Venue: Stamford Bridge
Date: Monday, 1 April
Kick-off: 12:30 BST
Whilst seven changes against Southampton saw us slip up again in the league Saturday, United managed to rest players and still edge a bit closer to the title.
The interim clearly doesn’t take the Premier League as seriously as we do and decided to put all his eggs in the FA Cup basket this weekend, so he’d better have something up his sleeve today. Somehow I doubt it though.
MANAGER’S VIEWS
Going into today’s game, Fergie admits “I thought we were lucky to be honest with you (in the first leg). I thought that tiredness had got into the team and, from a comfortable position for the first 20 minutes, you could see the signs when we started to give the ball away just before half-time. That is a definite sign of tiredness. The tiredness came, possibly, from the emotional intensity of the Real Madrid game and also the way we lost it. I think that affected two or three players. In the second half in particular there was no doubt that Tom Cleverley’s and our two full-backs’ [Rafael and Patrice Evra] legs had gone. That was [due to] emotions. The way full-backs are, they put so much energy into getting forward but they found it difficult getting back. That made it a long game against Chelsea and they had the advantage of extra players in midfield. They really deserved to win the game in the second half, although we could have been four-up in the first 20 minutes. De Gea’s save was one thing, but I also thought we were scrambling about to get through the game. But we’re fresher now and we’ve got a strong squad in terms of picking two teams.
In the last few years, we’ve had some very difficult draws in the FA Cup. Chelsea have enjoyed a great benefit of home draws and I don’t think they have had one hard game in the run-up to the semi-finals over the years. That helps, no doubt about that. But they have us to play at Stamford Bridge and we won’t be easy for them.”
SQUAD NEWS
For Chelsea, Juan Mata is likely to return after missing the defeat to Southampton through illness, Gary Cahill (knee) is still a major doubt.
For United, Rafael (groin) will miss out but Ferdinand, Giggs and Rooney could all return after their rest against Sunderland.
TEAMS
UNITED (From): De Gea, Lindegaard, Amos, Rafael, Smalling, Jones, Ferdinand, Vidic, Evans, Evra, Buttner, Giggs, Valencia, Scholes, Carrick, Cleverley, Anderson, Young, Kagawa, Nani, Welbeck, Rooney, Hernandez, Van Persie.
CHELSEA (From): Cech, Turnbull, Hilario, Ivanovic, Ferreira, Cole, Bertrand, Luiz, Terry, Azpilicueta, Ramires, Oscar, Mata, Benayoun, Mikel, Moses, Lampard, Hazard, Marin, Torres, Ake, Ba.
LAST MEETING
United 2-2 Chelsea (10th March 2013)
PREDICTION
We go into today’s game as the holder’s and a record of winning this trophy in four of the last six seasons (seven overall). Sadly, I think the outcome will show the interim has as little respect for records as he has for us.