Chelsea\u2019s visit to Brentford ended in a 3-0 defeat that exposed a second-half unraveling and extended a worrying run of results for Xabi Alonso\u2019s side. After an hour of control, the Blues were undone by three late goals in a damaging Friday night setback.<\/p>\n
The match turned just after the hour when Brentford made a set-piece count. Jannik Schuster rose from a corner and headed the ball back into the danger area, where Jaidon Anthony reacted first to nod home the second ball and put the hosts ahead. Chelsea then struggled to build any meaningful response, despite effort in possession and spells of territorial control.<\/p>\n
The decisive blow followed in the 83rd minute. Kevin Schade broke through on goal, Emiliano Mart\u00ednez produced a strong save, but Igor Thiago was on hand to finish the rebound and make it 2-0. Brentford added a third in stoppage time, when F\u00e1bio Carvalho arrived at the back post to tap in and complete Chelsea\u2019s collapse.<\/p>\n
It was another reminder of Chelsea\u2019s problems defending dead-ball situations. This was the fifth time this season they have conceded from a set-piece, and the pattern has become hard to ignore. Four markers were not enough to stop Schuster winning the initial duel, while three Chelsea players were caught ball watching as Anthony scored. That sequence arrived after Alonso had already labelled the team\u2019s defending \u201csoft\u201d following the 2-2 draw against Hull City.<\/p>\n
The result leaves Chelsea with only one point from their last three Premier League games and heading into the international break with an injury-hit squad. There is now an obvious demand for improvement once the season resumes, particularly after another defeat in which their defensive structure deteriorated under pressure.<\/p>\n
Chelsea also failed to end a long run without a win at this ground, as Brentford once again found a familiar route to punish them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea were beaten 3-0 at Brentford after a late collapse and another costly set-piece setback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19776,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[728,190],"tags":[1836,1162,180],"class_list":["post-19777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brentford","category-chelsea","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-analytics","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}