Chelsea crush Arsenal at Stamford Bridge

Chelsea moved 12 points clear at the top of the Premier League table with a dominating and hugely impressive 3-1 victory over Arsenal at Stamford Bridge.

A Marcos Alonso header before the break gave the Blues the early edge, before a stunning solo effort from Eden Hazard and a lob from Cesc Fabregas guaranteed the points.

The Gunners pulled one back through Olivier Giroud late on, but it merely added a sheen to the scoreline that didn’t truly reflect the dominance of Antonio Conte’s Chelsea.

It took the league leaders just 13 minutes to break the deadlock. A ball in from the right from Pedro was met in the box by Diego Costa, who crashed his powerful header against the bar, with the rebound hanging in the air for left winger Alonso to beat Hector Bellerin to it to head home for the opener, with Theo Walcott found guilty of allowing the Chelsea man to roam free into the area for the strike.

The Gunners were failing to find any rhythm of their own with Chelsea probing down the flanks at will. Hazard looked away down the left flank with Shkodran Mustafi forced into hacking the Belgian down and taking a booking in the process.

It was all Chelsea as the game ticked towards half-time with with both Costa and Pedro going close, with Arsenal reduced to rare forays forward. Their best chance coming from Gabriel when meeting a chip to the back post from Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, with Thibaut Courois making a stunning one-handed punch save to keep the scores level. The visitors continued to edge their way back into the tie as the game advanced, with Mesut Ozil forcing Courtois into another save with the keeper getting down low to his left to save and hold a stinging drive.

Chelsea, spurred on by the Gunners minor resurgence before half-time, pressed hard after the break in search of a second to secure a two-goal cushion; N’Golo Kante in particular a driving force as they attmepted to go for the jugular as he fed Hazard in on goal with Cech doing superbly well to parry away a point-blank effort.

Moments later the second goal did come and it was a one-man wonder show from Hazard. The diminutive Belgian picked up the ball on halfway, before proceedijng to waltz past Laurent Koscielny, Francis Coquelin, Koscielny again, and then Mustafi, before clipping home past Cech to the left corner. A moment of individiual brilliance from a footballing magician.

Arsenal needed a change of direction in an effort to ignite themselves and secure a goal that would draw them back into the tie. With that in mind, Wenger introduced Danny Welbeck for Walcott with just over 20 to go, with the former Man United striker slotting in on the left of the Gunners’ attack. In fact, Arsenal had plenty of the ball in that second period at that juncture, with 60% possession, but couldn’t find the guile in the final third to unlock the miserly Blues back line.

And Welbeck’s introduction almost made the difference as he directed an header from the edge of the area towards the bottom-left corner, only for Courtois to once more get down to push the effort away from danger.

The Gunners had a further chance from the resulting corner as Mustafi found himself unmarked in the box only to wastefully direct his header wide of the mark.

Any hope of a comback was finally extinguished with five minutes of normal time remaining. Former Blues keeper Cech played a woeful ball out from his defence straight to a waiting Fabregas, who steadied himself before directing a looping lob over the keeper and into nets for a game-killing third.

Photo: Getty/Clive Rose

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