Blue is the colour Chelsea top the Premier League by 11 points after beating Swansea. Tottenham will try to cut the gap against Stoke today
They welcomed Frank Lampard back onto the Stamford Bridge pitch at halftime, and while the devotion will forever be strong to the club’s greatestever goalscorer, it is not as if the current Antonio Conte side desperately miss a player like their famous No 8.
No team would pass over the option of a goalscoring midfielder in Lampard’s class but this time Conte could rely on goals from two others in that position, as the march on the Premier League title continued. This time the first was scored by Cesc Fabregas, who in his Arsenal days had many a badtempered battle with Lampard, and the second by Pedro as Chelsea cruised to their 20th victory in 26 league games.
There was a third from Diego Costa after Eden Hazard had tricked his way down Swansea’s left side, and the game was over. Fernando Llorente scored an equaliser at the very end of the first half for the away side, their first attack of the half, but even Swansea manager Paul Clement, with a complaint over a penalty that was not given in the second half, had to admit Chelsea were too good.
Fabregas kept his place in the team from the FA Cup fifth-round win over Wolverhampton Wanderers and was preferred ahead of Nemanja Matic in what Conte said was a tactical decision against a side he knew would sit deep and try to frustrate Chelsea.
It also helps to keep things varied with a group of players for whom the only danger seems to be complacency as they stride towards the Premier League title.
Conte conceded that keeping minds focused on ticking off the next 12 games was his priority. “It’s not easy,” he said. “It’s not easy to keep the concentration for the whole championship. But I have a lot of players who played and won in the past. They know very well the way that we must continue to try to stay at the top of the table, to try and win the title.
“I’m lucky to have a lot of players who, in the past, won a lot. If, sometimes, I can see some of them relaxing, it’s right for me to try and help them be focused for every moment. But, honestly, it wasn’t necessary for me to keep the concentration and focus of the playget ers. I’m very happy about that.” By the end of the day they were 11 points clear at the top with neither Manchester City nor Arsenal playing this weekend. Tottenham Hotspur, in third, can cut that lead to 10 if they win against Stoke City today although it should be said that with every Chelsea win it becomes harder for the chasing pack to believe.
Clement, a former assistant coach at Chelsea, said the current Chelsea side could eventually be as good as the team who won the double under his former boss Carlo Ancelotti in 2010. “They are different, younger [to the 2010 team] … the team I worked with under Carlo was a lot more mature. Three or more seasons more at this level, if they keep them together, they’ll be formidable.”
Chelsea had just one setback: there was already one minute and 29 seconds extra played at the end of the first half when Gylfi Sigurdsson struck a freekick from halfway inside the Chelsea half, Llorente slipped away from Victor Moses and nodded a nicely-judged header past Thibaut Courtois. To say Swansea could consider themselves lucky was an understatement. They were lucky to get the free-kick for an N’Golo Kanté tackle that referee Neil Swarbrick said was a foul, let alone a goal from it. Chelsea’s domination of the first half had been complete, they just had failed to make their advantage count nearly as much as they should have done.
Fabregas scored the first goal on 19 minutes in his first league start since Dec 31 against Stoke, taking a ball played behind him by Pedro into his stride and poking it past Lukasz Fabianski with his second touch. There were times when Swansea could not Sealing it: Diego Costa fires Chelsea’s third in an easy win over Swansea City out their own half.
At one point Kyle Naughton simply wrapped an arm around Hazard and dragged him to a standstill, barely glancing upwards at the yellow card dealt to him. There was a further chance for Fabregas and Pedro cut in from the left side and went past Federico Fernandez and Jack Cork before he was finally stopped.
But Llorente struck with just seconds of the half to play and Conte’s team came back out still requiring more goals. On their way out they passed Lampard, a man with 211 goals to his name for Chelsea, more than any other in their history, who got his chance to take the mic and say a few words to the home fans on the Stamford Bridge pitch.
Fabregas struck the bar on 51 minutes and while Chelsea still looked the most likely winners they did not dominate quite as completely as before the break.
César Azpilicueta should have been penalised when he lost track of a bouncing ball at the feet of Sigurdsson and it struck the right arm of the defender in his own area.
Clement said: “I thought it was a penalty at the time. Someone just asked me was it a penalty up at the other end [for a challenge on Costa]. It doesn’t matter. That [the Azpilicueta incident] is what happened first. It’s 1-1 and we had a chance to go to 2-1. On reflection, they’ve had a lot more chances and a lot more of the ball, so probably deserved the victory.”
Chelsea were probably due a stroke of luck and there was more of that for the goal that Pedro scored on 72 minutes. He took the pass from Fabregas and ran at an angle from right to left striking a left-footed shot that should have been saved easily by Fabianski but went straight through the goalkeeper.
The assists for Fabregas took him to a career 102 in the Premier League, second on the all-time list in joint position with Lampard. Hazard made the third, forcing Naughton backwards in his own area with the full-back afraid to make a challenge, before the Belgian slipped past him with those lightning feet and cut the ball back for Costa to volley home.