Chelsea 1 Manchester U 3

Willie Morgan

Chel­sea 1 Man­chester Uni­ted 3, Stam­ford Bridge, Mar­ch 30, Eng­lish Foot­ball Lea­gue Fir­st Di­vi­sion, 1974. Af­ter suf­fer­ing two con­sec­ut­ive de­feats, re­leg­a­tion threat­ened Man­chester Uni­ted be­at mid-ta­ble Chel­sea 3-1 away cour­tesy of a goal each from Ger­ry Da­ly, Wil­lie Mor­gan, and Sam­my McIlroy.

Man­chester Uni­ted had on­ly ma­naged to win six top-flight ga­mes all sea­son and were 22nd in the stand­ings as a res­ult, but there was still hope of sur­viv­ing re­leg­a­tion wi­th nine mat­ches left to play. Man­chester Uni­ted and Chel­sea had fou­ght out a dra­mat­ic 2-2 draw in the re­verse meet­ing at Old Traf­ford in Nov­ember and the clash at Stam­ford Bridge was ex­pec­ted to be a fairly open af­fair. Roared on by the trav­el­ling fans, Tom­my Docherty´s lads stormed in­to an early 1-0 lead thanks to an ef­fort from Wil­lie Mor­gan in the sev­enth min­ute of ac­tion and then doubled their ad­vant­age wi­th a goal from Ger­ry Da­ly on the hour ma­rk be­fore Sam­my Mc­Ilroy made it 3-0 to the red shirts just sev­en min­utes la­ter. And al­though Chel­sea re­duced the de­fi­cit thro­ugh Bill Garner in the 81st min­ute, the vis­it­ors went on to win the en­counter by a com­fort­able 3-1 mar­gin. But des­pite de­feat­ing The Pen­sion­ers, Man­chester Uni­ted re­mained bot­tom of the ta­ble and were ev­entually re­leg­ated at the end of the cam­paign. Chel­sea Te­am: John Phil­lips, Ron Har­ris, Ga­ry Locke, Da­vid Webb, Micky Droy, Ste­ve Kem­ber, Char­lie Cooke, John Hollins, Bill Garner, Ian Hutchin­son, Pe­ter House­man. Sub­sti­tute: Ken­ny Swain. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Al­ex Step­ney, Al­ex For­syth, Stew­art Hou­s­ton, Mar­tin Bu­chan, Ste­ve Ja­mes, Bri­an Green­hoff, Wil­lie Mor­gan, Jim Mc­Cal­liog, Sam­my Mc­Ilroy, Mick Mar­tin, Ger­ry Da­ly. Sub­sti­tute: Paul Bielby.

 

Manchester United Quickfacts

Man­chester Uni­ted ham­mered Chel­sea 4-1 at Stam­ford Bridge on the 28th of Septem­ber 1907 wi­th Billy Mere­dith re­cord­ing a brace and Sandy Turn­bull and Ja­mes Ban­nis­ter also find­ing the target.

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