PEDRO’S PEACH SINKS CHELSEA
Late strike condemns Chelseato back-to-back losses
Paul ScholeS can s ometimes have a tendency to take a little thing too f ar but his observation in a pre-match discussion of chelsea that ‘I’m not sure I think they’re a really good team’ was not so far-fetched. This was a very substantial dent to the air of invincibility that they seemed to have been developing just lately.
Frank lampard’s frustration was there, in plain sight, as he remonstrated with the Wolves bench, even before Pedro Neto had claimed a 95th-minute winner. ‘Sit down. Sit down,’ he told them with a sequence of hand gestures. The VaR official was weighing up a Wolves penalty appeal. The decision went chelsea’s way but lampard knows this is a side that is far from the finished product.
They took the lead through the surprise quantity of this winter — olivier Giroud. The Frenchman pounced in the blink of an eye to crash in a cross Willy Boly was only vaguely trying to clear and made it seven in seven games since his return to the side.
But that was chelsea’s first shot on target and the broader picture was a side struggling for the magical commodity which Timo Werner and Kai havertz were supposed to have brought this season. havertz puts in a shift, though that is not really exactly what chelsea paid £62million for, while Werner looked like a centre-forward stuck on the wing. Which he was.
It was the returning christian Pulisic who provided the flickers of menace and pulled the levers, occasionally switching flanks to do so. But all he delivered came to nothing.
little more than 17 minutes after taking the lead, chelsea surrendered it to a player who had threatened more than anyone in their own number had all night. a half- clearance was knocked down to Daniel Podence, who cut on to his right foot, manufactured some space from Reece James and scored at the near post.
Neto’s clinical finish at the death — easing to Kurt Zouma’s left and dispatching a shot across edouard Mendy which the goalkeeper probably should have stopped — was a metaphor for the night. Wolves l ooked a yard or two sharper in the critical moments.
asked if this was only a blip, lampard said: ‘Well, that’s up to us, isn’t it? everyone sang our praises and I was the last one to do that as it is my job to stay level-headed.
‘When we perform like we did, that’s not the game management and quality levels that we are striving for. I still think there’s a lot of improving to do within the group, so I wouldn’t say I am massively surprised.
‘What my experience of the Premier league tells me is that i f you drop your standards,
which we have in the last two games, particularly away from home, then you can lose football matches.’
The result signifies little in the wider scheme of this deeply unpredictable Premier League. But taken with the defeat i nflicted by Everton on Saturday, it does provide a sense that Chelsea are vulnerable to sides who sit deep and break on them.
So sit deep Wolves most certainly did, with a defence which Lampard’s players rarely l ooked capable of piercing. There were two promising first-half moments. Giroud escaped Boly and leapt unhindered to a Mason Mount corner, depositing the header over the bar. Zouma evaded detection in the same way and powered his effort against the crossbar. But nothing from open play. Very little shift through the gears.
Wolves were the ones who provided that. They are desperately depleted, shorn of the players who have created and scored most for them since promotion, but t hey brought i mpeccable defensive resilience through Marcal, Leander Dendoncker and Conor Coady. That said, their defence did look vulnerable at the start of the second half and goalkeeper Rui Patricio will want to forget the Giroud strike he fumbled in.
The Portuguese seemed to have grasped the ball but it slipped from his hands and over the goal-line. It means Giroud has now scored more Premier League goals (88) than Dennis Bergkamp and more in all competitions than any other Chelsea player this season. But after the size of investment Chelsea made, Lampard did not want him to be the leader.
Nor would he have relished the kind of defensive collapse which, as his players pushed for a winner, allowed Neto to race after a Romain Saiss ball through a wide open midfield and score. It was the fitter, stronger, more athletic side that took the points, which delighted home boss Nuno Espirito Santo.
‘We reacted well to the Chelsea goal,’ he said. ‘We were always in the game and organised and in the second half played really good football. The second half was what you want and feel in the game. After the Chelsea goal, we believed the game was there for us to be competitive and win it.’