It took a minute for the game to kick into life, though it weren’t Chelsea who were doing the kicking with the visitors looking the more energized and certainly the more dangerous on their forays forward.
But Chelsea were living a charmed life in front of our own goal, with Brentford wasting at least two glorious opportunities and proving a constant, if not unexpected, threat on set pieces.
And we got a welcome slice of luck at the other end as well. After a penalty shout on João Pedro was dismissed for supposed lack of evidence (despite his foot appearing to clearly get kicked), a bounce off a pressing Enzo fell right to JP who roofed it beautifully with his left. The flag went up and he certainly looked offside in live-time, but VAR’s lines favored us and the goal stood.
Brentford came out with renewed impetus from the break, but somehow our clean sheet remained intact. Robert Sánchez made yet another ridiculous save, and this time he didn’t flub any crosses either! But Chelsea were looking dead at minute 50 and it seemed like only a matter of time before our net would ripple.
Liam Rosenior tried to inject some fresh legs soon after, and those changes did serve to even up the game a little bit. And then another welcome stroke of luck, as Caoimhín Kelleher misplayed a simple pass to him and brought down Liam Delap who was on to the loose ball in a flash. Cole Palmer made no mistake from the spot to double our lead, with just 15 minutes left to play.
Brentford resumed their quest for a goal, but it was not their day. We hunkered down, Rosenior responded by throwing more defenders on, and that ensured that it was a Blue day instead!
* Estêvão and Jamie Gittens miss out, the latter through illness, the former for unspecified reasons
* Tosin gets the start, does well, almost scores an own goal, gets injured; how’s that new center back signing coming along?
* Rosenior going with a back 3/5 for the final 5 minutes plus stoppage time (of which there were 7 minutes, for some reason)
* A clean sheet!
* Just our second win in our last ten league games
* Chelsea back up to sixth, for now, just a couple points behind fourth-place Liverpool
* Next up: Pafos at home in the penultimate Champions League league-phase game
* KTBFFH
See More:
* [Chelsea FC: Premier League](/premier-league)