Rafa’s cynical plan fails to stop Hazard
Rafa’s Toon try to kick Hazard off the pitch – and get what they deserve
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means, says Oscar Wilde’s Miss Prism. Football, sadly, isn’t like fiction. Good teams can be unlucky; rotten, negative, teams can get away with murder. Yesterday, however, justice was done.
The player Newcastle tried to kick off the park scored Chelsea’s opener; the player who could have been sent off for elbowing an opponent put Chelsea’s winner through his own net. The team who travelled away and tried to win got three points. The team who enjoyed less than 20 per cent of the ball playing at home got nothing.
Newcastle do not have Chelsea’s resources, we know that; but Brighton are a few quid short of Manchester United too, and that did not curb their ambition eight days ago. Newcastle got what they deserved as did Chelsea, whose 100 per cent record under Maurizio Sarri has been maintained.
This was a determined performance in difficult circumstances, given the way Newcastle tried to nullify eden hazard by fair means or foul. he rose above it, the best player on the pitch and never stopped trying to take Newcastle on, no matter the battering he received.
The win was controversial, said the locals. They left complaining about referee Paul Tierney and his 76th-minute penalty award, and cursing the rotten luck that befell DeAndre Yedlin with two minutes of normal time remaining, but these are red herrings.
The penalty was a penalty and converted by the best player on view; Yedlin jabbed an elbow into Olivier Giroud’s face on his way to creating Newcastle’s equaliser, so his later misfortune was hardly a cause for violins.
Benitez will argue that his team were level with Chelsea in the 87th minute, 180 seconds plus injury time from a draw with elite opponents who hope to contend the title. had it been level at the end, Newcastle would have been praised for their resilience, particularly given a makeshift defence missing Jamaal Lascelles and with playmaker Jonjo Shelvey absent from midfield. In those circumstances, Benitez would have insisted the end justified the means, so perhaps it is just as well that Newcastle took nothing.
This love for the underdog cannot be unconditional. Bravery and ambition must be part of that narrative, too, and it is hard to argue Newcastle showed either, given the limitations of their play. Few neutrals will have pitied them when the cards fell Chelsea’s way.
Some think Tierney did Chelsea a favour with the penalty — but he didn’t do them too many over the other 89 minutes. Some of the treatment meted out to hazard reminded one of a Monday night against Stoke, under Jose Mourinho, when he was lucky not to be kicked out of the game entirely.
he needed two lengthy periods of treatment to make it through the first half, but a Newcastle player was not booked for fouling him until the 65th minute. Fabian Schar was the culprit and maybe that event was still on Tierney’s mind when he sent Marcos Alonso tumbling in the area.
Maybe, too, Tierney had at last realised that Newcastle had been taking advantage of his leniency all game, and had been systematically targeting hazard and others. They thought Chelsea could be roughed up, slapped back to London. They were proven wrong.
In his challenge with Alonso, Schar got some of the ball, the top mostly, but not the meat of it. his followthrough, however, became a scissor challenge that left Alonso sprawling, a reckless attempt in the area. Unjust? Unjust is what preceded it; 76 minutes that nearly removed hazard (right) from the game.
It was fitting, then, that he was the one to put his shot past goalkeeper Martin Dubravka to give Chelsea a deserved lead.
Now, had the next goal ended up affecting the outcome, that would have been a travesty. Not only was it against the run of play, but the build-up included a blatant foul
that could have caused serious injury. Newcastle had broken down the right, the ball was loose, and, challenging for it, Yedlin gained an advantage over Giroud by shoving an elbow into his face. It did not appear accidental either. Yedlin looked like he deliberately repelled his opponent with a jab and Giroud fell to the ground, leaving him clear.
His cross was outstanding and the finish perfect. Yedlin whipped in the ball, perfect height, perfect position, and it was met by substitute Joselu at the near post.
Newcastle were level. And that is where it would have ended, had they not retreated to a default position, conceding territory and possession and ending up defending a Willian freekick taken from midway in their half. The ball was played back across goal where Alonso hit a low shot that startled Yedlin. He stuck out a boot and diverted it into his own goal.
In one respect it was tough on Newcastle because with Lascelles mysteriously absent — the official line was injury, the grapevine suggested conflict with the manager — this was a largely scratch defence, with two of the three central placements on debut, and a left-footer, Schar, on the right.
It is testament to the coaching skills of Benitez that they resisted Chelsea for so long. Equally, for all Chelsea’s pressure, Newcastle’s lone chance of the first half was probably the best of the game. It came in the 34th minute, a cross from Federico Fernandez met by Salomon Rondon, who was unable to get it on target despite being given the space for a free header.
Yet this was an exceptional event, a rare moment when Newcastle revealed the potential to inflict lawful damage. Little of the rest was pretty and no amount of David v Goliath bluster or hard-luck tales will justify it. Teams considerably poorer than Newcastle will try to give Chelsea more of a game, and some may even succeed. And that’s a good thing. Football shouldn’t just be about beautiful football, aesthetics and artistry; but it still needs the good guys to win more often than not.