Less than 72 hours after playing in Munich, Chelsea have to take to the pitch at Old Trafford for our third away game in a week. Following a self-inflicted draw and a (largely) self-inflicted defeat, this should be a great chance to quickly get back to winning ways, against an absolutely shambolic United team, who have won just one of their five games in all competitions thus far with a coach actively campaigning to get fired after every game.
But Old Trafford has not been kind to us in recent years: in fact, we haven’t won here in the league since 2013. We used to have one of the better records at the Theater of Dreams, if memory serves, back when United were legendary; now we surely have one of the worst.
Can we grit our teeth, gather up our last reserves of energy, and change that trend today?
Date / Time: Saturday, September 20, 2025, 17.30 BST; 12:30pm EDT; 10pm IST
Venue: Old Trafford, Greater Manchester
Referee: Peter Bankes (on pitch); Craig Pawson (VAR)
Forecast: Heavy rain
On TV: Sky Sports Main Event (UK); USA, Telemundo (USA); Star Sports Select HD1 (India); SuperSport Premier League, Canal+ Sport 3 (NGA); elsewhere
Streaming: Sky Go (UK); NBC Sports Live, Telemundo Deportes En Vivo (USA); Disney+ Hotstar (India); DStv Now (NGA)
Manchester United team news: A summer of massive spending has seen United remake the squad in, presumably, manager Ruben Amorim’s image, but so far, the returns have been as lackluster as last season. Antony, Alejandro Garnacho, Rasmus Højlund, Marcus Rashford, André Onana, Victor Lindelöf, and Jadon Sancho have all gone (at least on loan, but many permanently) while over £200m was spent on the likes of Benjamin Šeško, Bryan Mbeumo, and Matheus Cunha. Only Mbeumo has scored so far this season.
Mason Mount’s return from long-term injury will be helpful in the long run, but as things stand, United have not shown much, if any improvement from an historically bad 15th-place finish last season, which left them with no European commitments midweek for the first time since 2014.
Diogo Dalot and Lisandro Martínez are set to miss out due to injury.
View from the enemy: The Busby Babe
Chelsea team news: Chelsea sure could use a bit of a break as well, but as Enzo Maresca put it in his pre-match press conference, “I prefer to play Champions League games”. At the end of the day, if we want to be in with the big boys, we’re going to need to behave like big boys.
Adding extra intrigue will be the return of Garnacho to Old Trafford, with Maresca hinting that the former United winger would get his first start for Chelsea in this one. That may be just one of several changes from midweek, depending on any additional fitness concerns with the likes of Cole Palmer, who just returned after nearly a month out or João Pedro (who needed a rest weeks ago already).
Long-term absentees Levi Colwill, Liam Delap, Dário Essugo, Roméo Lavia, and Benoît Badiashile remain out.
Previously: We did manage a draw here last season, with Moisés Caicedo canceling out a Bruno Fernandes penalty in mid-March.
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