Chelsea player ratings: VAR overshadows Mateo Kovacic, covers for others

Willian, Right wing: 5

Remember we said at the beginning that Andreas Christensen shared the lead with four tackles? He shared it with Willian, whose four tackles far outstripped anything he did on offence, which wasn’t very much at all. Willian worked well on the press, but he did not offer anything that could help Chelsea get behind United’s lines.

With Callum Hudson-Odoi reinjured and Christian Pulisic still injured, Willian and Pedro may be set for more starts together. Hopefully they can rediscover their old rapport and individual scoring magic.

Michy Batshuayi, Striker: 3

Getting a Slab-foot in the Simeone’s might be the best thing that happened to Michy Batshuayi on Monday night, since it shifted some of the conversation and banter away from his performance in front of goal. Batshuayi had two shots, both of which exuded less confidence than an Alvaro Morata late 2018 shot. The shots were tentative and the timing was off, which meant that even if they were on goal they would not have made their way past David de Gea. If the striker doesn’t believe he will score, he won’t.

The rest of his play was not much better. There was the Jorginho pass mentioned above. Pedro slid a perfect throughball to Mason Mount who played in Batshuayi, but that came to nothing. Later, Pedro was running at three Manchester United players at the top of the box, and Batshuayi was seemingly running within their little pack rather than opening up to either side to draw a defender to him and / or make himself available for a pass.

You can only fault a player so much when he has played so little. But Olivier Giroud has played far less and did everything Chelsea needed their striker to do, including putting the ball into the back of the net.

If Tammy Abraham is unfit for Saturday’s game and Batshuayi starts, Giroud will be entirely justified in his choice of protest.

Pedro, Left wing: 6

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: the man is timeless. The energetic pressing, the frenetic runs (sometimes with the ball back towards his defensive zone), the brilliant passing interspersed with wild shooting, the ever-present confidence that one of those wild shots will curl into the top corner. It’s sometimes hard to believe it’s been a decade since Pedro was winning Euro and World Cup trophies with Spain. He’s so much the same player.

Pedro has not been treated much better by the fans than by Frank Lampard this season, but he may be in line for a run in the starting XI. His experience is invaluable and his style of play does bring something new to the side.

The question for him, Lampard and his teammates is if they can take what he does and who he is – and there should be no question about all those attributes, good and bad, at this point – and apply it to where the team needs it.