Early Saturday afternoon Plymouth Argyle looked to be cruising to the unlikely upset to the European champions with an early header from Gillespie to give the men in blue quite the shock early in the first half. The League Two side, played with supreme confidence, showing and believing that they can go into West London and get the result needed to upend a team that is out matching their side in every position.
Hakim Ziyech was the biggest contributor to all of the creative things on the ball for Chelsea, his flick, runs and pure imagination lead to many positive things for himself as well as his teammates. It seemed that he was the only player up for the challenge against a team that had nothing to lose, the goal Chelsea scored came in the 41st minute a beautiful back flick perfectly executed by Cesar Azpilcueta whose brilliance over the last few years shone again, with the balance in the myriad of talent he brings to pitch, for the first time in career Cesar; looked brave going forward expecting to score goals.
Although he did not appear on the stat sheet Romelu Lukaku did make some good runs and he is hoping to mend the relationship that has since suffered some damage due to his controversial comments made about the club late last year, however is this enough, just runs? Some of his overall play was really poor, he only had 31 touches in 120 minutes, and he has to be scoring in these type of matches. Chelsea have fixture congestion as they face Lille, Liverpool and the FIFA Club World Cup all this month, and potentially without their enigmatic leader Thomas Tuchel on the touchline for atleast the Club world Semi Final due to testing positive with COVID prior to the start of the match.
Chelsea secured victory on a goal 107st minute off a beautiful pass and a tidy finish from Marcos Alonso. This match is a reminder that everyone is looking to knock Chelsea off their perch and they have to prepared to battle every match, some late concerns with Mason Mount going off with what looked like an injury and perhaps Azpilicueta too, who was subbed off due to cramp or an injury, we await further confirmation.
