Southampton 1-5 Chelsea, Premier League: Post-match reaction ...

Southampton made a bright start to the game, and they created multiple dangerous situations early on. Filip Jorgensen had to make an excellent stop just a couple minutes into his first ever Premier League start — even if the play was then called back for offside — but Chelsea were a bit slow out of the blocks overall.

And even after we took the lead on a set piece, the home side hit back with a well-worked equalizer on ten minutes. Thankfully, not five minutes later, their goalkeeper, who certainly didn’t cover himself in glory for any part of the day, gifted the lead back to us.

And from there, we never looked back. It would’ve been a massacre in the first half already had the frame of the goal not rescued the hosts multiple times, including on a glorious chance for Cole Palmer. But Noni Madueke would find the bottom corner on a cutback before the half, which also saw Nkunku and Felix just miss the target.

Southampton’s first half misery was completed with the sending off of their captain, Jack Stephens, for pulling Marc Cucurella’s hair on an attacking(!) corner. Unlike the exact same incident against Cristian Romero a couple years ago, this time VAR did intervene and the offender was rightly sent off.

The second half began as the first ended, with a huge miss by João Félix, and that would set the tone for the next 30 or so minutes. The cavalcade of horrendous misses — Noni himself could’ve had a hattrick — plus another woodwork from Tosin, was finally ended by Palmer slamming it in from point blank into an empty net with a little under a quarter hour left.

Sancho then added one for good measure, his first ever for Chelsea, improving our goal difference in the process, which could prove useful given the tight top-four/six race.

We scored five, could’ve scored ten.

Carefree.

• Seven changes from the weekend; so not quite a full rotation, but plenty of changes in defense and also in attack
• Nkunku adding to his team-leading goals total to bring him to 12 (all competitions); Palmer now tops in the league for us with 9
• Enzo, Madueke, Félix, Nkunku, and Gusto with the assists
• Maresca getting his name sung for the first(?) time
• Chelsea move up to second, pending the outcome of the Arsenal-Man Utd match going on right now
• Next up: Spurs away on Sunday
• KTBFFH

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