Is It Do Or Die For Manchester United & Chelsea?

Another international break has been and gone, and there was a lot to like about it. We had some entertaining friendlies, the USMNT actually managed to get a draw against Uruguay, and we took a few steps towards learning who is going to be competing in UEFA Euro 2020 next year.

Alas, while that’s all well and good, we’re still pretty happy about the fact that domestic football is set to return to our screens. As reported by Sky Sports and ChelseaFC.com, two teams that will be back in action over the weekend are Manchester United and Chelsea.

Pushing forward

It’d be accurate to suggest that these two clubs have not had the best of starts to this current Premier League season, and even that may be a little bit generous. Under the guidance of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Frank Lampard respectively, there was an awful lot of intrigue surrounding how they were going to perform in such an increasingly competitive division.

As it turns out, the early answers haven’t been great.

When United beat Chelsea 4-0 to open up their campaign it seemed as if these two would be heading in very different directions. That hasn’t proven to be the case, though, with both really struggling to get a foothold in the season.

Since that game United have dropped points against Wolves, Crystal Palace and Southampton, which is a set of three fixtures they’d be expecting to get at least seven points from. While the individual quality from within their squad was quite evident, there’s still so, so much work to be done before they can be deemed a finished product.

Chelsea, on the other hand, were able to edge past Norwich City which is no easy task these days – but they were also unable to beat Leicester and Sheffield United. The latter of those two results, with all due respect to the Blades, really did showcase some serious frailties within their squad.

Block out the noise

This weekend serves as a great opportunity for both to get back to winning ways, even though the games they’re faced with are still going to be pretty challenging.

United will be taking on Leicester City who got off to a great start in their first few games, which includes the aforementioned draw against Chelsea. If the Red Devils can implement their attacking threat and Maguire can keep his composure against his former side, then they could be in for a really positive result.

Chelsea, meanwhile, face a Saturday afternoon trip to Molineux in order to play Wolverhampton Wanderers. Nuno’s men haven’t quite been at the races in recent weeks due to their Europa League commitments, but even with that being the case, they’re very difficult to beat at Molineux and haven’t lost at home this season.

It isn’t quite do or die for both managers yet but if another few poor results start to flood through as the weeks and potentially even months go on, they could be looking at some big changes by the time Christmas rolls around.