Chelsea 2-0 West Ham: Quite simply the Garden of Eden but for how long?

Eden Hazard once again demonstrated his quality and class last night with a stunning opening goal followed by a cool, calm finish late in the game to secure three massive points for Chelsea. Just how long will he be here to deliver performances like that?

Ahead of the game there had been plenty of talk of how would start the game, would Callum Hudson-Odoi and Ruben Loftus-Cheek continue in the side after impressing against Brighton? Would Maurizio Sarri rotate his players ahead of a busy and important week? Finally, could Chelsea take the step back into the top four and third place with a win?

It was pleasing to see that he continued with both youngsters to give them confidence. Toni Rudiger came back into the side alongside David Luiz at the expense of Andreas Christensen and Gonzalo Higuain into the team in place of Olivier Giroud.

It was important that we started well in the game and dominated. It’s fair to say what West Ham more than held their own in the early stages despite Chelsea creating chances. The visitors always looked dangerous on the counter-attack here and there were one or two occasions where we looked shaky at the back but, thank-god we managed to get rid of the danger.

We looked more than dangerous ourselves going forward which was good to see, with Eden Hazard one side and Hudson-Odoi the other, we looked to use the full width of the pitch which at times caused West Ham problems.

Until the Hazard goal, although we looked dangerous, we had not really created anything of note that forced the goalkeeper into making a telling save in the game. Then, with time and space thirty-five yards from goal in the middle of the pitch, Eden Hazard picked the ball up and drove at their defence. The ability to dribble through the challenges on the edge of the box with ease and leave them standing is something we have seen before from Hazard, but this is right up there with the best. He left FOUR defenders for dead moving the ball to the right before cutting back to his left hand-side before drilling a shot with his left-foot hard and low into the bottom corner to make it 1-0. It was a remarkable goal that will only entice Real Madrid even more so.

At that point we had control of the game but could not capitalise further and score more goals which has been one of our problems this season. Maurizio Sarri spoke of not being happy with the score line at half-time and I agree with him but, in saying that, it was important to go in at the break a goal up.

The second half played out as expected with the visitors now forced into a reaction to try and grab a goal to get back into game. There were a couple of moments that on another day they could have scored with Creswell’s effort that flew just wide being one of them.

Chelsea also created some good opportunities but couldn’t get that all-important second goal to calm things down and take a real foothold of this one. That was until late on, Eden Hazard scored his second goal from close range into the bottom corner to seal the three points. His first touch to control the ball was excellent to give him the space and the angle to fire past the goalkeeper giving him no chance. That’s nineteen goals now for him which equals his best season at Chelsea and we still have five Premier League games to go in addition to the Europa League.

With Liverpool away on Sunday and the fact that although our top four rivals have a game in-hand on us, it was an all-important win that puts us third with the points in the bag. Let’s see how the others react at the weekend before we travel to Anfield to hopefully, once again spoil their party. Demba Ba anyone?!

UTC!