Malo Gusto\u2019s first goal for Chelsea ignited a 3-0 victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers at Stamford Bridge on Saturday, a result that moved Chelsea up to second place in the Premier League. Jo\u00e3o Pedro scored his second goal in as many Premier League appearances in the 65th minute and Pedro Neto completed the scoring against his former club in the 73rd minute.<\/p>\n
Chelsea began the day ninth in the table and ended it with only Arsenal above them. Wolves remain at the foot of the division.<\/p>\n
The match was one-sided from the start. Alejandro Garnacho threatened early and Sam Johnstone was required to tip away two efforts from Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez in a first half in which Wolves failed to muster a single shot. A smattering of boos greeted the interval with the score still 0-0, but Chelsea took a deserved lead in the 51st minute when Gusto met Garnacho\u2019s cross at the back post. It was Gusto\u2019s first goal for the club and his first at any level since scoring for Lyon\u2019s B team four years ago in front of 729 spectators. The 40,000 in attendance were soon rewarded with two more goals.<\/p>\n
Pedro\u2019s second-half finish came shortly after Est\u00eav\u00e3o\u2019s low cross following his introduction from the bench. Neto, operating from the right, finished a swift counterattack to seal the win.<\/p>\n
Several Chelsea players drew high marks. Alejandro Garnacho and Pedro Neto were among the standout performers, while Gusto\u2019s goal was the evening\u2019s defining moment. Mois\u00e9s Caicedo was described in the report as \u201carguably the Premier League\u2019s standout midfielder\u201d and Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez pushed forward frequently. Liam Delap worked as a target but adapted into a role that allowed Jo\u00e3o Pedro more freedom to drop deep.<\/p>\n
Wolves showed technical quality in places but suffered from low confidence. Ahead of the match, the visitors\u2019 interim boss James Collins moaned: \u201cIf you listen to everybody out there, it\u2019s like Wolves are down,\u201d the visitors\u2019 interim boss James Collins moaned ahead of the first match in his temporary reign.<\/p>\n
The statistical picture underlined Chelsea\u2019s control: dominant possession, a higher expected goals total and all of the game\u2019s shots on target.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gusto’s first Chelsea goal started a 3-0 win over Wolves and sent Chelsea up to second. A fine night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[227,1140,1237],"class_list":["post-4336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-alejandro-garnacho","tag-caicedo","tag-malo-gusto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4336","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=4336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}