Ruben Amorim handed Man United lifeline thanks to 20 minutes of Chelsea chaos | OneFootball

The Theatre of Dreams maybe needed a miracle, and it got one courtesy of a nightmare for Robert Sanchez as Manchester United eased the pressure on under-fire boss Ruben Amorim.

A storm was brewing over Old Trafford as the world champions came to town, the deluge of rain falling on a grey day in Manchester summing up the situation that the Portuguese found himself in this week.

However, in the end the bizarre weather only foretold an equally ridiculous match, with the game eventually defined by a whirlwind opening 14 minutes that saw Robert Sanchez sent off before United captain Bruno Fernandes opened the scoring.

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Robert Sanchez’s early red card came to define a crazy match (Getty Images)

Amorim’s side started quickly but they were given a gift five minutes in as Benjamin Sesko rose highest to win a header that played Bryan Mbeumo clean through, with the winger taking it past the onrushing Sanchez before being scythed down.

There were few complaints from the visiting side as Enzo Maresca brought on defensive reinforcements, but they weren’t able to hold on for long as that rain was accompanied by a deluge of United attacks, the visitors barely able to get out of their own half before Bruno Fernandes tapped in from close range to open the scoring on 14 minutes.

Old Trafford was roaring and there was a sense that the afternoon could turn into a rout, with Chelsea’s misery compounded as they were forced to bring off Cole Palmer just after the 20-minute mark after their talisman suffered a recurrence of the groin injury that had kept him out of action until a week ago.

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Cole Palmer was the third Chelsea played subbed in the opening 20 minutes (Nick Potts/PA Wire)

And yet it was to get worse for the visitors, with a weak Reece James clearance eventually leading to United’s second, as Harry Maguire’s header set up a tap-in for Casemiro at the far post.

But if many inside Old Trafford began to ask themselves just how many goals United could put past Chelsea, they were guilty of forgetting United’s capacity to make life difficult for themselves.

Casemiro, often the guilty party in United’s moments of rashness, went from hero to zero as he became the second player sent off, dragging down Santos near the box to earn himself a second yellow. It meant that the match received the ‘honour’ of being the first in Premier League history to see two (or more) goals, red cards and substitutions within the opening 45 minutes, in what is a suitable statistic to sum up a bizarre afternoon.

And it was only to get more tense from there, with neither side really able to dominate the second half with the teams once again level in players, but it was the visitors who struck the next blow, Trevoh Chalobah’s impressive late header having felt somewhat inevitable given United’s performances in recent weeks.

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Casemiro’s goal appeared to set United on course for victory (PA Wire)

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Only for his red card to give Chelsea hope (AP)

But if each manager could take little from the previous 80 minutes, perhaps the final 10 was more helpful. The recently crowned world champions toiled as they searched for an equaliser, with the earlier removal of Palmer having felt like a watershed moment in terms of the likelihood of a Chelsea comeback. There were jeers from the home crowd that were almost tantamount to celebrations, as if the withdrawal of Palmer was almost as positive as scoring a goal themselves.

Maresca will likely be asking himself questions, primarily regarding why his team got off to such a poor start and why they struggled to create clear-cut chances in the second half once both sides were down to 10 men. The first could be shrugged off to bad luck; the second is a little more worrying for a side that currently has more questions than answers. For, despite their status as world champions, the fit of many players in their squad remains unclear, with little to show in attack once Palmer is removed from the equation.

But while Chelsea’s bloated squad and boardroom issues combine with Maresca’s luck of clarity about his ‘best’ 11, the club remain a world away from the misery that has befallen Old Trafford in recent years, so whatever questions the Italian has, he’ll have plenty of time to find an answer.

His opposite number has less time to prove himself, and while Amorim may have learned something about the character of his players today, he emphasised that his team need to “return to that urgency” away at Brentford next week. His choice of words was perhaps fitting in a week where reports suggested that the Portuguese could have just three games to save his job.

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Ruben Amorim may have been given a reprieve but still faces a fight to save his job (REUTERS)

Amorim admitted that his team “complicate our lives every time” with rash decisions or silly mistakes, and while United dug in deep – with some solid defensive performances from Matthijs de Ligt, Maguire and Luke Shaw – it was an evening that was a far cry from these sides’ matches of old, a rivalry that one defined the Premier League (and even Europe) now discarded to a pair of sideshow soap operas that illustrate some of football’s biggest problems.

Nevertheless, only one issue will bother either manager at the moment, and it is that of results. Chelsea lose to fall to sixth, United earn a win to take them to 10th, and Amorim has the perfect result against a side that may have originally been seen as a rival for European football this season.

There was very little to take from the performance on a one-in-a-million afternoon, but the Portuguese lives to fight another day in what may yet prove to be the first step in dragging United out of the nightmare that has enveloped the Theatre of Dreams.