United were without top scored Wayne Rooney so Sir Alex Ferguson opted for Dimitar Berbatov upfront with Ji-Sung Park, Ryan Giggs and Antonio Valencia supporting him.
J.Cole gave Chelsea the lead only 20 minutes in after he back-heeled the ball in from a Florent Malouda cross.
With 78 minutes on the clock substitute Drogba was put through on goal by Saloman Kalou and he calmly put the ball past keeper Edwin Van Der Sar. It was obvious to everyone, apart from the officials that Drogba had been stood in an offside position.
Two minutes later Macheda gave United a lifeline after Luis Nani’s ball into the area was parried by Chelsea keeper Petr Cech, Macheda was there to put the ball into the back of the net.
During the first half it was blatantly obvious that United were missing Rooney and we also missed the pace of Nani. The fullbacks Gary Neville and Patrice Evra were sitting far too deep and we never really threatened the Chelsea goal.
We had in the main contained Chelsea but we weren’t pushing enough to get a goal.
Man United did improve slightly in the second half but we still didn’t test Cech enough.
I thought after the terrible performance against Bayern Munich midweek, the players would come out and show the world that we aren’t a one-man team and we can manage without Rooney. More than anything, I wanted to see a better performance but we didn’t really get that.
The officiating wasn’t great; there were quite a few mistakes made and the biggest one cost us. The officials can’t entirely be blamed because we could have been better but Drogba was clearly well offside and if that hadn’t have counted, maybe we would have got a draw. The refereeing standards weren’t upto it today.
Next up we have Bayern Munich in the Champions League. We are already 2-1 down and we really need a much better performance and obviously a win. The players have to keep their heads up and keep the club in the competition.
