Swansea City suffered their worst home defeat in 24 years as title hopefuls Chelsea were rampant in their 5-0 demolition of Garry Monk’s side at the Liberty Stadium.
Some fans had barely settled in their seats before Oscar fired in from outside the box after a poor pass from Sigurdsson that came off Carroll and nicely into the Brazilian’s path.
Swansea were struggling in midfield before the game started as Britton was added to the list of unavailable midfielders. Monk was forced to drop Sigurdsson back along side Carroll, while loanee striker Oliveira played being Gomis.
The lack of ball winners in a very makeshift midfield showed, and against a talented outfit such as Chelsea, the Swans were punished all too often for a catalogue of errors in what was accurately described as a ‘horrible first half performance’ by Garry Monk.
The hosts looked to recover from the early goal but after a brief spell of promising possession that saw Sigurdsson’s long range effort brush the corner of the woodwork, Chelsea went up the other end and almost doubled their lead.
From that point, before the 10 minute mark, Chelsea took complete control and forced Swansea to make basic and embarrassing errors that allowed the Blues to easily add to their tally.
That strike from Sigurdsson, who was looking to redeem himself after his early costly error, was the only brief moment when the Swans looked like threatening Chelsea’s clean sheet in the entire 90 minutes.
But it wasn’t just errors at the back, Chelsea’s attacking and passing play at times was breathtaking. At one point, they had a 3-minute spell of possession that ended with the unmarked Costa easily collecting Fabregas’ pass inside the box before finding the net.
14 minutes later, Costa scored his second of the game and his fifth against Swansea City this season. Chelsea effectively closed Swansea down as they always looked to pass out from the back. Similar to the first goal, Chelsea’s pressure and closing off of the passing angles forced another costly mistake. Fernandez was forced to pass back to his goalkeeper, but Costa read the situation brilliantly, making a move forward towards the goalkeeper and picking up the loose ball before finding the net again to add to Swansea’s misery.
In between the goals, Chelsea still had chance after chance. Eden Hazard had a relatively quiet day by his standards, as you`d have thought him scoring on a day like this would have been certain. He dragged a low shot just wide of the far post, while Willian somehow missed a host of chances himself, hitting the woodwork twice and blazing over another inside the box.
3-0 was soon 4-0 before half time thanks to another scintillating attacking move from the likely champions. Chelsea`s width thanks to the added support from the full backs caused problems for a narrow Swansea side that lacked the wide defensive help from Routledge (Emnes) and Dyer. Chelsea worked the ball down the right, before a squared pass picked out Oscar in space to curl home his second of the game.
It might have been 4-0 after just 36 minutes, but it was disappointing to see quite a few fans leave for the exits. Some had simply headed down for a much needed pint to recover from the horror show that they just witnessed, but leaving to witness no more is disgraceful.
The second half couldn`t be no worse than the first half and luckily we only got to see one more goal as Chelsea took almost 25 minutes after the break to add to their goal tally that they added to with ease earlier on.
Oliveira surprisingly lasted until the 66th minute before being taken off for a much needed defensive midfielder – Jay Fulton. He may be young and very inexperienced, but he was still a better option in there to keep to a deep midfield position to add much needed protection for the defence.
The Swans had finally a bit more shape to them in the second half, with greater discipline and much better defensive support out on the flanks.
There`s little point in continuing to pick out the errors of Swansea`s play and the sheer quality of Chelsea`s. It was bad enough having to witness it – let alone write in detail about how it all happened.
Simply put, Swansea looked like a side who were in total awe of their opponents. They gave them far too much respect, not to mention the amount of time they had on the ball to work their magic.
The game was rounded off with Schurlle adding a fifth – finishing off an excellent team goal that saw at least Chelsea players in behind the Swansea defence inside the box as Ivanovic`s cut back cross came in. The German international was at the front of the queue to tap in from a yard out and fortunately for us – that was it.
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