Chelsea 2 Manchester U 2

Joe Jordan And Micky Droy

Chel­sea 2 Man­chester Uni­ted 2, Stam­ford Bridge, Eng­lish Foot­ball Lea­gue Fir­st Di­vi­sion, Feb­ruary 11, 1978. Man­chester Uni­ted equal­ised twice to sal­vage a 2-2 draw ag­ainst Chel­sea. Clive Walk­er and Ray Wil­kins hit the goals for The Blues, where­as Sam­my Mc­Ilroy and Gor­don Hill notched for United.

Man­chester Uni­ted had be­en beaten 1-0 by Chel­sea in the re­verse ga­me at their Old Traf­ford gro­und in Septem­ber and Dave Sexton´s boys were hungry for re­venge. Watched by a crowd of 32,000 on­look­ers at Stam­ford Bridge, The Pen­sion­ers got them­selves in front when Clive Walk­er steer­ed a low ef­fort well bey­ond the reach of Man­chester Uni­ted shot stop­per Pad­dy Roche and in­to the bot­tom left-cor­ner of the net in the 19th min­ute of the con­test. The Chel­sea rear­guard, led by Micky Droy, de­fen­ded res­ol­utely for the re­mainder of the fir­st pe­riod and the blue shir­ted play­ers head­ed in­to the ha­lf-time break wi­th a nar­row, but de­served, 1-0 lead. Man­chester Uni­ted began the sec­ond pe­riod the bet­ter and drew level thanks to mid­field dy­namo Sam­my Mc­ilroy who took full ad­vant­age of a blun­der in the ho­me de­fence to score from clo­se ran­ge in the 52th min­ute of pro­ceed­ings, but the hosts went ahead ag­ain thro­ugh a fe­ro­cious shot from Ray Wil­kins just two min­utes la­ter. Man­chester Uni­ted re­fused to be de­feated, tho­ugh, and the away te­am equal­ised for a sec­ond time when ex-Mill­wall wing­er Gor­don Hill cooly be­at for­mer Eng­land goal­keeper Pe­ter Bonetti from the pen­alty spot in the last min­ute of the clash. The 2-2 draw meant that Man­chester Uni­ted re­mained 11th in the top-flight ta­ble, whi­le Chel­sea dropped down to 15th place. Chel­sea Te­am: Pe­ter Bonetti, Ga­ry Locke, Ron Har­ris, Ken­ny Swain, Mickey Droy, Ste­ve Wicks, Ian Brit­ton, Ray Wil­kins, Ste­ve Finni­e­ston, Tom­my Langley, Clive Walk­er. Sub­stitutes: No­ne. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Pad­dy Roche, Ar­thur Al­bis­ton, Stew­art Hou­s­ton, Jim­my Nich­oll, Bri­an Green­hoff, Sam­my Mc­Ilroy, Ste­ve Cop­pell, Joe Jor­dan, Stu­art Pear­son, Lou Ma­cari, Gor­don Hill. Sub­stitutes: None.

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