Manchester United visits Chelsea for a late Monday kickoff, and it’s the headliner tie of the FA Cup quarterfinal. On Monday, it will be the top football story line in A block, B block and C block. After all it’s another edition of the Jose Mourinho Cup.
It’s a bummer for Mourinho that he won’t likely be able to go more “all in” for this one, as you know this match matters a lot to him. Mourinho was sacked by Chelsea in December of 2015, and he’s already made a lot of interesting comments about this match.
He’s made some fascinating comments about what kind of motivation Chelsea might, or at least should, have for this contest. The Portugese also said that the Blues success this season doesn’t surprise him, but their style does.
Mourinho will be hamstrung because he has a full fledged crisis going on in attack right now. They’ll have no active strikers, and be sans four, count ’em four, forwards. Here’s a link to the United injury report for this match.
(Also, you can check out our Chelsea starting XI prediction at this link)
Still Mourinho reminds overall positive about the current big picture direction of his team.
“They [players] are doing really well and, if we could change three or four draws at home in the Premier League for wins, it would mean we would have six or eight more points in the Premier League and we would be in a magnificent position,” Mourinho said. “So the boys are doing really well.”
Finally, without any further ado, (more like “for what it’s worth), The Sports Bank’s Man United starting XI prediction:
Henrikh Mkhitaryan
Juan Mata Paul Pogba Jesse Lingard
Ander Herrera Marouane Fellaini
Marcos Rojo Phil Jones Chris Smalling Antonio Valencia
David de Gea
As always, feel free to post your own Man United starting XI in the comments section below. Speak your mind on the formations and line-ups that are already presented here for your discussion.
Odds via Odds Checker: Man United 24/5, draw 27/10, Chelsea 3/4
Prediction: Chelsea 2, United 0
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times and NBC Chicago.com, contributes to Chicago Tribune.com, Bold, WGN CLTV and KOZN.
Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Sound Cloud, LinkedIn and YouTube