Three goals, monsoon conditions, two first-half red cards and three substitutions after 20 minutes: the early evening kick-off at Old Trafford on Saturday was a lively affair.
Here are the key takeaways from a Fantasy Premier League (FPL) perspective.
ANOTHER/THE SAME PALMER INJURY
Despite pre-match insistence from Enzo Maresca that Cole Palmer (£10.4m) was “okay”, he clearly wasn’t.
Palmer had been feeling his groin towards the end of a 90-minute run-out against Bayern Munich on Wednesday. Groin discomfort is nothing new for the England international, of course. It had forced him to withdraw from the starting XI in Gameweek 2 and he was subsequently out for weeks.
According to the well-connected Simon Phillips, the issue even predates the FIFA Club World Cup.
Just so everyone knows, Cole Palmer has been injured since before the CWC. They’ve been giving him pain injections to play. Nothing bad showed up on the scans but he’s had continuous discomfort in his groin and it’s not gone away. Make of it as you will.
— Simon Phillips (@siphillipssport) September 20, 2025
And, on Saturday, those niggles forced him off after just 20 minutes.
“Cole, he tried this morning, he had a test this morning to play this game, he was not 100% fit. He made a fantastic effort to play this game, but he was not 100%.
“It’s a problem that is already a long time for him, his groin. Again, he did this morning a test, he wants to play this game for the team, to be close, so the effort has been huge from him, but then after 20 minutes, he started to feel something, so we decided to change him.” – Enzo Maresca on Cole Palmer
It does beg the question about what the next course of action is for Chelsea, as well as if he’s worth the hassle in FPL.
WHY SANCHEZ ISN’T FLAGGED IN FPL
Chelsea were up against it from an early stage on Saturday.
The Blues were down to 10 men even before Palmer came off, with Robert Sanchez (£5.0m) dismissed in the fifth minute for the denial of an obvious goalscoring opportunity.
That offence carries a one-match ban but, as you may have spotted, there is no red flag next to the Chelsea goalkeeper’s name in FPL.
The reason? Chelsea are in EFL Cup action at Lincoln City on Tuesday, so Sanchez will serve his suspension in that game.
Sanchez’s dismissal saw Maresca make not one but two substitutions, not only throwing on replacement goalkeeper Filip Jorgensen (£4.4m) but also centre-half Tosin Adarabioyo (£4.5m), who had been dropped for this game.
Chelsea’s starting two wingers exited.
“The reason why we changed Pedro [Neto] and Estevao [Willian] was because they attack with the five players always, and we defend with the four, and we can defend with the four when we are 11 vs 11, but 11 against 10, I think we need to defend on the width, so we decided to go with the back five, this is the reason why.” – Enzo Maresca on making his two early changes
A DIFFICULT GAME TO CONTEXTUALISE
With Chelsea being reduced to 10 men so early, this was a difficult game to judge. Maresca retreated to a 5-3-1 after Sanchez’s dismissal, only having one shot – from a corner – in the first half.
It has to be said that United had started the stronger of the two sides even before the red card. They were quicker out of the blocks, more aggressive, and had already tested Sanchez through Bryan Mbeumo (£8.1m). And for the red card incident, Mbeumo – the pick of United’s attackers – would have scored had he not been felled.
Benjamin Sesko (£7.3m) had flicked the ball on for Mbeumo to run onto for the sending off, a little glimpse of the link-up play that United fans hope to see when that pricey front three are in full swing.
“The players must take the space whenever Ben [Sesko] goes for the ball, and that’s what Bryan [Mbeumo] did.” – Bruno Fernandes
Bruno Fernandes (£9.0m) was again in central midfield. The fact that he was once more deployed deeper, even with Matheus Cunha (£8.0m) and Mason Mount (£5.9m) only fit enough for substitute duty, just underscores where he is going to be spending the majority of this season.
Fernandes did at least score from his central midfield berth, timing his run perfectly to prod in from close range.
“He scored a goal playing as a midfielder, so I am really happy about that!” – Ruben Amorim in a tongue-in-cheek post-match comment after recent criticism of his decision to use Bruno Fernandes in midfield
After Casemiro‘s (£5.5m) headed goal, and especially after the Brazilian’s 45th-minute red card, that was kind of it. Sesko went off at the interval, as Ruben Amorim shut up shop with the numerical advantage wiped out. United posed little threat; just two shots after they went 2-0 up.
But then Chelsea didn’t muster many chances, either. Just four efforts in the second half, with Trevoh Chalobah (£5.1m) reducing the arrears with a header. Even that is hard to assess, as Maresca had hooked his three starting attacking midfielders by that point and there was little in the way of a supply line for Joao Pedro (£7.8m).
DEFCON WATCH
Chalobah incidentally is now joint-top of the FPL defenders’ table. He may also get two more DefCon points; our Opta data has him on 10 contributions in this game, FPL on nine. Let’s see if there is an adjustment to either figure on Sunday.
Moises Caicedo (£5.6m) did bank DefCon points for the third successive Gameweek and is himself third in the FPL midfielders’ points table.
