Red Devils have the blues

LONDON: Jose Mourinho blamed “incredible defensive mistakes” for his humiliation at Stamford Bridge where his former side Chelsea routed Manchester United 4-0 yesterday.

Having held out for 90 minutes at Anfield last Monday, United conceded the quickest goal in the Premier League this season to Pedro after 30 seconds, and were then ripped apart as Gary Cahill (21), Eden Hazard (62) and N’Golo Kante (70) completed the scoring.

Most of the goals stemmed from poor defending as Chelsea found ever more ingenious ways to inflict pain on Mourinho.

“We made incredible defensive mistakes and you pay for that,” he said. “If you score you have a chance and the match would have been different. When you come with a strategy you can’t concede a goal like that in the first minute.

“We were coming to have an offensive approach, we wanted to create chances, we showed that after the 1-0. The second and the third were counter-attack goals. If we score a goal like we almost did for 2-1 the game would be different.”

Marcus Alonso began the unravelling with a defence-splitting pass between De Gea and his central defenders that found Pedro, while Cahill could not believe his luck when the ball fell to him in the area after Chris Smalling failed to clear a corner.

“I couldn’t miss from there,” said Cahill.

Two up at half-time, when United replaced Marouane Fellaini with Juan Mata, Chelsea sat back and waited to hit United on the break, with Hazard adding a third after a clever one-two and then Kante driving forward to score his first goal for the club.

That goal would have been particularly difficult for Mourinho to stomach because the former Leicester midfielder met so little resistance.

A downbeat Mourinho struggled to find a positive spin to put on a terrible result.

It was only the second time in the Portuguese’s Premier League career that one of his sides had conceded four goals.

“You lose three points when you lose 1-0 or 4-0, it doesn’t make a difference,” he said.

“We need to win matches now to close the gap.”

Manchester City returned to the top of the Premier League on goal difference after coming from behind to draw 1-1 with Southampton at the Etihad Stadium yesterday.

Pep Guardiola’s side, who began the season with 10 consecutive victories, have now gone five games without a win in all competitions, equalling the Spaniard’s worst run as a manager at Barcelona.

It could have been worse as City gifted Southampton the lead when a wayward pass from John Stones put Nathan Redmond in on goal after 27 minutes.

Moments later Stones thought he had atoned by bundling the ball into the net, but his goal was disallowed for a Sergio Aguero offside.

Guardiola reacted to the poor first half by replacing Kevin de Bruyne with Kelechi Iheanacho, who made an immediate impact by scoring from close range after Fernandinho found Leroy Sane with an exquisite cross-field pass.

Saints remained a threat on the break and Claudio Bravo saved from Charlie Austin on 74 minutes, while Aguero went close at the other end, where Raheem Sterling was a constant threat as City pushed for the elusive winner.