Despite yesterday’s thoroughly disciplined performance, Man Utd were left with nothing to show for their toils, as Chelsea’s lead over the champions in this year’s title race was extended to five points. That’s three defeats on the road already for Fergie’s boys, but their display limited Chelsea in a way no team have so far at Stamford Bridge.

Coming into this game, the United boss’ thinking would have been influenced, in part, by United’s 3-0 away drubbing at the hands of Ancelotti’s Milan a couple of seasons ago in the Champions League semi final, and refereeing decisions aside, Ferguson is justified in feeling hard-done by. His spot-on tactics meant the Reds could easily have won this game themselves. Here’s some key indicators as to how the game was played out:

Ivanovic

Ancelotti’s diamond means the full backs- Ashley Cole and Jose Bosingwa- have been given license all season to bomb on forward and find themselves positioned in the opponent’s half more often than not.

With Bosingwa injured, however, and Branislav Ivanovic currently deputising, Utd concentrated on nullifying Cole at the expense of allowing the less creative Ivanovic more freedom. The plan worked well, as although Ivanovic saw more of the ball in attacking positions, his lack of real creativity ,as this chalkboard shows, meant he never quite posed a threat to the opposition.

With Bosingwa injured for a while, Ivanovic is a real FPL bargain at 5.6m, and as this chalkboard illustrates, his defensive contribution was impressive yesterday; he was responsible for just under half the Blues’ successful clearances. Ivanovic also won more tackles than any other Chelsea player yesterday.

Carvalho

With his central defensive partner making the headlines this weekend, it was the Portugese defender who really led by example. As this chalkboard shows, Chelsea’s no.6 was responsible for a fantastic five out of his side’s seven defensive blocks, capping a fantastic display at the heart of Ancelotti’s defence.

United Pressing

It speaks volumes about the game that FPL bonus allocations went to Terry, Carvalho and Essien, as Man Utd never gave Chelsea the chance to shine as an attacking force. This chalkboard illustrates perfectly how Utd not only won much more tackles, but won them far higher up the pitch, as they pressed and harried their opponents from start to finish, meaning Chelsea never really found a rhythm at any point of the game.

Antonio Valencia won more tackles than any player on the pitch, a great indicator of Utd’s dogged display, and a perfect indication of the above-mentioned treatment of Ashley Cole.

Anderson

With Fletcher and Carrick grafting behind him, Anderson’s job was not only to continually badger Michael Essien at the base of the Chelsea diamond, but as the further forward midfielder, to link with lone striker, Wayne Rooney. As this chalkboard shows, though, Rooney’s hard-working shift meant Anderson was rarely able to pass to him at all, meaning practically all his passes were of little or no attacking merit.

Goal Attempts

Chelsea came into the game having averaged 28 shots per home league game this season. As this final chalkboard shows, despite restricting their hosts to a mere 12 attempts, and having 18 attempts themselves, United managed only 2 shots on target all game, and both were taken from well outside the penalty area, showing a real lack of cutting edge.

Such was the nature of United’s performance, however, Chelsea could do nothing to take advantage of the absence of both Vidic and Ferdinand at the heart of their opponent’s defence, meaning a relatively quiet game for both Wes Brown(5.6m FPL) and Jonny Evans(5.2m FPL), their current stand-ins.

With the upcoming weekend of internationals, United now have two weeks to stew over this defeat, but the champions are coming into a fairly decent run of fixtures after the break, and if this level of dedication can be mixed with a little more ruthlessness, they should be racking up the wins again.