Champions Manchester City started their new premier league campaign in style as they defeated Chelsea 2-0 at the Stamford Bridge in a sunny afternoon on Sunday.
Chelsea started a new era under Enzo Maresca who was appointed the head coach in last June after the sudden sacking of Mauricio Pochettino. The Italian who was hijacked from Leicester City to manage the West London club picked up a relatively young starting line-up including players like Levi Colwill in defence and Romeo Lavia in central midfield.
On the other hand, his counterpart Pep Guardiola fielded a fairly more experienced side, though key players like Kyle Walker, Jack Grealish and Rodri were missing. Newly recruited Brazilian winger Savinho started in the left wing while Belgian Jeremy Doku was operating from the right.
With both the sides making a positive start, the visitors led the attacks more often as expected. However, Chelsea’a Spanish left back Marc Cucurella was continuously disappointing Doku in the right flank with some resolute defending.
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Observing the said issue, Guardiola switched his wingers after quarter of an hour of play and the impact was almost instantaneous. In the 18th minute, after cutting inside from the left, Doku fed the ball to the edge of the penalty area towards Erling Haaland who shrugged off the challenges from Colwill and Cucurella before expertly slotting home the ball past goalkeeper Sanchez. It was the lanky Norwegian’s 91st goal for the ‘Cityzens’ in 100 appearances. For the rest of the first half, Chelsea enjoyed good possession but apart from a disallowed Nicolas Jackson goal due to offside, couldn’t find the back of the net.
Phil Foden was introduced after the restart as debutant Savinho picked up an injury during the closing stages of the first half. The home side also made more than one changes around the hour mark to turn things around but the complexion of the game didn’t change much despite their repeated penetration. Then in the 84th minute, Manchester City ensured full points when midfielder Mateo Kovacic produced a wonderful long range effort from 25 yards, controlling the ball on his chest after gliding past Caicedo and Fernandez. The Croatian who used to play for Chelsea earlier sealed the fate of his former employers with the sublime strike.
As far as the other matches of the first weekend is concerned, there were no such unexpected results as all the so called big clubs like Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool started their campaign with victories.
