Our first midweek fixture of the season has arrived as August draws to a close. Club historian Rick Glanvill and club statistician Paul Dutton set their sights on the team’s journey south…
Chelsea are aiming to bag three wins from the opening five fixtures as this compressed first half of the season suddenly intensifies. The Londoners successfully navigated a great test of character on Saturday, playing with 10 men for more than an hour and winning – unlike the collapse at Leeds a week earlier. Morale should be restored by that three-point claim, as well as key summer signing Raheem Sterling netting his first two goals.
Southampton has often proved a safe haven for the Blues, who have scored on each of the past 17 occasions we have docked at the Hampshire port in the league. That is the longest scoring sequence one team has had on another’s soil in the history of the Premier League.
As a result, the Saints have shipped 44 home goals against the Londoners in that time, the most against any of their opponents. Equally, only at Tottenham’s various grounds have Chelsea found the net more times: 51.
Thomas Tuchel returns to the touchline after serving his one-match ban knowing victory could lift the Blues into the top four ahead of West Ham’s visit to SW6 on Saturday, now set for 3pm.
Chelsea team news
Saturday’s hard-fought triumph took Chelsea up to sixth place. Sterling’s second, a close-range dispatch of Reece James’s irresistible cross, was a made-in-west-London move you want to see executed from muscle memory again and again.
The former City man has scored seven goals and made four against this evening’s hosts, and the Blues need to put more away to simplify games and rise out of the current negative goal difference. Of the regular front three, Saturday’s match-winner has so far been on target with 22.2 per cent of his shots, Mason Mount 28.6, and Kai Havertz 40. Armando Broja, who was Southampton’s second-highest goalscorer on loan at St Mary’s last season, has cracked one shot to date this term but with 100 per cent accuracy.
Until reduced to 10 players on Saturday through Conor Gallagher’s second yellow, Thomas Tuchel’s side lined up as a 4-4-2. After that the defence reverted to a central three, with James and Thiago Silva especially making exceptional blocks and interceptions under intense Leicester pressure.
The Bavarian would have been pleased his team faced off 16 Foxes corners without conceding, but was concerned that Gallagher’s second misdemeanour came from sloppiness after one of the six awarded to the hosts. The decision-making in such settings is not quite there yet as new players grow accustomed to their team-mates.
Tuchel has confirmed Kali Koulibaly will start after suspension but we wait to see how he handles 37-year-old Thiago Silva as games arrive every three days. Midfield remains problematic as N’Golo Kante is still a few weeks away from a return and Mateo Kovacic may not be asked to start games until 100 per cent fit, despite Gallagher’s enforced absence. Recent recruit Carney Chukwuemeka is also in Tuchel’s thinking.
A clean sheet for the Blues tonight would be the 50th since their arrival at the Bridge for both Tuchel and goalkeeper Edou Mendy.
Our Hampshire hosts
Southampton have responded to adversity this season, coming back from losing positions to earn points against Leeds and at Leicester. That does not alter the fact the 13th-placed club have conceded the first goal in three of their four league outings.
More specifically, six of the eight goals scored against them have come in the 18 minutes immediately after the break. ‘Maybe we should stay longer in the dressing room,’ was Ralph Hasenhuttl’s jocular response.
Equally disconcerting for the head coach, James Ward-Prowse’s opener in the 4-1 loss at Tottenham is the Saints’ only goal inside the opening hour of their five most recent matches. They have managed two league victories in the past 16 attempts, with one of them (Arsenal) on home soil.
Hasenhuttl has asked his team to ‘use reverse gear’ more against Chelsea – 6-0 winners at St Mary’s in April – and, with regular centre-back Jan Bednarek seemingly on his way, the Austrian says Armel Bella-Kotchap and Mohammed Salisu look more comfortable in a back four than a three.
That allows him an extra attacking player on the field, and the Saints are always eager to overload opponents in the final third to support Che Adams or new man Sekou Mara. However, that urge to commit bodies forward means a smart threaded pass can leave their youthful centre-backs isolated and exposed.
Cobham core
Chelsea’s starting line-up against Leicester featured six English players for the first time in the Premier League since Wayne Bridge, Joe Cole, Glen Johnson, Frank Lampard, Scott Parker and John Terry stepped onto the field at home to Blackburn in October 2004.
Raheem Sterling aside, all those named on Saturday (Trevoh Chalobah, Conor Gallagher, Reece James, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Mason Mount) are Cobham graduates, compared to just one homegrown (Terry) 18 years ago.
Card count
Throughout the 2021/22 Premier League campaign Chelsea staff and players were shown one red card and no second yellows. After four matches of the new term the Blues have been hit with two second-yellow reds (already the most since 2017/18) and a straight red for the head coach.
Up to now only one other club – Liverpool – has had a player sent off.
‘We cannot behave like this if we are on yellow cards,’ Thomas Tuchel said after the latest dismissal, while making clear this is a whole-team issue. The Londoners last received red cards in successive league games in October 2014: Cesar Azpilicueta (against Crystal Palace) and Branislav Ivanovic (Manchester Utd).
Koulibaly and Gallagher are not the first players to see red in the opening few games of their Chelsea career and will not be the last. Dennis Wise was sent off 11 minutes into his second appearance in royal blue in August 1990 – and look what a legend he became.
The Blues’ red cards
straight red second yellow
2022/23 0 2
2021/22 1 0
2020/21 2 1
2019/20 0 0
2018/19 0 0
2017/18 1 3
2016/17 0 0
2015/16 2 3
2014/15 3 1
2013/14 0 3
Previous pilgrimages to St Mary’s
Just four month ago Chelsea travelled to the South Coast and matched our biggest ever Premier League era away win with half-a-dozen goals shared between Marcos Alonso, Kai Havertz and two each for Timo Werner and Portsmouth-born Mason Mount.
In fact, the Blues have lost only once in 14 league visits to Saints’ home since 2001, scoring two or more goals in nine of our 10 victories there.
The Blues’ biggest Premier League wins on the road
2021/22 Southampton 6-0
2010/11 Wigan 6-0
1996/97 Barnsley 6-0
1997/98 Tottenham 6-1
2014/15 Swansea 5-0
2009/10 Portsmouth 5-0
2008/09 Middlesbrough 5-0
2003/04 Wolves 5-0
2011/12 Bolton 5-1
2014/15 Everton 6-3
2019/20 Wolves 5-2
Matchday five Premier League fixtures
(all games on BT Sport)
Tuesday
Crystal Palace v Brentford 7.30pm
Fulham v Brighton 7.30pm
Southampton v Chelsea 7.45pm
Leeds v Everton 8pm
Wednesday
Arsenal v Aston Villa 7.30pm
Bournemouth v Wolves 7.30pm
Man City v Nottingham Forest 7.30pm
West Ham v Tottenham 7.45pm
Liverpool v Newcastle 8pm
Thursday
Leicester v Man Utd 8pm