Chelsea 2-0 Man Utd: Martínez's 82 seconds sink Carrick

Update (31 Oct, evening): after the later Premier League results United dropped to 17th, level on seven points with Crystal Palace in 18th and above them only on goal difference. What the next two games mean for Carrick is in our piece on why Roma and Villa now decide his job.

Chelsea 2-0 Man Utd will go down as another defeat, and it was a self-inflicted one. For 45 minutes at Stamford Bridge, Michael Carrick's side were the better team and should have been ahead. Then they gave away a soft opener five minutes after the break, Lisandro Martínez committed two bookable offences 82 seconds apart, and a game United could have won became a ninth without a victory in all competitions.

That is United's longest run since 1988, and at full time it left them 16th, a point above the relegation zone with 7 points from 27. Chelsea move up to fourth.

The half United should have won

Carrick brought Bruno Fernandes back as captain after leaving him on the bench against Bournemouth, and for a while it looked the right call.

Amad Diallo was twice denied by Mike Penders, and curled just over on 42 minutes after Wesley Fofana slipped. Fernandes, unmarked from Bryan Mbeumo's cross, blazed over from the best chance of the half.

On 34 minutes United thought they'd done it. Fernandes swung in a corner, Harry Maguire headed it back across goal and Matheus Cunha nodded in. VAR ruled it out for offside.

United's expected goals at the break were roughly 1.0 to Chelsea's 0.3. That's why the second half hurts so much. Chelsea had hit the post through Moisés Caicedo, but that one wouldn't have stood for handball, and Pedro Neto dragged wide one-on-one after a Maguire mistake.

Five minutes, one walk-through

It took five minutes of the second half for the whole thing to come apart. Romeo Lavia picked the ball off Mbeumo and Carlos Baleba in the centre circle and flicked it to Rogers, who ran straight through the middle of United's defence. He went past Martínez and Maguire far too easily and dinked the ball over Senne Lammens.

Carrick took Baleba off for Kobbie Mainoo eight minutes later.

Martínez's 82 seconds

On 59 minutes Martínez hauled Rogers down and was booked. Moments later, at a Chelsea corner, he ignored the ball, jumped into Fofana and put an arm into his face.

Referee Peter Bankes didn't give it on the field. VAR sent him to the monitor, and he gave the penalty and showed Martínez a second yellow card. The two offences were 82 seconds apart. Lammens got a hand to Palmer's penalty, but it squeezed in. 2-0, with almost half an hour left and ten men.

Martínez walked past the bench and Carrick didn't look at him. Martínez publicly criticised the club's recruitment after the Atlético Madrid defeat, then apologised for the timing. This was only his second start since. It was a senior player costing his manager the game at the worst possible moment.

Lammens kept it at two

The scoreline could have been far heavier. Estêvão, on his first league start of the season, had two goals ruled out for offside, the second a rocket from Palmer's pass on 71 minutes. Valentin Barco missed a sitter late on.

Lammens made seven saves, his most in a single Premier League game, and was United's best player after the break.

There were ten minutes of added time and United had one moment in them. On 92 minutes Mbeumo's shot was tipped on to the bar by Penders.

Discipline is now a pattern

The part of this game that should worry Carrick most isn't the finishing. It's the cards. United committed 19 fouls to Chelsea's seven, and Martínez's red was joined by bookings for Maguire, Mainoo, Mbeumo and Zirkzee. Mbeumo's came for delaying a restart. Zirkzee's came with United two down and ten men.

That isn't a team that has downed tools. It's a team losing its head once things go wrong, and it's a pattern: Yoro was sent off in Madrid, Martínez here.

What Carrick said

Carrick spoke to TNT Sports straight after the game, in comments carried by BBC Sport. On the match:

"We didn't come out, and didn't get going in the second half.

"Half-time we could have and should have been up. Everything was positive as we hoped for.

"We could have made more chances. We looked in a good place and then found a way of unravelling the second half. A bad way to concede, penalty, and then we were right up against it at that moment. It turned right on its head.

"There is no hiding from the fact that we haven't won enough games. The boys were in a good place in the first half.

"I think we didn't start the second half particularly great. A bit scrappy and we didn't get going. They made [the] first blow in the second half and in the end that goes on to be the difference."

On Martínez's red card, he said: "I have not looked at it to be honest. I have not seen it." Asked whether he felt let down by the defender, his answer was one word: "No."

On the supporters:

"There is a lot of emotion, we're a great football club, and we want to win football matches. The supporters come, make a lot of effort, pay a lot of money to watch us play. You can see from today the boys had the game in the right place and things have gone against us.

"Things have gone against us, and gone against us in a big way. Unravelled quickly. A lot of emotion right now.

"We have got to move forward and take the things that worked for us today. A lot of the good things, especially in the first half and use that moving forward."

Asked whether he expects to be in charge for the next game, he said: "Yes."

"Things have gone against us" is generous. The VAR calls were correct, and nothing went against United in the 82 seconds that decided this. Players made those decisions. Carrick is right that the first half was good, and he's right that it unravelled quickly, but the honest version is that his own defenders unravelled it.

What comes next

Roma at Old Trafford on Tuesday is next, then Aston Villa at home on 8 November. Carrick says he'll be in charge, but the shortlist hasn't gone away: our piece on Eddie Howe's £3m compensation clause explains why the money is the easy part.

We got our preview wrong: no 1-1, and Carrick went with a back four rather than three. Our view now is simple. On this evidence the first half proved Carrick can still set a team up to compete with a top-four side away from home. The second half proved some of his senior players can't be trusted to see a plan through. Martínez shouldn't start against Roma. If United are going to change the manager anyway, they should at least be honest about whose 82 seconds this was.

Picture: Stamford Bridge before a Chelsea home game, by Michal Lenc via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped to 16:9.