Chelsea thrash out three points at home, giving Antonio Conte a winning start.
It was billed as a match with huge attacking potential, but ended up one that took its spectators through the grinder. Chelsea set up with a hugely defensive system, with two defensive midfielders, and yet had huge swathes of possession. It was possession they didn’t always find easy and breezy, as West Ham too set up with a defend-first mentality.
It took a second half penalty, offered in appalling fashion by Michail Antonio, to give Chelsea the lead. West Ham equalised via, of all people, James Collins, but Chelsea and Conte had the last euphoric roar, as Diego Costa wrestled back maximum points in the 89th minute.
When you win your first #PL match in charge… #CHEWHU pic.twitter.com/5S03nMLD5n
— Premier League (@premierleague) August 15, 2016
Conte’s formation
Chelsea possess the two outstanding defensive midfielders of the last two seasons; Nemanja Matic and N’Golo Kante. Conte’s job this season – a task among many – is to decide whether he needs both of them, and more specifically; whether he needs them both on the pitch.
He started both players, in what was nominally called a 4-1-4-1 formation, with Kante the deepest of the two, but in effect appeared to be more of a 4-2-4, with both players shuttling and roving in largely the same areas of the pitch. With Oscar dipping in and collecting the ball from the defenders, there was plenty of man-power in Chelsea’s deep midfield, and they erected a rampart that made it nearly impossible for West Ham to find a way through.
It did mean, however, that almost all of the creativity was lumped onto Eden Hazard; without Cesc Fabregas, there was almost no attacking invention emerging from deeper areas, and with West Ham forced to retreat as a unit, it would have helped to have a puppeteer of Fabregas’s quality surveying the scene from afar.
It took a superb Diego Costa finish, spanked low and hard into the corner a few minutes from time, to earn the full share of points. But even the winner didn’t look – pre-shot – like a clear chance, and Chelsea will certainly hope to attack more fluently in future, perhaps with Fabregas on the pitch.
.@oscar8's pic from inside the Chelsea dressing room! 👊 pic.twitter.com/ENEZFdKEti
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) August 15, 2016
West Ham start an under-strength XI
A mixture of injuries and extended rest breaks meant that three key members of West Ham’s starting XI were not on the pitch when the kick-off occurred. Manuel Lanzini and Aaron Cresswell are both nursing injuries – Cresswell’s a serious knee knock – and Dimitri Payet was still enjoying a quasi-holiday schedule, so all were absent from the line-up. Payet came on with 20 minutes remaining, but West Ham had been the subservient team for the majority of the contest by then.
These three players are central to West Ham’s attacking fluency, with Cresswell’s overlapping runs a prominent feature of last season, and the Lanzini/Payet combination one of the best in the league. Their absences do not justify West Ham’s poor performance, but an assessment of the Hammers’ chances this season can’t really be made until all three are back in the starting line-up.
He starts from the bench, but could @dimpayet17 play a starring role for West Ham later on? #CHEWHU pic.twitter.com/XGOGwCqdBh
— Premier League (@premierleague) August 15, 2016
Antonio-as-right-back still seems unwise
Michail Antonio is an excellent player, last year’s club runner-up for Player of the Season. He dribbles with irresistible energy, a pumping dynamo of upper-body strength and youthful exuberance. But these qualities are that of a flying winger, not, it still seems, a full back.
Slaven Bilic started the Englishman once again as a right-back, and when Antonio decided, early in the second half, to dribble out of his box, he was acting in fully-fledged winger-mode. He was dispossessed, and as he attempted to make up for his mistake, he only compounded it by giving away a penalty. It was a comedy of errors, almost the exemplar for what one imagines is likely to happen when an attacking midfielder is asked to play a defensive role.
He was substituted a few minutes following Eden Hazard’s successful spot-kick conversion, punished for a crime he was purpose-built to commit. Anyone who has watched West Ham over the past six months will know this is not the first time Bilic’s pet project has backfired.
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