All this in one year ..what a difference a boss makes
ON the corresponding match weekend of the last Premier League season, Chelsea travelled to Sunderland and lost.
They lost 3-2 to a team that started the game in 18th position.
Seven of the Chelsea starters that day were in the team that sealed title formalities here at the Hawthorns.
John Terry was sent off in the dying moments of a defeat at the Stadium of Light that meant Chelsea had a tally of 48 points from 36 matches.
At the same stage of this season, not only are they champions courtesy of Michy Batshuayi, they are 39 points better off.
Amidst the celebrations, it is actually easy to forget how dramatic the transformation has been, not just in the statistics.
In no one has that transformation been more vividly personified than Eden Hazard, who had not long left the field before the dramatic winner.
He had been the only Footballer of the Year to go into hibernation for a season. One campaign later, it has been non-stop squirrelling, relentless darting into nooks and crannies of danger.
That Hazard’s probing did not pay off here for him was the night’s biggest surprise.
On a couple of occasions in recent games, he has been unable to unshackle himself from a chaperone, but that might have had as much to do with a hint of fatigue as anything
else. Few can have been as full of running as Hazard. On one of West Brom’s rare counter-attacking occasions, Hazard hared half the pitch to haul in James McClean, forcing a possession-surrendering error.
There has been a selflessness about Hazard that Jose Mourinho seemed to believe had disappeared.
It was a self-perpetuating belief. Mourinho got the unnecessary hump, Hazard reacted negatively, an individual summation of the team’s sudden slump under Mourinho.
Antonio Conte gives Hazard freedom of expression and is rewarded by a flair footballer tracking back fifty yards. Not that he has to do that often. Not that Conte would want him to do it often.
This performance was full of the criss-crossing havoc he can cause. That penchant for switching flanks with the ball is unrivalled in this league.
That no end-product came from Hazard’s shrewd scampering was down to an element of Chelsea over-confidence and over-elaboration.
When even ultra-cautious Conte, after the cruise against Middlesbrough, conceded the title was almost a given, there was always the slight threat of complacency.
Excusably, there was a swagger for much of this Chelsea performance that suggested they no longer thought if but when.
That swagger was more apparent offensively than defensively. The relatively unheralded component of this title triumph will be the defensive unit.
That they were resilient against the sometimes-celebrated Albion set-piece was a reflection of, amongst other things, how the second Chelsea edition of David Luiz is such a sturdier, stronger, more disciplined version than the first.
Yet, with Cesar Azpilicueta and Gary Cahill, this is a trio of defenders who each take responsibility. It would be wrong to call one a leader. Like all effective defences, they work as a unit. They did not face a massive amount of hard labour here and, for a long time, the cutting edge of Cesc Fabregas (right) and Co was lacking.
That was until Batshuayi stepped into the foray, the one Chelsea man with plenty to prove.
He did it memorably and not only were Chelsea champions, the transformation from a year ago was complete.