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MOTD: Chelsea 0-1 Bournemouth

By on December 5, 2015

Perhaps all the lambasting, criticism and condemnation from the football community has indeed taken a toll on Jose Mourinho as Chelsea succumbed to a dreadful 1-0 loss to Bournemouth, their eighth defeat of the season. In his post-match interviews, Mourinho was surprisingly candid in analyzing his disappointing team and only half-hearted in his swipe at the referees’ failure to spot a hand-ball from Diego Costa’s cross in the penalty area. His attitude reflected the dull, burnt-out performance of his team; there’s only so much Mourinho can do to explain and deflect attention away from Chelsea’s poor form before the results simply speak for themselves.

Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth side halted Chelsea’s slow climb back up the table in one deadly blow from Glenn Murray late on. The Blues had gone 388 minutes without conceding a goal in all competitions leading up to Murray’s goal, but another loss exposes Chelsea yet again. They sit just three points above the relegation zone having scored just seventeen goals — one fewer than Bournemouth — in their first fifteen games on the season and won only fifteen points. No reigning Premier League champions had lost more or won fewer games than Chelsea so far this season.

Chelsea’s lack of bite up front was startling, although they began to step up the pace after the introduction of Diego Costa, who again started on the bench after a very public row with Mourinho over the past week, at halftime. Yet none of Chelsea’s attacking stars — not Pedro, Willian, Eden Hazard, nor Cesc Fabregas — looked particularly sharp in the final third. As Mourinho noted, Chelsea had eleven corners, yet only a select few made it past the first man.

“All those crosses from the right side, short crosses, we have to touch the ball in front of goal because the goalkeeper would have no chance,” said Mourinho, per The Guardian. “If you are in the box you have to attack the ball and touch it in. These are big chances. Big chances you have to take. The only time we made contact was with [Nemanja] Matic [early in the second half], where it was difficult for him wearing his mask and with the cross really fast. It was difficult for him to react and give direction to the ball.”

On another occasion, Artur Boruc pounced on Willian’s tantalizing low cross from the right off an awkward bounce in the fifth minute and Boruc was put to work again towards the end of the first half, sprawling across his goal to tip Pedro’s deflected effort wide. Fifteen minutes from time Pedro and Costa found themselves inches away from a tap in at the end of Branislav Ivanovic, in keeping with the theme of the night for Chelsea, a cacophony of missed opportunities.

With nine minutes to go, Bournemouth stole a winner at Stamford Bridge as Thibaut Courtois flapped at a corner at the near post and Murray was on hand to head a cut-back into the back of the open net at the near post. Harry Arter might have added another, dragging wide on the break late on.

Chelsea have a mountain to climb, as no club in Premier League history has finished any higher than eighth place from The Blues’ current position. In the stands, Roman Abrahmovic held his hands in his head for a large part of the match. At a stadium Mourinho usually protects so fiercely, Chelsea have already lost four times this season.

Homepage photo credit: joshjdss, via Flickr

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.