Martinez’s 83 Seconds Sink United Again

That is the event here, and BBC Sport’s account is unusually clear about how quickly a match can tip from difficult to doomed. United had played well enough in the first half that Chelsea’s lead, when Morgan Rogers found it in the second, did not yet feel terminal. Then Martinez, already on a booking, gave away a penalty with a reckless challenge on Wesley Fofana and was sent off after catching Fofana in the face with a raised elbow at a corner, an incident missed live and corrected after VAR James Bell sent referee Peter Bankes to the screen.

At 1-0, Michael Carrick still had a game to manage. At 2-0 with 10 men, he had damage to contain.

BBC Sport noted that Carrick did not even look at Martinez as the defender walked off, focusing instead on his assistant Steve Holland and the problem left behind. Afterwards, Carrick avoided the easy public denunciation. “I’ve not seen it back, so I don’t know if it was or not,” he said of whether he felt let down, before adding: “It’s a big moment in the game.” He was blunter on the consequence than on the blame: “The second goal and losing a man at that stage had a big influence on it, for sure.”

That is manager-speak, but not evasive manager-speak. The influence was obvious. United were still close enough in the match to imagine a recovery; Martinez removed the conditions that made one plausible.

Former World Cup final official Darren Cann called the actions “inexplicable” in BBC Sport’s report, and that word fits because this was not just a routine defensive error. Defenders misjudge flight, lose runners, mistime tackles. What Cann described was worse in its decision-making: Martinez, already booked, “making no attempt to play the ball and not even looking at the ball as it came in from the corner.”

The wider criticism in the same report was savage and familiar. Stephen Warnock said Martinez is “making mistake after mistake at the moment.” Joe Cole judged that in a United shirt he is “at the scene of the crime too often.” Danny Murphy went furthest, calling him “a liability.” Pundit language can become a competition in bluntness, but the match had already supplied the evidence they were feeding on.

United were fortunate the scoreline did not become uglier; BBC Sport says Estevao also had an effort ruled out by a tight offside call. But the sharpest summary remained the simplest one. Chelsea did not need a long siege or a late surge. Martinez gave them the penalty, the extra man and the calm that comes when the opponent has sabotaged himself.

He will miss next Sunday’s league game against Aston Villa through suspension. At Stamford Bridge, though, the damage was immediate and already complete.