West Ham put in a much improved show on Monday night against Chelsea, but their struggles on the road continued as Eden Hazard’s double helped the Blues pick up a 2-0 win and jump to third in the league table. Let’s take a look at our talking points from the game.

A 10/10 performance from Chelsea’s No.10: Big players often win you games. Eden Hazard was virtually untouchable here, making a mockery of the Hammers defence with a fantastic solo goal for Chelsea’s first, and an accurate finish on 90 minutes for the second. It wasn’t just scoring- some of his passes, to the likes of Gonzalo Higuain and Callum Hudson-Odoi, were simply delicious, and on another day Chelsea might have been 3 or 4-0 up at half time.

If Chelsea didn’t have Hazard here, West Ham might have even managed to come away with a point from Stamford Bridge. Their performance wasn’t too bad, but Hazard was at another level, and even as an opposition supporter, you had to doff your hat to the little Belgian.

Performances like this will only drive up his fee for a potential transfer to Real Madrid in the summer.

West Ham’s tactics: Manuel Pellegrini started this game with a 4-2-3-1 that had Marko Arnautovic on the right wing and Javier Hernandez on his own upfront. Later in the first half, Arnautovic and Felipe Anderson swapped wings, with Pellegrini perhaps concerned at the Brazilian’s reluctance to track back, which resulted in plenty of space being afforded to Azpi and Hudson-Odoi down Chelsea’s right flank.

At half time, Hernandez was withdrawn for Robert Snodgrass and Arnautovic took the Mexican’s place upfront as the Hammers switched to a 4-1-4-1, a formation that saw them being a bigger threat in the second half. Rudiger and Luiz weren’t threatened by Hernandez, but had their hands full tackling Arnautovic after the interval. [Read more…]

West Ham will look to bounce back from what Manuel Pellegrini said was “their worst performance of the season” when they travel to Stamford Bridge to take on Chelsea tonight. It’s the beginning of a busy week for Maurizio Sarri’s Blues- after hosting the Hammers, they have to make the long trip eastwards to Prague to take on Slavia in the Europa League and then return home to take on Liverpool on Sunday.

Given the fixture congestion, Sarri would’ve ideally liked to rotate some first team regulars tonight. But with Arsenal’s slip up against Everton over the weekend, fourth place remains quite possible for the Blues. Chelsea have lost only once at home in the league this season, while West Ham have been very average travellers.

Let’s take a look at what the pundits have predicted for this clash? The Hammers do have a decent record against the Blues in recent years- they’ve lost only one of the last five clashes between the two sides. [Read more…]