A Closer Look At How Chelsea Faltered At Stoke

After a roller coaster ride of a few games, Chelsea were handed yet another embarrassing defeat this past weekend, this time at the hands of Stoke City. The loss, coupled with a great Liverpool win over West Ham have knocked the Blues out of second place and back into third in the Premier League table. Chelsea started off well, with a great goal from Andre Schurrle in the 9^th minute - in fact, Schurrle had a pretty good performance, scoring both goals for Chelsea, the second in the 53^rd minute.

However, Chelsea’s performance as a whole wasn’t at all good enough to take the 3 points from Stoke that were so desperately needed. It was Peter Crouch who equalised for Stoke in the 42^nd minute, and then Stephen Ireland netted another for them in the 50^th minute.

Then, with Schurrle’s goal shortly after that it seemed fairly certain that Chelsea would at least be able to manage a draw out of this one, finally stepping their game up in the last few moments. Stoke however had other plans.

In the 90^thminute Oussama Assaidid scored just a beauty of a goal that honestly left me with my mouth wide open. It was a beautiful strike, from range, right into the top corner of the net, there was nothing that Chelsea could do. It seemed like before Chelsea could even recover from that goal the whistle was blown and the game was over.

So what can Chelsea do to recover from a match like this? It seems as if one week I’m writing about a fantastic win, and then the next, an embarrassing loss. Blaming Mourinho is definitely not the right thing to do, Chelsea may just need to have a more consistent line up, and it’s definitely time to start looking for another striker in January. 

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