Well today saw the two top clubs in the Premier League face off at the Etihad Stadium and it also saw the two leading goal-scorers in Chelsea’s Diego Costa and Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero face each other with the opportunity for both to show they are the best striker in the League.
At half-time Manchester City led 1-0 through a Gary Cahill own-goal which sadly went into the Chelsea goal just before the whistle blew to end the first stanza. Antonio Conte will no doubt have been frustrated to concede the lead just before the break as his team was looking to improve their recent record at the Etihad where they had only won one of their most recent seven games after losing last time out there by 3-0. Interestingly almost forgotten man Cesc Fabregas got the start for Chelsea and he showed his class by setting up Diego Costa for his 11th Premier League goal and most importantly the equaliser to square the match at 1-1 in the second half.
Man City were arguably the better side through much of the early part of the game and certainly started brightly by really going after Chelsea in the first 20 minutes but they could not make the pressure count on the scoreboard and they had to rely on Cahill’s unfortunate blunder to grab the lead after he volleyed Navas’ cross past Thibaut Courtois in the Chelsea goal. De Bruyne clattered the cross bar with a thunderous strike in the second half but City were really quite wasteful in front of goal much to Guardiola’s frustration.
Willian was sent on by Conte in the 50th minute to replace Pedro and it was the Brazilian who calmly struck the ball past Claudio Bravo in the City goal on 70 minutes to give Chelsea the lead. David Luiz and Willian took the opportunity to honour their fallen countrymen who died in the plane crash on Monday which almost wiped out the entire football team of Brazilian club Chapecoense.
As Man City pressed for the equaliser late on, Kevin De Bruyne lost the ball and Chelsea broke quickly on the counter attack and Marcus Alonso hit a great pass to Eden Hazard who calmly slotted home to give Chelsea a commanding 3-1 lead. Chelsea now have gone on an 8 game winning run and have scored 20 goals over that spell and only conceded 2 goals despite their uncharacteristic defensive display today which fortunately did not cost them as City were rather careless in front of goal. The game ended with an altercation on the sideline after Sergio Aguero had been sent off for a really nasty knee-high challenge on David Luiz – a tackle which Chelsea were very upset about. Fernandinho also got sent off for his rough-housing of Fabregas as Chelsea ran the clock out to claim another most deserved victory as they remained top of the table and comprehensively beat one of their main Premier League rivals. So it was another great day for Antonio Conte and his players as Chelsea are looking like the complete team these days.