The Swan
ANTONIO CONTE is still unbeaten as Chelsea boss but he will wake up this morning wondering how on earth his side dropped points for the first time this season.
The Blues ultimately had to settle for a point in south Wales after a game they had thoroughly dominated turned on its head in three wild second-half minutes.
Diego Costa had fired the visitors into a deserved lead and the striker and Eden Hazard had spurned chances to see off a listless Swansea side.
At half-time the question appeared to be how many they would win by, but when Thibaut Courtois rashly brought down Gylfi Sigurdsson the tide turned.
The Iceland midfielder levelled from the spot and Leroy Fer then robbed Gary Cahill to give them the most unlikely of leads.
But Chelsea rallied and got a deserved share of the spoils thanks to an acrobatic close-range finish from Costa, who made it seven goals in four Premier League appearances against his favourite top flight opponents.
It also took his tally for the season to four, a figure he did not manage to reach until Boxing Day last term.
Swansea boss Francesco Guidolin, above, had taken the brave call to roll out a new formation. It seemed ill-advised given Chelsea’s early season form and so it proved.
Swansea were at sixes and sevens from the opening minutes with players clearly uncomfortable in the unfamiliar system of three at the back.
With no place for orthodox wingers, the hosts also had no real attacking width and, once Chelsea had taken a few minutes to suss that out, they dominated.
Willian stung Lukasz Fabianski’s palms in the fifth minute and there were plenty of encouraging signs for the Blues as Hazard and Oscar started brightly.
It was the Brazilian who created the opener. Federico Fernandez twice failed to adequately clear a Branislav Ivanovic cross and Oscar punished him. The falling ball was controlled brilliantly with one touch and then laid into the path of Costa and the striker fired into the bottom corner.
Hazard should have doubled the lead just two minutes later, the Belgian breezing past Kyle Naughton, but he was denied by a sprawling stop from Fabianski.
Time and again Conte’s men found the code to break Swansea’s frail defensive security, and Cesar Azpilicueta ought to have looked for a team-mate when a smart Hazard pass found him cutting in on the byline. With several options waiting, he tried to beat Fabianski at the near post from an impossible angle, and the chance was spurned.
Sigurdsson smashed a rare Swansea shot beyond Courtois but the writing was on the wall for Guidolin, and his tactical blunder, and he was forced to change four minutes before the break. Neil Taylor was the man to