TUCHEL GETS A LUCKY ESCAPE
Moyes lays into officials over disallowed Cornet equaliser
TODD BOEHLY’S education in the ways of English football continues apace. Amid the things he learned at Stamford Bridge yesterday was that £62million might be a lot of money in US sport, but in the Premier League it does not buy you a full-back who can take a corner that clears the first defender.
Marc Cucurella had several attempts at it in the first half and when he finally managed it, was met with ironic cheers from the Shed End.
The new Chelsea owner and transfer supremo also learned that everything people had been telling him about how the new £62m left back might not be as good as the one already at the club was true. Ben Chilwell, who has been kept on the bench as he returns from injury, replaced Cucurella with 18 minutes to go and promptly scored an equaliser and set up the winner.
Until then Boehly must have been suffering a bout of buyer’s remorse as he watched a team featuring the majority of the £231.1m he had spent this summer heading for defeat by West Ham.
Their scrambled and fortuitous victory, courtesy of Kai Havertz’s 88th minute strike, may have eased his embarrassment, but only a little.
Chelsea did not deserve a third victory in their opening six games and would not have got it save for a controversial added time decision by referee Andrew Madley to rule out Maxwel Cornet’s equaliser. Madley decided, to general astonishment, that Chelsea keeper Edouard Mendy had been fouled in the build-up to the goal and ruled it out.
‘It was a ridiculously bad decision,’ said West Ham manager David Moyes and it was hard to disagree. His team had taken the lead through Michail Antonio, but afterwards he spoke passionately about how he had lost faith in the refereeing system, how he was embarrassed for the VAR official who encouraged Madley to watch the incident on the pitchside monitor and how the decision ate away at the culture of English football.
The result represented a significant escape for Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel, who would have come under serious pressure if his team had fallen to another defeat. His side is struggling to gel, which is perhaps no surprise given the influx of new players. ‘There is no way out any more,’ Tuchel said ominously, ‘The players who are here have to take responsibility for what comes.’
Even in football’s age of excess, Chelsea’s transfer spending in the summer window set new standards for extravagance. Boehly took control of the club’s business in the wake of the departure of Marina Granovskaia and the level of his spending felt like an effort to persuade Chelsea’s fans of his ambition and intent.
Not everyone has been impressed. Ahead of the game, former Liverpool and Rangers manager Graeme Souness became the latest figure to cast doubt on the wisdom of Boehly’s transfer approach.
‘He is the latest in a long line of wealthy individuals to come into football thinking the game is easy,’ Souness wrote in his MailSport column yesterday.
Much of the first half had been desperately pounderous. West Ham packed men behind the ball and Chelsea showed precious little sign of being able to break them down.
Cucurella floated over a few of those corners, Christian Pulisic mishit a shot that was deflected wide and Mateo Kovacic’s snatched effort sent Lukasz Fabianski scurrying across his goal with false alarm.
Raheem Sterling did at least try to run at the visitors’ defence but had to come deeper and deeper to get the ball. Chelsea started to quicken the pace as the interval approached but they were grateful when a dipping volley from Pablo Fornals flew wide.
The closest the game came to gripping goalmouth action in the first 45 minutes was when Tomas Soucek and Ruben Loftus-Cheek clashed heads in the final few seconds. They were allowed to play on after treatment. Reece James and Antonio were both booked soon after the interval after Antonio fouled James and the Chelsea man kicked out at him as he lay on the ground. On another day, James might have been sent off. A few minutes later, Antonio wrestled Thiago Silva to the ground as they chased a loose ball. On another day, Antonio might have been shown a second yellow.
It took an hour for the game to explode into life. Mendy punched a corner from Fornals clear but Jarrod Bowen met it sweetly on the volley 25 yards out and it took a fine flying save from the Chelsea keeper to keep the scores level.
It was only a brief reprieve. When the resulting corner was nodded on in the box and looped into the air, Mendy could only punch the ball weakly to the feet of Declan Rice. Rice turned the ball back into the
six-yard box where Antonio got to it first and prodded it in.
Cucurella was replaced by Chilwell and 15 minutes later he leapt for a hopeful punt forward by Silva and not only won it but was first to it when it fell. Fabianski rushed out to try to smother the danger but Chilwell tapped it through his legs and it rolled slowly across the line. It was a dreadful goal to concede but a personal triumph for its scorer.
Two minutes from time, though, West Ham thought they had won the match.
Said Benrahma got free down the left and crossed to the far post where fellow replacement Cornet was unmarked. He tried to direct the ball into an empty net but his header hit the post.
Chelsea took the ball down the other end and worked a short corner to Chilwell. He curled a cross to the near post where Havertz slotted past Fabianski.
It seemed the game was over but Chelsea contrived to give the visitors a way back into it as the game went into added time.
James attempted to head the ball back to Mendy but, challenged by Bowen, the keeper could only push the ball out to Cornet, who stepped to his right and rifled the ball into the roof of the net.
Mendy rolled around on the ground and VAR checked if he had been fouled by Bowen. It seemed clear Mendy would not have been able to recover the ball, foul or not, but Madley checked the monitor and decided he had been fouled and the goal should not stand, a decision met with disbelief by Moyes.
In the final stages, Havertz was shown a yellow card for trying to get Vladimir Coufal sent off.
When the final whistle went, Moyes remonstrated with Madley and on Chelsea’s bench, one of Tuchel’s assistants wiped a bead of imaginary sweat from his brow.