Chelsea left Stamford Bridge unbeaten ahead of the September international break after a 2-0 victory over west London neighbours Fulham, but the match offered as many questions as answers for Enzo Maresca.<\/p>\n
Video assistant referee intervention shaped large portions of the contest. Chelsea teenager Joshua King had a well-taken opener ruled out after the VAR instructed referee Rob Jones to review an incident in the build-up. There was lengthy deliberation over Rodrigo Muniz\u2019s perceived foul on Trevoh Chalobah, and a slow-motion replay prompted Jones to describe Muniz\u2019s infringement as “careless” when explaining his decision.<\/p>\n
On the same sequence of decisions, Fulham manager Marco Silva was visibly furious and sought an explanation at half-time. There was also contention around Chelsea\u2019s second goal, with referee Jones seemingly overlooking Jo\u00e3o Pedro\u2019s handball in the build-up to Ryan Sessegnon\u2019s penalised handball, which stopped Chalobah\u2019s cross. The time taken to reach those conclusions and the frequency of interventions left the game feeling strained by the technology.<\/p>\n
Player welfare emerged as another concern after Liam Delap suffered a hamstring problem just 15 minutes into the match. The striker clutched his left hamstring, attempted to walk it off, then sat on the turf before being withdrawn. Chelsea will hope he recovers during the international break, because options up front are limited.<\/p>\n
Tyrique George replaced Delap and was asked to operate as a centre forward. George has been linked with a late move in the window, but Delap\u2019s injury and George\u2019s ability to fill in as a No. 9 suggest Chelsea may keep the Cobham graduate. The club have parted ways with Nicolas Jackson and Christopher Nkunku has joined AC Milan. Given how much they\u2019ve spent since BlueCo got involved, it is notable how thin the striker depth chart looks.<\/p>\n
Jo\u00e3o Pedro grew into the game and finished the first half with a headed goal from Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s corner. He has recorded four goal contributions through three league outings this term and is now one of four players to score at least five goals in their first five Chelsea games. With Delap sidelined and Cole Palmer due back after the break, Pedro is likely to lead the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VAR controversies, a Delap hamstring, and Jo\u00e3o Pedro’s form define Chelsea’s 2-0 win over Fulham. More<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2257,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,713,172],"tags":[597,319,242],"class_list":["post-2258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-fulham","category-epl","tag-christopher-nkunku","tag-cole-palmer","tag-injury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258","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=2258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}