Draw highlights role reversal at Old Trafford as Jose Mourinho meets Louis Van Gaal

Much was made in the buildup to this match of José Mourinho’s managerial debt to Louis van Gaal. Football has a nice habit of turning such orthodoxies around though and here, in a boisterous and entertaining 1-1 draw there was an agreeable sense of role-reversal in play.

When Mourinho came to Van Gaal he was but a pupil: when it comes to the Premier League he is, on the face of it, the master – although here Van Gaal appeared to have been studying his former assistant's methods quite closely in a match in which United equalised a set-piece goal with a stoppage-time set piece of their own and, at times in the first half, pressured and disrupted a more fluid and well-seasoned Chelsea midfield that only really asserted itself in the final half-hour.

Van Gaal had admitted after the draw at West Bromwich Albion last week that he is still adapting to the tone and texture of a new league, noticeably the need for a greater “physical balance”.

So it proved here, as Chelsea’s mobility and expertise at set pieces threatened to open up a six-point lead at the top of the Premier League right up to the final moments of a muscular, full-throated, brilliantly entertaining match.

Unlikely star

If Chelsea left Old Trafford disappointed but still with the air of a title-bound team, the unlikely star of United’s encouragingly sound performance here was a figure from the fringes. Enter:

Marouane Fellaini

, brought in for his first start this season, and in the opening half the dominant feature of a concussive midfield battle, before popping up at the end to head down a free-kick, enabling Robin van Persie to drive home the equaliser.

Here Van Gaal used Fellaini like a man very deliberately placing a platoon of traffic cones in the middle of the road to slow the rush-hour traffic, drawing from the Belgian a dogged and astute performance as a kind of left-sided midfield obstacle-cum-distributional hub. The expectation before this match had been that Chelsea’s midfield would prove too much for a work-in-progress opposition. United, though, offered the rest of the Premier League a lesson in how to close down Cesc Fabregas’s ability to dictate play.

Player of season

So far Fabregas is a convincing candidate as the player of the season in his central pivot role, albeit in a league where his qualities on the ball as metronome and razor edge make him stand out at times like a world class sniper in a blunderbuss shootout. Here, though, he completed just five passes in the first half as Fellaini’s inclusion gave United added muscle if not exactly mobility.

Afterwards, van Persie admitted his late equaliser felt like a winner. “In the 93rd minute, 1-0 down at home, it feels so much better as you can see. Overall we had more chances than them, although it’s a fair result. I have mixed feelings.”

Fellaini's header came when he was not marked by Branislav Ivanovic – the Chelsea defender who was sent off seconds before. "Is that so? It makes it even better for us," Van Persie said. "If you look at the table we should have won, wanted to win to get the points but we can be happy with a draw."

Mourinho was at pains to say he was happy with the outcome, despite the late drama. “Very happy,” he said. “Very happy. My team played a fantastic game, it’s not easy to play here against Manchester United, a Manchester United that tried to play very compact and hit us on the counter attack.”

The Portuguese manager refused to get involved with discussing Ivanovic’s dismissal for two yellow cards. “I prefer not to speak about the second yellow card,” he said. “If I do I have to start in the first half and go through many things that happened in the game . . . Chelsea was fantastic, even with the circumstances. The result is not the one we wanted, we came to win but the performance is fantastic.” Guardian Service