Well Chelsea fell foul of what is turning out to be a very good Wolverhampton Wanderers team last night.
The blues scored very early in the first half and had many chances to put Wolves away but ultimately Nuno Espirito Santo’s increasingly outstanding Midlands outfit, roared on by their home support, came back to win 2-1.
If Morgan Gibbs-White was not known by many before despite his already classy displays for Wolves so far this season, then after the 18 year old won the man of the match award vs Chelsea last night playing in an unfamiliar centre-forward role he will be now. After his assist to Raul Jimenez, the young forward will be making headlines throughout the season from now on you would expect after he played such an awesome game.
His manager had this to say about the young Wolves starlet who won the U17 World Cup with England last year as Sky Sports reported:
“He is a world champion,”
“He is [part of] one of the best generations of English players for a long time. It is amazing what they are producing.”
Wolves drew 1-1 with Man City very early in the season in August perhaps issuing a warning to other teams that they are a team to be reckoned with but that warning clearly has not been heeded.
Wolves came back to draw at Old Trafford vs United in September in a game they easily could have won where they pushed Jose Mourinho’s team all the way.
Just last month Nuno’s side almost came all the back from 3-0 down at home vs Spurs after looking completely dead and buried only to just lose 3-2 and then a week later they faced Spurs’ North London rivals Arsenal claiming another creditable point with a 1-1 draw at the Emirates.
Nuno’s team got an impressive 2-2 draw with Everton on opening day so the signs have been clear for all to see despite them losing to lower level teams like Huddersfield, Cardiff and Brighton.
Wolves have only lost to Spurs of all the top sides they have faced with only Liverpool remaining to face of the so-called top sides in a couple of weeks.
Nuno has a very capable squad who play for each other, defend as a unit and can certainly score goals. Chelsea obviously looked past Wolves with their massive home clash against Pep’s Man City looming this Saturday but you cannot look past any team in the Premier League and Maurizio Sarri has now discovered that to his cost.
Even before the results from last night Man City were favourites with the likes of Coral Betting but now City are quoted at 20-21 with some bookies and a Chelsea win is available at 3-1 while a draw can be had for a similar price.
Marcos Alonso has not looked good over the past few games either in attack or defence and the word of him carrying an injury cannot be good news for his manager and many Chelsea fans are calling for Alonso to be dropped for the City game.
Many Chelsea players had bad nights last night with Eden Hazard, Alvaro Morata and Willian looking particularly off the pace with only captain Cesar Azpilicueta emerging with any real credit from the game for his performance.
This is the first rough patch of Sarri’s reign and it will be interesting to see how the Chelsea boss handles it as a loss on Saturday would see the Blues likely slip out of the top 4 where they have been all season.
In their past five games just two wins with one draw and two losses does not make for good reading and has to be a concern to the Chelsea braintrust but Sarri is unlikely to panic and hopefully we see a much improved performance against Manchester City on the weekend as you would expect a strong reaction given the opponents and the way the Chelsea capitulated against Wolves last night.
For Chelsea to come out on top vs Manchester City they will need a vastly improved defensive performance and Alvaro Morata and the other misfiring forwards like Willian in particular must be more clinical or they will be torn apart by Pep Guardiola’s men and they could do with taking a leaf out of Wolves’ book and genuinely playing for each other.