Chelsea v Brentford | Premier League | Match Highlights

As the definitive bogey team for Chelsea over the last three seasons, Brentford could have been taken by this team as a massive challenge. But week after week this team looks to grow much more confident, more consistent and way more solid than the iterations that crumbled under the slightest of pressures given by the Bees.

It’s perhaps one of the little secrets behind this ongoing resurgence. The team is always looking up and looking forward. It explains how Moisés Caicedo finds so many great long passes, even though he’s supposed to be the more defensive-minded player when next to Enzo Fernández in the pivot.

Looking up and looking forward also helps us keep the ball for large swathes of the game, and give little chance for Brentford even when Bryan Mbeumo and co. appeared near our box to try one of his usual tricks against us. In a couple of those occasions Robert Sánchez actually did well as a sweeper-keeper, having little to no fear of clearing the ball out of our half.

We were doing everything we could to find that one golden chance to score and we got very close on several occasions. Until Noni Madueke hit a good cross to Marc Cucurella in the small box, and the Spaniard’s brilliant header gave us the lead just before the end of the first half.

Chelsea continued to dominate in the first minutes second half, although with not as much impetus as in the first one. There were still some very good chances for us to expand the lead, but things such as Nicolas Jackson totally failing to calibrate his shots didn’t help our case.

However, Thomas Frank’s substitutions started to make a difference. Chelsea started to regret not taking their earlier chances, especially after Fábio Carvalho almost got the tying goal less than a minute from entering the pitch.

And then Jackson happened. He who had been absolutely frustrating throughout the night, finally got his goal to double our lead.

As is basically tradition at this point, Chelsea still allowed Mbeumo a late goal just so the Bees had some proper hope at frustrating our plans of taking all points today. But the Blues held strong, and we finally got the job done against the Bees.