Todd Boehly’s education in English football continues apace. Amid the things he learned at Stamford Bridge on Saturday afternoon was that £62m might be a lot of money in US sport but in the Premier League, it doesn’t buy you a full-back who can take a corner that clears the first defender. Marc Cucurella had several attempts at it in the first half and when he finally managed it, he was met with ironic cheers from the Shed End.
The new Chelsea owner and transfer guru also learned that everything people had been saying about how the new £62m left back might not be as good as the left back already at the club was true. Ben Chilwell, who had been banished to the bench, replaced Cucurella with 18 minutes to go and promptly scored an equaliser and set up the winner in Chelsea’s sketchy 2-1 win.
Until then Boehly must have been suffering a spectacular bout of buyer’s remorse as he watched a team featuring the majority of the £231.1m he had spent in the summer window heading for an embarrassing defeat to West Ham. Their scrambled victory, courtesy of Kai Havertz’s 88th minute strike, may have eased his embarrassment. But only a little bit.
Chelsea scarcely deserved their third victory in their opening six games and would not have got it save for a controversial added time decision by referee Andrew Madley to rule what would have been an equaliser by Maxwel Cornet. Madley decided, rather generously, that Chelsea keeper Edouard Mendy had been fouled in the build-up to the goal and ruled it out.
West Ham boss David Moyes, who has now failed to win a league fixture at Chelsea in 18 attempts, was predictably less than delighted and remonstrated with Madley at the final whistle. His team, who had taken the lead through Michail Antonio, deserved more from this match.
Even in football’s age of excess, Chelsea’s transfer spending in the summer window that has just closed set new standards for extravagance. Boehly, took control of the club’s business in the wake of the departure of Marina Granovskaia and the level of his spending felt like an effort to persuade Chelsea’s fans of the ambitions and intent of the new regime.
Not everyone has been impressed. Ahead of the game, former Liverpool and Rangers manager Graeme Souness had become the latest figure in the sport to cast doubt on the wisdom of Boehly’s transfer approach.
‘He is the latest in a long line of wealthy individuals to come into football thinking the game is easy,’ Souness wrote in his Daily Mail column yesterday. ‘So maybe he’ll prove the utter folly of thinking he can understand it. Go and get Alex Ferguson out of retirement, send him to manage LA Dodgers and ask him to put a valuation on baseball stars playing at other clubs, with a view to deciding which ones he might buy. It would be impossible.’
Eyebrows were raised, in particular, when Chelsea paid £62m to Brighton for Cucurella and suspicions that other clubs were taking advantage of Boehly’s naivety were not allayed by Brighton chief executive Paul Barber, who is one of the most shrewd and successful of Premier League transfer negotiators, praising Boehly’s negotiating skills.
Much of the first half had been desperately pounderous. West Ham packed men behind the ball and Chelsea showed precious little sign of being able to break them down. Cucurella floated over a few of those corners, Christian Pulisic mishit a shot that was deflected wide and Mateo Kovacic’s snatched effort sent Lukasz Fabianski scurrying across his goal in false alarm.
Sterling did at least try to run at the visitors’ defence but he had to come deeper and deeper to get the ball. Chelsea started to quicken the pace as the interval approached but they were grateful when a dipping volley from Pablo Fornals flew wide. The closest the game came to gripping goalmouth action in the first 45 minutes was when Tomas Soucek and Ruben Loftus-Cheek clashed heads in the final few seconds. They were allowed to play on after treatment.
Reece James and Michail Antonio were both booked soon after the interval after Antonio fouled James and James kicked out at him as he lay on the ground. On another day, James might have been sent off. A few minutes later, Antonio wrestled Silva to the ground as they chased a loose ball. On another day, Antonio might have been shown a second yellow.
It took an hour for the game to explode into life. Mendy punched a corner from Fornals clear but Jarrod Bowen met it sweetly on the volley 25 yards out and it took a fine flying save from the Chelsea goalkeeper to keep the scores level.
It was only a brief reprieve. When the resulting corner was nodded on in the box and looped into the air, Mendy could only punch the ball weakly to the feet of Declan Rice. Rice turned the ball back into the six-yard box where Antonio got to it first and prodded it over the line.
Both managers rang the changes. Cucurella was among them. He was replaced by Chilwell and 15 minutes later, Chilwell proved just why so many people had been scratching their heads about Chelsea spending so much money on someone to replace him.
Chilwell leapt for a hopeful punt forward by Silva and not only won it but was first to it when it fell. Fabianski rushed out to try to smother the danger but Chilwell tapped it through his legs and it rolled slowly across the line. It was a dreadful goal for West Ham to concede but something of a personal triumph for its scorer.
Two minutes from time, though, West Ham thought for a split second of ecstasy that they had won the match. Substitute Said Benrahma got free down the left and crossed to the back post where fellow replacement Maxwel Cornet was waiting unmarked. Cornet tried to direct the ball into the empty net but his header cannoned back off the post.
Now the match made up for all its acres of inactivity. Chelsea took the ball down to the other end and worked a short corner to Chilwell. Chilwell curled in a cross to the near post where Kai Havertz met it first and slotted it past Fabianski to put Chelsea ahead.
It seemed the game was over but Chelsea contrived to give the visitors a way back into it as the game went into added time. James attempted to head the ball back to Mendy but, challenged by Bowen, Mendy could only push the ball out to Cornet. Cornet stepped to his right and rifled the ball into the roof of the net.
The West Ham bench leapt into the air as one but Mendy was rolling on the ground in pain and VAR checked whether he had been fouled by Bowen in the build up to the goal. It seemed clear that Mendy would not have been able to recover the ball, foul or not, but referee Andrew Madley checked the monitor and decided that was irrelevant and that Mendy had been fouled and the goal should not stand. The decision was met with disbelief by Moyes and his team.
In the final stages, Havertz was shown a yellow card for trying to get Vladimir Coufal sent off. When the final whistle went, Moyes marched over to remonstrate with Madley and on the Chelsea bench, one of Tuchel’s assistants wiped a bead of imaginary sweat from his brow.
