A double strike from Tammy Abraham wasn’t enough to give us our first home league victory at Stamford Bridge this season, as the Blades stuck the knife in to end up with a well-deserved draw. After the victory against Norwich last week, the expectations were high in and around Stamford Bridge pre-match, with the Chelsea faithful hungry for another three points, against, yet another newly promoted team. There was one change from last weeks victory over Norwich as Fikayo Tomori made his Premier League debut at Stamford Bridge ahead of Andreas Christensen, who was on the bench. Toni Rüdiger was still missing, although after playing for the U23’s against Tottenham on Friday night, the chances are likely he’ll be back for the Wolves game on September 14.
The average age of the Chelsea starting line-up was 24 and ended up with an even younger average age when Billy Gilmour came on during the second half. Two to three years ago, how many of us would have thought that Tammy, Mason, Fikayo and Billy Gilmour would be playing in the first team together? Albeit with Billy Gilmour replacing Tammy Abraham today.
Sadly the match ended up feeling more in the way of a defeat than a draw; the first 45 minutes produced two Tammy Abraham goals, the first came after some sloppy goalkeeping when Henderson spilled the ball under pressure from Pulisic. Then in the 43rd minute a chip through from Jorginho confused the Sheffield United defenders; with the ball falling to Tammy he slotted it to the left of Henderson and it was 2-0. Prior to our second, Kovacic had shot across goal when scoring looked more likely. At 2-0 the Chelsea of old would have either notched another, or kept as much possession as possible. However, the start of the second half saw Robinson score past Kepa after a cross from the left. The nerves then began to fray as we couldn’t score a third, although Tammy Abraham had a terrific effort for a hat-trick. Then with just minutes remaining a cross from Robinson on the left gave panic to our defence as Kurt Zouma stuck out a long leg in the hope of clearing the ball, only for the ball to flick off of his leg and into the back of our net past a stranded Kepa.
There’s a long road ahead of us; this game showed that we can achieve good things with pace and pressure, but on the other hand, our defence can be and has shown to be very brittle without Rüdiger; Kante would be a great addition too, if fit for Wolves on September 14, so let’s see if both will make a timely return against a difficult opponent.
Chelsea: Kepa; Azpilicueta, Tomori, Zouma, Emerson; Barkley (Willian 60), Jorginho, Kovacic (Batshuayi 83); Mount, Abraham (Gilmour 84), Pulisic
Scorers: Abraham (19, 43)
Attendance: 40,560
Referee: Stuart Attwell
