On a clear and cool Saturday morning in west London, Chelsea effectively wrapped up the Premier League title with 14 games to spare. They also relegated Arsenal to yet another season of battling for a top-four finish and proved Leicester City’s 5,000-1 championship win wasn’t a fluke, it was a preview of things to come.
Unfortunately for Leicester, their miracle run wasn’t a harbinger of their own future, it was a window into Chelsea’s.
The Blues stole the Foxes’ destiny by buying their best player, midfield man-and-a-half N’Golo Kante, refining Leicester’s counter-attacking tactics to work with their world-class squad, and by fully committing to the novel idea that fielding the same group of players, week in and week out, builds a level of team momentum that is hard to stop once it gets rolling.
None of that was evident in the first few minutes of Saturday’s game. As in their first meeting at the Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium in September, the Gunners came out blazing and seemed to catch Chelsea half-asleep. Pressing and harrying accident-waiting-to-happen David Luiz, Mesut Ozil won the ball deep in Chelsea’s half and played in Alex Iwobi, whose curling shot could have changed the course of the game had it nestled in the bottom corner. It didn’t, and instead, the shot seemed to wake Chelsea from their slumber.
The Blues soon clicked into high gear and took the lead in the 13th minute when Petr Cech could only parry Diego Costa’s thumping header onto the crossbar. Hector Bellerin was in good position to clear it, but Marco Alonso came flying in, elbow first, to knock Bellerin unconscious and head the ball into the back of the net. Chelsea were off to the races, and 40 minutes later had their second when Eden Hazard picked the ball in his own half and dribbled the length of the field, beating six Arsenal defenders, including supposed hard man Francis Coquelin and captain Laurent Koscielny, to smack the ball past a helpless Cech.
Chelsea would grab another goal late on after a Cech brain fart, and Arsenal got a consolation goal from Olivier Giroud. Yet the result was permeated by a pungent sense of deja vu. Chelsea got their first whiff of success at the end of their 3-0 loss to Arsenal earlier in the season when manager Antonio Conte finally installed his preferred 3-4-3 formation. The new tactics stopped the bleeding at the Emirates and have worked wonders ever since, with Chelsea picking up a whopping 49 of an available 54 points.
Many, The Post included, have heaped praise on Conte’s genius and Kante’s mind-bending midfield performances. However, Chelsea’s unsung hero has been their literal human consistency. Chelsea has started only 14 different outfield players, which means they have the luxury of basically putting out their best starting 11 every week. Their title rivals have not had the same luck. Tottenham (18), Manchester City (20), Arsenal (21), Liverpool (17), and Manchester United (20) have started significantly more players than has Chelsea, which means they are forced to constantly adjust the team chemistry.
Arsenal never clicked this weekend because they were missing rhythm setter Santi Cazorla — who is out injured for the year — and Bellerin after the 13th minute. In their place were fifth-choice central midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who normally plays as a winger, and Gabriel Paulista, Arsenal’s fourth-choice center back.
Chelsea didn’t have to incorporate any newcomers to their squad and came out easy winners. They put themselves nine points clear of the pack at the top of the table and will, in all likelihood, stroll to the title. Leicester did much the same last season when they pulled off one of the biggest miracles in sports history while fielding just 17 different outfield starters. This season, they’ve already fielded 19 — starting keeper Kasper Schmeichel has missed eight games, to boot — so it shouldn’t be surprising they are languishing in 16th place. – M.B.
What a difference a month makes. Hull City may still be in the relegation zone, but after new coach Marco Silva guided them to a 2-0 defeat of Liverpool on Saturday, things suddenly look a lot less dire.
Not much was expected of the 39-year-old Portuguese manager when he was hired on Jan. 5. He was taking over a team seemingly anchored to the bottom of the table, having only managed a single win since August and whose best player, Robert Snodgrass, had made clear his desire to play elsewhere. Despite all this, Silva calmly has led the Tigers to two wins and a draw during his first four league games, a run of form no one saw coming.
Silva’s revitalized Hull by doing exactly what he previously did at Olympiacos and Sporting Lisbon. He’s taken a more tactical and analytic approach than did his predecessor Mike Phelan, and transformed Hull into a disciplined defensive unit more than happy to sit back and soak up its opponent’s attacks. The manager also injected some new blood into the team. Snodgrass left for West Ham at the end of January, and he and Jake Livermore were replaced by seven new players from around Europe, almost all of whom had been written off as talented underachievers.
The benefit of both these changes was clear on Saturday. Thanks to a determined backline and some nifty goalkeeping from Eldin Jakupović, Hull City was able to frustrate a Liverpool side that’s suddenly found goals hard to come by. The Tigers seized upon the few chances that came their way: Alfred N’Diyae pouncing on a muffed free kick for the opener just before the half and Oumar Niasse sneaking behind the Reds’ back four for a late insurance goal. Both goal scorers happened to have been signed in January.
Hull now are a point from safety with 14 games left, with a legitimate chance at surviving this season — which is all the team or Silva could have asked for on Jan. 5. – B.H.
There’s no better microcosm for what Chelsea is doing to the Premier League than the team’s second goal against Arsenal: Eden Hazard gathered the ball just inside of his own half and took off on a run in which he evaded and shrugged off challenges from Laurent Koscielny, Francis Coquelin, Koscielny again, and finally Shkodran Mustafi before emphatically slamming the ball past Petr Cech. The craziest thing about it was how easy it looked.
Łukasz Fabianski gave it his all Sunday, but it just wasn’t quite enough. Although the Swansea keeper managed to block Gabriel Jesus’ unmarked header in stoppage time, he couldn’t corral the rebound, and the 19-year-old Manchester City starlet poked the ball home for the game-winner, 2-1. A painful end to what had been a valiant performance.
The division between the contenders for the top four, the also-rans in the middle of the pack and the relegation battlers never has been clearer.
1. Chelsea (1)
2. Tottenham (2)
3. Manchester City (6)
4. Manchester United (5)
5. Arsenal (3)
6. Liverpool (4)
7. Everton (7)
8. West Brom (9)
9. West Ham (10)
10. Stoke (8)
11. Southampton (11)
12. Watford (14)
13. Burnley (12)
14. Bournemouth (13)
15. Hull City (17)
16. Leicester (16)
17. Middlesbrough (15)
18. Swansea City (18)
19. Sunderland (20)
20. Crystal Palace (19)
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
