How did Mourinho beat the Conte formation

This past weekend we witnessed Jose Mourinho do what he does best and beat his opponent with simple tactics.

We have seen Antonio Conte's Chelsea run riot against quite a few teams in the league this season, with their new 3-4-2-1 system. A system that completely demolished Jose Mourinho and his Manchester United team earlier on in the season. But as Jose does when he has been beaten, he goes back to the drawing board and ensures it doesn't happen again!

On Sunday he decided to fight fire with fire and went with a 3-5-2/3-5-1-1. This formation was one of 3 reasons United came out on top in my opinion. The other two reasons were keeping Hazard and Costa out of the game and actually dropping current leading goal scorer, Zlatan Ibrahmovic, in favor of young talent Marcus Rashford. Who was played up front against the much slower David luiz.

Formation: 3-5-2/3-5-1-1

Mourninho knew the only way to beat Conte was by packing the midfield with more red shirts when defending and packing the final third with more red shirts, again, when attacking. When Chelsea had the ball, Ashley Young would tuck in behind Rashford and make it 6 United players in the midfield and when they were attacking, Young, Rashford and Herrera became an attacking 3 with a midfield 4 pushing up just behind them. When defending, the extra body of Young and even Rashford, at times, created such a compact unit in the middle, it gave the likes of Darmian the chance to keep his opposite wing back at bay all day without having to worry about other attacking payers. It also meant that Pogba and Fellaini could concentrate on sticking to Hazard and Pedro, instead of trying to contain Matic and Kante, while Hazard and Pedro ran between midfield and defense. Once this was done, it was simple for the back 3 of Rojo, Bailly and Valencia to keep Diego Costa quiet, well quiet soccer wise and a kicking screaming brat player wise. United had far less possession, but they did have 9(3 on target) shots at goal as opposed to the 5(all off target) that Chelsea had.

In short, this is how Jose was able to get one over his old club and strengthen United's chances for a top 4 finish.