Chelsea and Manchester United’s dramatic and fascinating 2-2 draw on Saturday proved, as many games in the Premier League have this season, that sometimes the best form of defense is to never stop attacking.

It was also a game that told us a lot about each team. Chelsea appears reinvigorated under new manager Maurizio Sarri, attacking for fun and not worrying about their error-prone backline. Manchester United’s current troublesome state seems to be the result of Jose Mourinho not letting his players attack nearly enough.

The game can be split into three distinct sections. In the first, visitors United sat back and tried to soak up the pressure from Chelsea. While they were able to somewhat neutralize superstar Eden Hazard, they still gave up a goal, a header by an unmarked Antonio Rudiger off a corner, and offered absolutely nothing going forward, their prodigious attacking talent spending more time chasing the ball than doing anything with it.

After halftime, United finally started to attack. Led by the impressive Juan Mata, the team began mounting pressure on the Chelsea goal and it paid off. Chelsea’s defense, which had looked so comfortable in the first half, couldn’t cope. In the 55th, near every Blues defender tried and failed to clear the ball before it bounced to Anthony Martial, who deftly smashed it into the back of the net. Then, in the 73rd, center-back David Luiz got caught out of position by Mata, who launched the counterattack that would lead to Martial’s second.

At that point, United manager Jose Mourinho decided to kill off the game, taking off the architects of his team’s comeback, Mata and Martial, and asking his players to play keep-away rather than go for another goal. And it worked … until the final minute when United’s defense was frozen by a late cross and the header that resulted from it. As the ball caromed around the penalty box, United defenders stood rooted to the ground as Rudiger slammed a shot into keeper David De Gea before Ross Barkley pounced on the rebound to earn his side a draw on basically the final kick of the game and set off a fight between the two benches (but more on that in a bit).

This season was supposed to be a rebuilding year for Chelsea. Instead, the team finds itself in third place after nine games, only two points behind joint-leaders Liverpool and Manchester City. While the Blues don’t have the reliable defense that a front-runner is expected to have, they do have an offensive dynamo in Hazard who is playing better than anyone else in the world right now. And Sarri has designed a game plan that goes through the Belgian, giving him chances to excel and opening up opportunities for his teammates when teams target him. While Hazard did not score on Saturday, the rest of the offense rose to the occasion, bailing out the defense at the last moment and keeping the club’s undefeated streak alive.

United, on the other hand, were expected to challenge for the title coming off last season’s second place finish and instead find themselves mired in the middle of the table. The defense, a perceived strength the last two seasons, has leaked goals at an astonishing rate, while the offense has rarely been set free by Mourinho. On Saturday, the offense gave the Red Devils a chance at a huge win that could have turned their season around, but Mourinho reverted to form in the game’s final act, damning his team to a draw. While his team has shown no sign it can defend this season, the Portuguese seems dead set on putting the game on the defense while ignoring an attack that’s more than strong enough to make this a moot point.

Seven points and seven table places aren’t all that separate Chelsea and Manchester United right now. Sarri’s side has accepted who they are, negating their deficiencies by playing to their strengths. Mourinho, on the other hand, seems unwilling to accept that his team can’t defend and it continues to cost them. Until he finally lets his team’s sparkling attack do what it does best, the ground between the two sides will be impossible to make up.

Etienne Capoue

Capoue got his side back to its winning ways on Saturday, scoring a low screamer to open things up in Saturday’s 2-0 victory over Wolves. Set up about 30 yards from goal, the French midfielder took his shot directly off the pass, striking the ball perfectly and making sure the keeper didn’t have a chance.

Marco Ianni vs. Jose Mourinho

Stamford Bridge was sent into hysterics by Ross Barkley’s late-game equalizer on Saturday, but no one was more charged up than Maurizio Sarri’s assistant Marco Ianni. The Chelsea coach bounded over to the United bench and screamed and swiped at Jose Mourinho. Even though he’s no stranger to over-celebrating himself, the Portuguese manager took offense and had to be held back by his staff and players to be stopped from chasing Ianni down the tunnel. Afterward, Sarri apologized for his assistant’s behavior, while Mourinho, surprisingly, admitted he’d acted similarly before and accepted the mea culpa.