Manchester United vs. Chelsea : 20 September 2025.
In the short few days of build up to our game at Manchester United, one thought kept bouncing around inside my head.
“Twelve years. We haven’t bloody won at Old Trafford for twelve years.”
That 1-0 win in May 2013 was the last time we had returned south with a full three points. A Juan Mata shot that nutmegged the gurning giant Phil Jones, deflecting slightly off his left kneecap, gave us the three points. I remember that I took a photo of that exact moment. It affected Sir Alex Ferguson so much that he announced his retirement the next day.
It all seems so long ago now. Our team that day reads like a list of Chelsea giants :
Cech, Azpilicueta, Cole, Ivanovic, Luiz, Ramires, Lampard, Oscar, Mata, Ba, Moses.
No Terry, though, jettisoned to the sidelines under Rafael Benitez. Torres and Ake were the two playing substitutes.
My closing paragraphs in my “Tale” from that that day sums up the joy of that moment.
“I glanced at Alan, who was screaming, his cheeks red, his face ecstatic. I spotted Juan Mata sprint down to the corner flag. It was his moment to tease, torment and tantalise. I clicked away. I was surprisingly cool. After taking around ten photos, my time had come. I clambered onto the seat in front and screamed.
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES! GET IN!
That was it. It was time for some bombastic, triumphant chanting.
“Amsterdam. Amsterdam. We Are Coming.
Amsterdam. Amsterdam. I Pray.
Amsterdam. Amsterdam. We Are Coming.
We Are Coming In The Month Of May.”
Our battle song of 2013.
The Chelsea fans around me were full of smiles and joy. I stood on the seat in front for the next few minutes. I was only vaguely aware of the late red card for Raphael as I was still full of song. I felt my throat getting sore, but this was no time to relent.
“Champions Of Europe. We Know What We Are.”
Despite a few last-ditch United chances, we held on. This was my eighteenth visit to Old Trafford with Chelsea and only the fifth victory. It wasn’t comparable to the pivotal win in 2009-2010, but it was a close second.
I raced back to the waiting car with the United fans moaning away all around me. I listened to “606” on the drive through Sale and Altrincham. Dave Johnstone’s voice was the sole Chelsea voice to be heard. Many United fans were phoning in.
They weren’t happy.
How dare “United” lose a match.
To be honest, I could hardly believe my ears at the ruthlessness of some of their fans. They were irate with Ferguson for playing a second-rate team (I hadn’t noticed) and one chap was so fed up with Fergie’s dictatorial nature that he wasn’t renewing his season ticket next year.”
Twelve years on, we had been lured back to Old Trafford once more.
I collected PD at 10am and Parky at 10.30am. I was well aware that this would be my thirtieth visit to Old Trafford to see Chelsea play Manchester United, the most-ever visits to an away stadium, but my record was rather humble.
Played 29
Won 5
Drew 10
Lost 15
To make it worse, two of those paltry five wins were way back in 1986, my first two visits. So, stretched out over almost forty years, just three wins in twenty-seven games tell my own personal story of misery.
For those of a certain age, Chelsea always used to have a decent record at Old Trafford, with our most successful period between 1966 and 1986. In thirteen league visits in that twenty-year span, we were unbeaten. It all came to a crashing end on a hot bank holiday Monday in August 1987, a game that I sadly watched from a cramped away enclosure.
Anyway, enough of the past. This was 2025, and I – worryingly – was travelling north with a smidgeon of optimism. As we all know, Manchester United have been quite awful so far this season under Ruben Amorim. I had no doubts that the four Manchester United supporters that co-exist alongside me in our small office of ten were nervous of the weekend’s game. I had kept my lips tight, not wishing to tempt fate, but was hopeful.
With the game kicking off at 5.30pm, a four-and-a-half journey stretched out in front of me.
The skies darkened as we advanced past Birmingham. We became enmeshed in slow-moving traffic, partly caused I think by teeming rain and copious surface water, and so we had to reappraise our pre-match plans. Rather than stop off at a pub en route, we decided to aim straight for the stadium.
In the last hour or so, the rain didn’t stop, and the clouds were so low that it seemed we had to duck to avoid them.
The Sat Nav sent me towards Old Trafford via a different route than usual, avoiding the M60 Orbital, past Didsbury, through the massive Southern Cemetery, a sombre experience in the Manchester rain, through Chorlton-cum-Hardy – a district that always makes me chuckle like a twelve-year-old – and then on towards Old Trafford. For a few minutes, I found myself driving on Kings Road in Stretford, where Morrissey once lived. In 2004, I saw Morrissey in concert at the Old Trafford cricket ground, a genuine home coming, and he opened with the line –
“Hello, Weatherfield.”
Due to my two co-passengers’ issues in walking, I dropped them off outside The Bishop Blaize pub on the Chester Road at around 4.15pm, then turned around and headed down to my usual parking place near Gorse Hill Park. As they exited my car, the rain lashed against them, my car, the roads and the pavements. I had left my house at 9.45am, and I had dropped the lads off six-and-a-half hours later. It was, despite no end of laughs between the three of us, a real slog.
I paid my £10 – it was £15 last season, are United now worth 66% of their 2024 value? – and zipped up my jacket, donned my baseball cap, and away I went, fearing the worst. The rain still lashed down, and I expected to be drenched by the time I reached the familiar slope of the forecourt underneath the Munich clock.
Thankfully, the weather lightened on my twenty-minute walk to Old Trafford, and I decided to take a few photos from a couple of fresh angles, with the huge steel structure of the stadium looking over the terraced houses below.
I noted the “20 Zone” street sign next to The Bishop Blaize and quizzically wondered if that was a nod towards the local team’s title haul. Maybe I would have been happier if it had said “20 Limit.”
They have won enough, surely.
On the busy corner of Chester Road and Sir Matt Busby Way, there was the usual agglomeration of United fans from many parts of the British Isles and further afield. For a few moments, all I could hear were Irish accents.
After a slight wait at the security check, and with Chelsea fans shouting about flutes, and a lone United fan shouting about rent boys, I finally reached the cramped away concourse.
Phew.
It was just before 5pm.
The rain had recommenced and – my goodness – Old Trafford looked as quintessentially Mancunian as it is ever likely to.
A depressing wash of clouds overhead, the grey steel of the roof, the mesmerising sight of millions of speckles of rain lashing down and across the massive void of the stadium.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry that my seat, in row 2 above the corner flag, had just missed the drip, drip, drip from a hole in the stand a hundred feet above me. Even worse was the fact that two of the disabled spectators in the section right in front of me were experiencing the full effect of a leaky roof too. It seemed that their red United rain jackets would be in for a tough assignment during the early evening’s entertainment.
Shocking.
Both the home and away sections took a while to fill.
At 5.25pm, I recognised a song.
“This Is The One” by the Stone Roses started and would welcome the teams onto the pitch. Flags and banners fluttered in The Stretford End, looking like a less colourful Kop, and I took a few photos.
I posted one on “Facebook” with the words “This Is The One.”
And please God, let this be the one, a win at last in rainy dreary Weatherfield.
Manager Enzo Maresca chose these starters :
Sanchez, James, Cucurella, Fofana, Chalobah, Enzo, Caicedo, Estevao, Palmer, Neto, Joao Pedro.
Then, next up, a John Denver / Pete Boyle mash-up.
“Take me home, United Road.
To the place I belong.
To Old Trafford, to see United.
Take me home, United Road.”
I had sensed a quiet nervousness both outside and inside from the home support, and there had been little pre-match jousting on the terraces from either set of fans.
As always, we attacked the Stretford End in the first half.
However, in the first six minutes, we didn’t attack the Stretford End. It was all United in this opening period.
It didn’t take long for the goal at our end to be the central focus. New signing Bryan Mbeumo forced a decent save from Robert Sanchez after only two minutes, and then Reece James was on hand with a timely interception very soon after, saving a likely opener.
This understandably roused the home support, whose noise then stirred the away support into life.
“Just like London, your city is blue.”
Around this time, we were treated to two Sanchez miskicks to United players, but very soon there would be an even bigger calamity.
Just as I was reviewing how wet the seats were to my right, and where my away pals Gary and John should have been standing – where were they? – I had momentarily looked away as the United ‘keeper had walloped a ball forward. To be honest, I didn’t see the build-up, only the ill-timed rush out of our penalty area by Sanchez and the catastrophic swipe at Mbeumo.
Oh bollocks.
The referee issued a straight red.
What a mess.
It seemed that those little hopes of success on this miserable day had been immediately washed away.
But then, as the United players crowded around the site of the free kick that would follow, Maresca chose not to make one substitution but two and we all scratched our collective heads.
Filip Jorgensen for Estevao, Tosin Adarabioyo for Neto.
Bloody hell, our two wingers, our two “out balls”, what was the manager thinking?
“That just invites them on” uttered a local Chelsea fan, who I am sure stood in front of me at Old Trafford on a recent visit.
From the free-kick, Bruno Fernandes thankfully wasted the chance to take the lead.
We struggled to put two passes together, and on fourteen minutes, a cross came in, and Patrick Dorgu’s header fell nicely for Fernandes to sweep the ball in. He raced away to the far corner and as the home fans roared, I felt ill.
“Well, that was too easy.”
Here we go again.
Unbeknown to me straight away, there was a VAR review, but that amounted to nothing.
Just after, Gary and John arrived, soaked, the victims of slow-moving traffic on the M6.
We were awful. I had to wonder who on Earth thought that it was a smart move to knock it about nonchalantly at the back when United had a spare man and who could put us under great pressure. It was nonsense tactics. Especially, when we had nobody to hit if we ever managed to play it past this press.
After twenty-one minutes, a further substitution, Andrey Santos for Cole Palmer.
I texted some mates.
“White flags.”
I was utterly perplexed. But then the rumour went out that Palmer was injured.
Down below us, a move developed and Casemiro bundled the ball in from an Amad Diallo cross, but the ball had gone out behind the goal-line in the build-up.
On thirty-four minutes, a very rare excursion into the Stretford End penalty box, and Joao Pedro tumbled. It was too far away for me to judge.
On thirty-seven minutes, a cross to the back post, a header back into the six-yard by Patrick Dorgu wasn’t cleared. James attempted to do so but only added to the panic. A Luke Shaw header then dropped down and Casemiro was on hand to nod in. His race towards our corner was just horrible to witness.
Fackinell.
In injury-time, a coming together of Santos and Casemiro, and they ended up on the floor. The referee took his time, seemed to review what he had just seen, then signalled a yellow.
The Mancunian next to me, bless him, had remembered another yellow.
“Second yellow. Off.”
I roared.
For a few seconds I overdosed on positivity.
“Now we have some space. We’re back in it.”
Or so I thought.
The half-time came and went, with much muttering and moaning from the faithful.
The second half began, and we tried to get at United, but at times we were rather pedestrian.
It took a while for us to build anything of note.
I expected a lot more from Enzo.
Wesley Fofana headed in from a James corner but there was an offside flag.
Soon after, a double substitution.
Tyrique George for Fofana.
Malo Gusto for Cucurella.
The addition of George was a head-scratcher.
Alejandro Garnacho, who had been booed by the Stretford End while he was warming up, would have been many Chelsea fans’ choice for a late appearance. Here was a player that had an extra dimension to his game, and a massive point to prove. A moment like this does not come around too often. The moment was meant for him. Alas, Maresca chose not to gamble, perhaps the story of his managerial life thus far.
God knows what must have gone through Garnacho’s head as he sat down on the bench, overlooked.
For all of the change in personnel, and for all of the possible variations of attack, Reece James stuck with what he knew, out wide, making angles with overlaps, and became our only effective attacking threat.
It was his cross that was ably headed down and in by Trevoh Chalobah with ten minutes to go.
The Mancunian next to me : “3-2, you watch.”
I wished that I shared his optimism.
We kept going, but without much of a clue as to how to get into areas that would hurt United.
At the other end, a flashing shot from Fernandes was ably saved by Filip Jorgensen.
The rain had relented slightly but then came on strong again in the closing minutes.
At the final whistle, I turned and headed up the steps, bracing myself for a long and wet walk back to the car. First, that bloody slope on the forecourt which is always a fun experience, being serenaded by the home fans.
I had to laugh as I walked back in the darkness when I was overtaken by a United couple. Despite the win, they were as morose as we were.
“Ten versus ten, we lost.”
That’s the spirit.
With PD and Parky unable to walk quickly, we did not get back to the car until 8.30pm, and by then I was absolutely soaked.
We hit the M6 at 9.30pm, the road conditions awful.
I stopped at Stafford Services for junk food – Scottish themed, Tunnocks tea cakes and Irn Bru – and we bumped into Allie and Nick from Reading again. There was a final stop at Strensham for some petrol, and at last, nearing Bristol, the rain finally relented.
I made it home eventually at 1.45am.
That win at Old Trafford is as elusive as ever.
At least Frome Town won.
2013
2025
CHELSEA/esque 