Wolves 1-0 Chelsea (Nuns 31′)
MOLINE – The more things change, the more they stay the same. Apparently, it takes more than 48 hours to release the ghost to make the scorer what this half-baked leviathan from the Chelsea team hopes to become.
In Frank Lampard’s second first game, his team played as if Todd Pain would be better off calling the Ghostbusters, a talking clock, or a licensed therapist.
Matheus Nunez’s goal in the half-hour match was no longer salvageable, and sooner or later experts could thunder around Chelsea. His attack gave him a fiery trail that he will no doubt get in the future in real-time highlights, but fans have just had to settle for his authentic beauty.
Daniel Podense’s pass to Trivela was edged out by Diego Costa Kalidou Koulibaly, but in the summer when he signed for Nunez, he reached just £38m.
The Portuguese returned softly to the ground after Koulibaly ducked his head, tearing the ball apart with his right foot and passing Kepa Arrizabalaga with the real-life power that hit the Chelsea fans this afternoon. Before this draw, there was a lot of controversy about Lampard’s prospects for winning the Champions League. This conversation will now be noticeably quieter.
Under Graham Potter, the Blues played beautiful football across most of the field, but couldn’t get what they needed in any of the 18-yard boxes. Molineux couldn’t even do that. All of Chelsea’s known flaws were still in place, they had just made some new friends.
In fire, brimstone and relentless running, Conor Gallagher has replaced Bruno Saltor’s undeniable star of the moment, N’Golo Kante. The Frenchman was deemed too weak to extend his 102 minutes from mid-August ahead of Tuesday’s Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid. It was not hard to see why Lampard felt it necessary to protect Kante at all costs.
The ex-Leicester midfielder turns anything and everything into art, like Daniels Kwan and Scheinert in their Oscar-winning film. When Gallagher tries, it looks like he will walk a lot. It’s not quite something, not quite somewhere, not quite at the right time.
Another notable choice for the game was Mark Cucurella, starting with Ben Chilwell. Cucurella has been a disappointment since he made a £50m move from Brighton this summer, while Chilwell has delivered some of the brightest moments of optimism since Potter’s failed experiment. The Spaniard failed to header the ball, resulting in the only goal of the game. Other than that, and maybe because of his haircut, there was little reason to notice him.
Despite the low standards of the rest of the game, Chelsea started well. They won a corner within the first two minutes when the ball bounced off a totemic Totey, who was duly saved by Rhys James right in front of the first man. Even though Chelsea eventually got eight corners, the level didn’t improve.
The first serious chance came just four minutes before Nunez, when Mario Lemina’s cross was deflected exactly past the tenth corner of the game. The next odds weren’t much better.
The second half was similar to the first, with the return of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang bringing change in the 67th minute, but little sign of the famous response to Chelsea’s goal problems. The ex-Arsenal striker fired a late shot on goal that was duly blocked by Craig Dawson and missed easily.
It was a game of little excitement and even less quality, apart from the Nunes attack and the Twitter jokes about Lampard. While the fans who traveled with them cheered their “Super Frank”, the caretaker-boss remained motionless with arms crossed for almost the entire 90 minutes. It’s not hard to predict what Chelsea’s perennial striker was thinking.
This victory brought the Wolves to 12e, lagging behind rivals by only one place and eight points. Julen Lopetegui remains confident that he will do what is required of him and keep his team in the Premier League. His team’s midfield, most notably Joao Gomes and Lemina, led the Chelsea trio relentlessly, with even the 34-year-old Costa showing some hints of threat.
Eight hundred and four days after Lampard was first sacked by Chelsea, they had two owners and two managers. They spent £650m and won the Champions League. And somehow, due to the sheer force of chaos and mismanagement, everything remains exactly the same as it was when he left.
Source: I News
I’m Dave Martin, and I’m an experienced journalist working in the news industry. As a part of my work, I write for 24 News Reporters, covering mostly sports-related topics. With more than 5 years of experience as a journalist, I have written numerous articles on various topics to provide accurate information to readers.