After Manchester United beat Chelsea 2-1 at Old Trafford Ruben Amorim urged his team to feel they need to win the next game too while criticising Casemiro for a red card that complicated the victory.
United were cruising after Robert Sánchez’s fourth-minute sending-off and goals from Bruno Fernandes and Casemiro on 14 and 37 minutes. But in the fifth minute of first-half added time the Brazilian was shown a second yellow card, for manhandling Andrey Santos.
Amorim said: “We started the game in the right way. Really aggressive. The red card helped us dominate the game but we were already there. We scored two goals and then we tried to complicate our game again. It’s always complicated for us. It should have been different in this game.”
He said Casemiro was feeling “worse than me. We won so I will forget a little bit and he will suffer because he’s a top professional. He understands what he did. He is experienced enough that that play should not be played like that. He cares too much. We suffered in the end but we deserved the win.”
Amorim stressed United need to forget the victory and focus on the trip to Brentford next Saturday. “With this win we have to forget the good feeling of winning the game and get back to the urgency of feeling we need to win the next game,” he said. “Today we won, it’s nice to win, but let’s forget that and return to that urgency. Because in the big club it’s not that feeling, today is a really good game, let’s relax a little bit.”
Trevoh Chalobah’s 80th-minute header ended up as consolation only. “The win was really important, I think we deserved it,” said Amorim. “Our crowd, our fans are easy to please. If you give everything they will be there. That is something our players need to understand. To have the crowd with us we just need to run, to fight and tackle.”
Fernandes’s goal was his 100th for the club. “Every three points is massive because we haven’t started the season as we wanted,” said the midfielder. “We go game by game – the next one will be massive too.”
Enzo Maresca said Sánchez’s red card shredded his gameplan, suggesting the keeper should have allowed Bryan Mbeumo to run through instead of fouling him. “For sure, if you ask me I prefer to be one goal down after three minutes than one player down after three minutes,” said the head coach.
Cole Palmer was forced off in the 20th minute by a recurring groin injury. “It’s a problem that is already a long time for him – it’s growing again,” the head coach said. “He did a test this morning – he wants to play this game for the team, so the effort has been huge from him, but then after 20 minutes he starts to feel something so we decided to change him.”
