Chelsea v Manchester United Betting Tips

The main headline here is of course the return of two-time Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho to Stamford Bridge as he looks to take revenge on his former employers with his new Manchester United side. The fact that this is the main headline grabber for this match, rather than the quality of the two teams, shows just how boring it might be.

Last week the odds dramatically shortened on Chelsea’s latest manager, Antonio Conte, being the next Premier League boss to be sacked. It seems the bookies got hold of a supposed insider word which has turned out to be unreliable.

Having said that, after an electrifying start to the season, Chelsea went a bit wayward about a month ago with two Premier League losses on the spin against potential title and top four rivals Arsenal and Liverpool.

The Blues recovered quickly from those setbacks to get their season back on track with two consecutive wins to nil and they are now fifth in the table and just three points off top spot.

As expected, home form has generally been good for Chelsea this season, winning all of their home matches apart from that loss against Liverpool.

However, the fact that those two previously-mentioned losses against Arsenal and Liverpool perhaps show a bit of vulnerability at Chelsea – they seem to struggle against the bigger teams in the league.

A lot of this is down to their defence with Conte still heavily relying on 35-year-old John Terry to give stability to his back-line. The injury to Terry’s likely successor, Kurt Zouma, has not helped matters.

The Italian has reverted to his favoured three central defenders which brought him so much success at Juventus, however, that trio in Turin are three of the best centre halves in the game whereas at Chelsea he just will not get the same consistency from the erratic duo of Gary Cahill and David Luiz.

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has been back to Chelsea before with a different club and so this is hardly a new experience for him. He has said that there will be no touchline sprinting if his United side score at the bridge but there will still no doubt be emotion for the Portuguese as he looks to exact revenge on a club who sacked him twice.

Mourinho supposedly added fuel to the fire in his pre-match conference when he said that he and Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich were not friends. Not exactly shocking news (although the tabloids have deemed otherwise) as this is one of the worst kept secrets in football.

Back to matters on the pitch. United have recovered from their mid-September blip where they lost three in a row and have not suffered defeat since then. Despite this, they still find themselves seventh in the Premier League thanks to recent draws against relegation-threatened Stoke City and historic rivals Liverpool.

Paul Pogba has been slated for his lack of impact since arriving back in Manchester, however, he put in a decent display against Fenerbahce in the Europa League on Thursday night – grabbing himself two goals. However, we must remember that this was against a side who have disappointed in Turkey for a couple of years and so we must be careful before we claim Pogba has turned his form around. Having said that, this performance will no doubt give the Frenchman a boost of confidence ahead of the weekend trip to Chelsea.

Last Monday it was no surprise to see Mourinho park the United double-decker bus against Liverpool and hope for the draw (which he got) and it will likely be similar tactics again.

It is funny how fans and pundits would have criticised Van Gaal for doing this last season but as soon as Mourinho does it it is seen as ‘a great tactical move’ – A media darling if ever there was one. To be fair to Mourinho, it does bring him results and I am all for teams playing with different styles.

With this match more of a must not lose for both sides, I can only see this going one way – draw – which can be had at a very well priced 47/20.

I think another reasonable bet here would be ‘0-0 at Half Time’ at 15/8. As said above, this really is a ‘must not lose’ match and so the first half will likely be the two sides sitting back and testing the waters on the counter.

Finally, I would go with ‘Manchester United Goalkeeper to be Man of the Match’ at an incredible 14/1. On Monday night David De Gea once again showed why he is up there with the best keepers in the world with another great performance. United would be a lot lower than seventh in the league if it were not for De Gea’s performances this season.

The Spaniard is likely to be well-tested on Sunday evening which gives him another opportunity to show his skills and put in another Man of the Match performance.

See more tips here.