A fifth defeat in ten Premier League matches for Chelsea and Jose Mourinho has left them with 11 points and 15th on the league table. As many believed, Jose’s woes are far from over.
Jose Mourinho made no changes to the side that featured in a goalless draw against Dynamo Kiev in the Champions League in midweek. Meanwhile, Slaven Bilic bought-in Mauro Zarate for the ineligible Blues loanee Victor Moses.
In an eventful first 45-minutes, at Upton Park, Chelsea found themselves a goal and a player down at half-time. Fabregas and Costa were booked for dissent and assistant Silvino Louro was sent to stand for protesting against the bookings of Matic’s second-yellow card, and Fabregas and Costa’s booking. Jose Mourinho was sent to the stands by John Moss for objecting his decision of booking Matic, initially by getting into the referee’s room at half-time.
Chelsea possessed much of the ball in the first-half, but failed to provide any real threat or convert the opportunities created. The first chance for Chelsea came, when Fabregas played a cushioned pass to Costa in-behind the West Ham United back-line on the half-volley, which was completely mishit by the Spanish striker. Throughout the first-45 minutes, Costa looked to be a threat, but only till he had shots on goal, which were wayward. He also, failed to dominate in the air, failing to win 5 of his 7 aerial duals. In a wave of attacks, initially from West Ham United saw Fabregas doing his defensive duties; intercepting a pass inside the box early in the first-half. An aspect of his game he has steadily developed.
West Ham tried to overload the right-side of the Chelsea back-line by overloading and creating timely 1v2 situations against Zouma as Willian moved central, which vacated this right-flank. West Ham proved to be more dangerous on the ball despite possessing only 30% of the possession in the first-half. Even, when Chelsea had more possession of the ball in the final-third of the pitch, West Ham United enjoyed more incisive passes in the final-third, which helped The Hammers create 12 shots on goal to Chelsea’s 8. It took Chelsea 175 passes before they could have their first-shot on-target. Matic’s sending-off and his time on the pitch equally affected Chelsea’s loss to West Ham, 1/3 of the Serbian’s passes were backwards, which resulted in a slow build-up, which provided West Ham to get-into a solid defensive shape, timely.
Dimitri Payet and Manuel Lanzini – flourish in the wide open spaces that develop for them on the counter-attack. This season, West Ham United’s favoured, whenever they haven’t been treated as favourites. Bilic’s aggressive and plucky ideology has stated: his side’s patience to sit in deep defensive lines and then pounce on to the spaces left behind by an unbalanced midfield and defensive unit. West Ham recorded just one yellow card (Kouyate 74’), which was only their second yellow card at home, this season in comparison with Chelsea’s 5 yellows and one red card. Bilic’s men have received 14 yellow’s this season on the road, which highlights their aggressive style of ball retention technique whilst providing a continuous threat on the counterattack recording on an average 12 dribbles per game.
West Ham’s home form hasn’t been fulfilling, but with signs showcasing their intent to replicate their away form and style of play at home against a top-side like Chelsea provides added bonuses to Bilic’s work.
Chelsea despite having most of the possession looked dangerous when they counterattacked the West Ham United defence; case in point: Fabregas’ offside goal. Otherwise, The Hammers looked resolute from a defensive point of view with a 4-4-2 shape off the ball (and at times even, 4-5-1). West Ham United received more space in the midfield area, while transiting from defence to attack as Fabregas was late to react on occasions.
This, eventually caught Chelsea, when Fabregas fouled Payet on 16 minutes, which resulted in a goal-scoring set-piece opportunity for The Hammers and Payet, which he almost took, but a save from Begovic resulted in a corner from which the home-side scored via Mauro Zarate. Chelsea’s inability to defend set-pieces was exposed yet again, this season. The first corner which fell to West Ham was cleared-off unconvincingly by Chelsea.
Having not conceded a single-goal against West Ham United coming into this game since, their 3-1 defeat in 2012, Chelsea conceded 2 goals, this time, and their 6th headed goal of the season, when substitute Andy Carroll headed home the winner by out-jumping his counterpart Azpilicueta, which was a complete mismatch in the Chelsea penalty area. A flurry of crosses into a box, and one unconvincing clearance from John Terry provided enough material for The Hammers to take the lead for the second-time in match.
West Ham United could’ve and probably, should’ve wrapped-up the match in the 39th minute of the match, when Lanzini was presented with a 1v1 opportunity against Begovic, Sakho won the initial header from Cahill by dropping deep, creating an ideal attacking opportunity for West Ham to pounce on, Payet’s back-heel pass to Lanzini into the space on the right-side of the Chelsea backline vacated by Zouma gave enough time and space to measure a smooth finish, but the Argentinian’s chipped effort went fractionally over the goal.
The second-half started on a slow-tempo from West Ham United’s perspective, which Chelsea quickly noticed, but had to wait until the 56th minute mark to capitalize on. Gary Cahill gave Chelsea and largely, the second half a temporary lift, which was quite contradicting to its first(-half). Cahill scored on the half-volley, which fell to him from a Willian corner.
Despite the fact: Fabregas played the most number of passes (32), he was subbed off, because of immobile nature, but also, a greater protection was needed (in Mikel) to shield the backline with the sending-off of Matic. Kouyate and Zarate with the most ball recoveries, 6 each further highlights, how the home-team successfully utilized the arguably weaker Chelsea flank. Case in point: the second-goal Chelsea conceded was a cross from the left by (left-back) Cresswell.
In all, West Ham United proved to be far superior in exposing the weaknesses of Chelsea, Mourinho is still addressing. This season’s Chelsea is quite similar to the Real Madrid of 2012/2013, off the pitch and Borussia Dortmund of 2014-2015, on the pitch. If last-week was a false dawn, believing – whenever the real dawn arrives it will likely be, too late for the current Premier League champions – wouldn’t be entirely incorrect.