Burnley’s Brady puts brakes on Chelsea
Home debutant Robbie Brady scored a memorable free-kick to earn Burnley a 1-1 draw on Sunday that prevented Chelsea moving 12 points clear at the Premier League summit.
Brady cancelled out Pedro’s strike and while the point gave Chelsea a 10-point lead, their advantage will be trimmed to eight if Manchester City beat Bournemouth on Monday.
Burnley, whose home record is bettered only by second-place Tottenham and Chelsea themselves, looked like they might be swept away following an electrifying start from the visitors.
But Sean Dyche’s team, who had won seven straight games at Turf Moor after losing to Manchester City in mid-November, showed great resilience and deservedly equalised after 24 minutes through Brady.
A foul by Nemanja Matic on Joey Barton on the edge of the area presented Brady, a clubrecord £13m signing from Norwich in January, with his chance. He took it in style, curling a magnificent 20-yard freekick over the wall and into the top-left corner.
That cancelled out an equally impressive opener from Chelsea that was started, and finished, by Pedro in the seventh minute. The Spanish winger helped to begin the attack deep in his own half with a pass to Eden Hazard who, in turn, fed Victor Moses on the right.
After skipping past Brady, Moses crossed for Pedro, who had covered nearly 70m, and his shot gave Burnley goalie Tom Heaton no chance.