Chelsea 0 Manchester U 0

Dong Fangzhuo

Chel­sea 0 Man­chester Uni­ted 0, Stam­ford Bridge, Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue, May 9, 2007. Dong Fang­zhuo was giv­en his com­pet­it­ive de­but for Man­chester Uni­ted in the goal­less draw wi­th Chel­sea at Stam­ford Bridge in May 2007. A pro­mising stri­ker, Dong had be­en sig­ned from Dali­an Shide for an ini­tial fee of £500,000 in the middle of the 2003-04 season.

New­ly crow­ned Barclays Pre­miership Cham­pi­ons Man­chester Uni­ted played out a goal­less draw wi­th Ro­man Abramovich´s Chel­sea at Stam­ford Bridge in their pen­ul­tim­ate fix­ture of the Pre­mier Lea­gue sea­son. In the re­verse meet­ing of the 2006-07 cam­paign, the two gi­ants of Eng­lish foot­ball had shared the spoils in a 1-1 draw at Old Traf­ford, wi­th Lous Saha en­ter­ing the score­sheet for the hosts in the fir­st pe­riod and Ri­cardo Carvalho find­ing the back of the net for the vis­it­ing out­fit af­ter the ha­lf time break. And al­though there was no pres­sure on either te­am at Stam­ford Bridge, the mat­ch was still value for money. Af­ter a few early op­por­tun­it­ies for Jose Mourinho´s boys, Man­chester Uni­ted came clo­se to tak­ing the lead in the 37th min­ute when pre­vi­ous Leeds Uni­ted mid­fielder Alan Smith played the ball thro­ugh to Ar­gen­tina in­ter­na­tion­al Gab­riel Hein­ze, but his ef­fort went wide. The West Lon­doners push­ed hard for a win­ning goal af­ter the re­sump­tion, but Uni­ted net­mind­er To­masz Kusz­czak made sev­er­al su­perb saves to keep the ho­me si­de at bay, and the ga­me ended wi­th no goals. Ten days la­ter, how­ever, Chel­sea and Man­chester Uni­ted would meet ag­ain in the FA Cup Fi­nal at Wemb­ley where The Blues ma­naged to be­at The Reds 1-0 thanks to a goal from Didi­er Dro­gba in ex­tra time. As re­gards Dong Fang­zhuo, the centre for­ward was sub­sti­tuted by Way­ne Roo­ney wi­th sev­en­teen min­utes left of the tie and on­ly ma­naged to make two more com­pet­it­ive fir­st te­am out­ings for Man­chester Uni­ted be­fore he re­turned to old club Dali­an Shide in Au­gust 2008. Chel­sea Te­am: Carlo Cudicini, Paulo Fer­reira, Way­ne Bridge, John Terry, Las­sana Diarra, Mi­chael Es­si­en, Claude Makelele, John Obi Mikel, Sa­lomon Kalou, Scott Sin­clair, Shaun Wright-Phil­lips. Sub­stitutes: Nu­no Mo­rais, Joe Cole, Ben Sahar, Fotso Ndjitap Geremi, Hen­rique Hil­ario. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: To­masz Kusz­czak, Wes Bro­wn, John O’Shea, Kier­an Lee, Gab­riel Hein­ze, Kier­an Richard­son, Chris Eagles, Dar­ren Fletch­er, Alan Smith, Fang Zhou Dong, Ole Gun­nar Sol­skjaer. Sub­stitutes: Mi­chael Car­rick, Way­ne Roo­ney, Rio Fer­dinand, Paul Scho­les, Ed­win van der Saar.

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