Wednesday 19th October 2022: Gtech Community Stadium: Premier League: Brentford vs Chelsea
Welcome back to my blog after a few weeks break whilst I sorted out many other areas of my life. As you will see from the photo above, for this blog I was back in London to watch my beloved Bees. Their opponents for this one were a Chelsea team adjusting to life under their new coach, Graham Potter, whose old team (Brighton) Brentford has beaten 2-0 just 5 days earlier thanks to a brace from Ivan Toney.
Having dealt so handily with his old team, and with the unbridled joy that returning to London sends flowing through my soul, I was confident of a positive result from this one. My excellent mood and overflowing confidence were fed further by the fact that my pre-match playlist, for the unexpected walk down from South Ealing, consisted of many fast-paced ‘loving London’ tunes which culminated in ‘London Calling by the Clash’ as I turned into the road up to the stadium.
After taking my seat; pizza, drink and programme in hand, I decided to peruse the team sheets for the match and it appeared that Potter had just as much faith in his team as I had in mine. He felt confident enough to leave the trio of Thiago Silva, Raheem Sterling and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang on the bench for the kick-off. Whether this risk would pay off for him, we will find out shortly.
The Bees staring 11 was not without its holes either as Pontus Jansson, the Bee’s captain, was nowhere to be found either in it or in the matchday squad as a whole. This omission mystified me at the time, but further research shows that I missed the news of him picking up a hamstring injury weeks before this match, against Bournemouth. An injury that has seen him also miss many other matches, including away days at both Newcastle and Nottingham Forest that train strikes prevented me from attending. In Jansson’s place Zanka took the free spot in central defence, though he plays so rarely I thought he would be in midfield when I saw his name on the team sheet.
Getting back to the match for this blog and my only worry for the match was how our depleted defence would hold up against the late appearance of Aubameyang into the fray.
That worry dissipated from my mind quickly as the match got underway though and the hosts were immediately on the front foot. Rico Henry exploded down the right wing and skinned his marker with consummate ease. It looked like the hosts would have a quick-fire opener but the cross into the centre was hacked clear by Marc Cucurella and Chelsea kept the score at 0-0.
The warning shot had now been fired and Rico would be a thorn in the visitor’s side all match as he tormented his opposite number, Ruben Loftus-Cheek. His was not to be the ‘Man of the Match’ performance though as that is invariably awarded to the who either wins the match for their team or prevents their team losing it. As Brentford pushed forward through both Rico and Byran Mbuemo on their respective wings, Toney was given ample chances to tuck the ball away, slam it home or bullet a header into the net to open up the host’s account for the match in the first 15 minutes.
He was prevented from taking these chances by the man who would save him team on countless occasions across the 90 minutes, Kepa Arrizabalaga. I don’t know what was inspiring the Chelsea keeper in this one, but throughout the match he showed the leap of a dolphin and the reflexes of a fly to pop up and prevent the ball from nestling in the back of the net on so many occasions I lost count. A fingertip save to knock a point-blank header over the top, from Toney, rushing out of his goal to claim every cross or long ball into the area (whether floated, driven or chipped) and flinging himself every which way to stop the ball in its tracks when it looked destined to nestle in the net; it was a true virtuoso performance from Kepa and not a bad way to impress your new manager either.
He was robbed of an opportunity to further etch his name into Chelsea folklore in the 12th minute however, when Brentford were denied a stonewall penalty after Loftus-Cheek shoved Mathias Jensen to the ground as he burst into the area. Loftus-Cheek needn’t have bothered risking such a blatant foul though as Kepa was in such unbeatable form that he would doubtless have saved whatever shot Bee’s had been able to muster. To say that I was apoplectic that this incident wasn’t even checked by VAR is to understate the strength of my feelings immensely.
Brentford had such command of the ball and were destroying Chelsea so completely in the first 25 minutes that the visitors were forced to resort to professional fouls and cynical time-wasting to gain any respite from the onslaught. They even time-wasted ad infinitum when Conor Gallagher was forced off due to injury in the 16th minute. He went down near the far touchline but was allowed to amble across the whole width of the pitch, including stopping 5 yards from exiting the field of play to tie his shoelaces, before finally being replaced by Mateo Kovacic a full 2 minutes after the board announcing his substitution was displayed.
In the face of such tactics from their opposition it was a huge credit to Bees that they kept the torrent of chances coming. The majority of these chances fell to the feet of Toney, confidence flowing through his veins after his gorgeous backheel against Brighton, but he was decisively losing his duel with Chelsea’s Kepa. So decisively in-fact that, despite being ripped to pieces all over the pitch Chelsea were able to limp to half time level with their hosts, at 0-0.
My hopes for the second half were to see Canos, Dasilva, Wissa and Damsgaard released from the bench to break through Kepa’s brick wall and win all 3 points for Brentford. None of them were introduced at half-time though, as both managers kept their powder dry for the time being. This would prove to be a smarter call by Thomas Frank, than by Potter, as Brentford surged forth once more to lay yet another siege to the Chelsea goal in a futile attempt to find a way past Kepa.
Within the first 5 minutes of the second half Toney should have had a brace, but both times Kepa appeared out of thin air to maintain his miraculous clean sheet. First a ball was chipped up by Roerslev on the right for Toney to meet with a powerful header at the back post, but Kepa got down quickly to smother the ball. Then moments later Ivan was through in the centre, but when he was found by Mbuemo, Kepa leaped like a salmon to once again fingertip it over the bar. Glorious though this goalkeeping display was it was also insanely frustrating to watch my team denied goal after goal. Brentford would have been 5 or 6-0 up by the hour mark against any other keeper, but Kepa was single-handedly keeping the score at 0-0 in this match.
Brentford’s total dominance of this match was illustrated by the fact that by the time Chelsea made their 2nd, 3rd and 4th subs of the match (in minute 62), Brentford had only made one. Just 2 minutes before Chelsea replaced Armando Broja, Mason Mount and Marc Cucurella with Carney Chukwuemeka, Raheem Sterling and Christian Pulisic, Bees had replaced Frank Onyeka with Shandon Baptiste. It would take till the added 4 minutes at the end of the match for Brentford to complete their 4th substitution, Samman Ghoddos on for Vitaly Yanelt, whilst Chelsea would complete their quota of 5 by sending on Aubameyang for Kai Havertz with 10 minutes of the match still to play.
The amount of Bees shots that should have been transformed into goals by the time Ghoddos came on that Kepa had crushed and rejected was incredible, but all I cared out by that point was that we use the 4 minutes of injury time to grab the full 3 points that our performance deserved. By this point both Josh Dasilva and Yoanne Wissa had been on the pitch for 17 minutes, having been introduced in place of Mbuemo and Mathias Jensen, but even with this added offensive firepower there was just no way past Kepa. The rest of the Chelsea team had long since abandoned their posts, but Kepa stood firm at his and refused to be beaten.
Kepa kept the score at 0-0 all the way through to the ref’s final whistle and helped Chelsea make off with a stolen point the rest of their play had done nothing to deserve. The way Brentford commanded possession and created chance after chance provided some form of silver lining to what was otherwise a frustrating match. For vast swathes of the match their only looked like being one winner, but thanks to Kepa there was none. I walked away infuriated at the Bees lack of sting in the final third but also buzzing about our chances of finding it as we went on the road to a managerless Aston Villa team in a few days’ time.
Join me for my next blog as I journey to Villa Park to see how that game went…
The Football tourist 