Saturdays result was disappointing, but today`s another day and like the team, us supporters move on. Antonio swapped his formation back to a 3-4-3 lineup tonight, with Alvaro Morata rested or injured, Eden Hazard stepped into the breach.
Conte clearly doesn`t rate Michy Batshuayi, the feeling is he must be off in January. It`s a shame because he seems like a good lad, but he`ll want to be playing ahead of next summer`s World Cup.
Eden Hazard got the game underway. It was almost bound to be a tense and cold night, Huddersfield have already had good home win over Manchester United and they ran City close recently. As it turned out for Chelsea fans it wasn`t so bad, a 3-1 victory saw them return to winning ways?..phew?.
Chelsea began the game with plenty of possession and Pedro had the ball in the net early on but he was offside. This game was as much about attitude as it was the result. Chelsea had to show an improved performance from the weekend.
As the game progressed the Terriers came back into the game and there very little between the two teams. A big positive for Chelsea was, they were pressing much more than they did against West Ham, and it was that pressing that created the goal that broke the deadlock.
Hazard pressured the keeper into making a rushed clearance, which he made, but slipped in the process. Willian picked the ball up, played it into the path of Tiemoue Bakayoko who was charging into the box, and the big Frenchman fired a shot goal wards, that was deflected in. It may well have been an own-goal, but tough to take it away from Baka.
From that point on Chelsea looked more comfortable, Hazard started to draw fouls from the Huddersfield defenders, a sure sign that Chelsea were on the front foot and on top.
As the game edged towards half time Chelsea doubled their lead when a Marcos Alonso put in a big cross, with plenty of height, and the big man, himself, Willian, was in the box to head home. I`m sorry, Willian haters, but give the man his due, another important goal.
Half time came and Antonio Conte was certainly the happier of the two managers. It was a much improved performance on Saturdays effort. The second half began with Chelsea very much still looking to score and it wasn`t long before they did.
This time it was Pedro on the score sheet, another Alonso cross was laid off by Willian for the Spaniard to fire into the top right corner. That` was a goal and an assist for Willian.
That third goal seemed to spur Huddersfield into action, but by then it was too late. Hazard and Pedro were linking well, and everything in the Chelsea garden was rosy once again.
With Hazard`s work done for the night, he was replaced by Michy Batshuayi with 68 minutes on the clock. Not long after that Danny Drinkwater replaced N`golo Kante. It was just a question of seeing out time now and rejoicing in getting back to winning ways.
The game thereafter pretty much stagnated, however there was a bright point and that was the introduction of Ethan Ampadu for his Premier League debut at just 17 years of age. He replaced Andreas Christensen with twelve minutes remaining, the two ‘kids` embraced as they swapped places.
Into injury time and Huddersfield slightly spoiled the party by getting a very late consolation goal. Courtois was furious with his defence for allowing the cross to come in, but there was very little he could do with the header that flew past him.
Final score Chelsea 3-1 Huddersfield Town. A good three points and more importantly a much improved performance on a night that it would have been easy to have come unstuck. Chelsea consolidated 3rd place in the Premier League going level on points with Manchester United. Next up Chelsea is a home fixture on Saturday at 15:00 against Southampton.
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