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MOTD: Chelsea 2-2 West Ham United

By on March 19, 2016

Tenth-placed Chelsea denied West Ham United a spot in the top four, at least for a day, holding their visitors to a 2-2 draw in just the latest role-reversal in the Premier League this season.  Cesc Fabregas’ late penalty pulled the Blues back from the brink of their first loss under Guus Hiddink in a clamorous evening at Stamford Bridge.

Slaven Bilic’s men are knocking on the door of the Champions League and West Ham can only hope their current run of form is more than simply a one-season wonder.

“This is a permanent shift at the top – at least I hope it is,” said Bilic, per the Telegraph. “Clubs like us with the [TV] money – Crystal Palace, West Brom, Leicester – we can still improve. Two years ago, West Brom could afford Salomon Rondon, but they would have had to sell Berahino to get him. Now they can keep Berahino. Next year with more investment you can keep those players. Crystal Palace can keep Cabaye and bring another one. So all those teams and us have bigger room to improve.”

Whether this season’s surprise shake-up at the top of the table is down to an improvement from the league’s middle class or the deterioration of the established big-boys is yet to be seen.  This match offered the suggestion that it is a little bit of both.

Chelsea were very sloppy and wasteful in front of goal and only strikes from Fabregas at the tail end of both halves rescued a point for Hiddink’s men.

Undefeated in their last seven matches, West Ham came into the match on the back of a 1-1 draw with Manchester United at Old Trafford and came out all guns blazing.

“We are playing good and we are a good team,” explained Bilic, via West Ham’s official website. “We have momentum and character and are defending with numbers and passion. When we have the ball, we are calm and we have pace and quality up front.”

On seventeen minutes, Manuel Lanzini curled a marvelous strike into the top-right-hand corner of the net from twenty-five yards.

Yet Fabregas pulled Chelsea level in first-half stoppage time with an equally fine finish, whipping a lovely free-kick into the top-left corner.

“We stared well in the first 10 minutes but we then started losing the possession too easily,” said Hiddink, per the BBC. “We reacted just before half-time, especially with the beautiful Fabregas free-kick. In the second half we got caught on the counter, but we reacted perfectly to get the draw.”

Andy Carroll restored West Ham’s lead in the sixty-first minute, peeling off of Gary Cahill, and running onto Dimitri Payet’s through-ball down the left side of the box.  Carroll tucked the ball pasted Thibaut Courtois and West Ham were momentarily in the top four.

But Antonio clipped Ruben Loftus-Cheek’s heels right on the edge of the penalty area with eighty-eight minutes on the clock and Fabregas coolly buried the resulting penalty.

“When you concede from a penalty that wasn’t a penalty it makes it really hard and unacceptable. We didn’t deserve it,” said Bilic.

“On the one hand we were missing that kind of luck and extra quality because when it was 1-0 and 2-1 we were close to being two up, either at 2-0 or 3-1, and I was expecting us to score.

“OK, we could have killed the game off, but it wasn’t a penalty and it’s so clear. We are not getting those decisions.

“We are not thinking about ‘Are we fourth? Are fifth?’ but thank God we are not fighting relegation. We are only thinking about this 90 minutes and we didn’t deserve to concede a second goal like that.”

Homepage photo credit: joshjdss (West Ham Vs Birkrikara) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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.