Any momentum Chelsea had picked up in the final week of November, through outclassing Barcelona and matching Arsenal with 10 men, appears to have been stunted in December. After Wednesday’s defeat at Leeds, a point against Bournemouth is no disaster but, with Arsenal’s earlier loss to Aston Villa, it is a chance missed. Eight points separate Enzo Maresca’s side and the top of the Premier League.
At full time, Maresca was not ready to throw in the towel. “My message after Arsenal was that, if in February/March we are where we were, we are in a title race,” he said. “But the table is so tight. I’m still thinking that the four, five, six teams that are at the top are going to be all close.” The last time Chelsea failed to score in a league game was on the opening weekend against Crystal Palace, their run of 13 matches scoring the longest of any team this season. Cole Palmer, making his first league start since that goalless draw in August, exerted little influence and was replaced by João Pedro after an hour.
It was an injury to Liam Delap, who went off before half-time using his shirt as a makeshift sling after falling on his shoulder at a defensive corner, that concerned Maresca the most. The summer signing from Ipswich has already missed two months of this season with a hamstring injury.
“It looks quite bad, his shoulder,” Maresca said. “He has been unlucky. Also, we are a bit unlucky because we need that kind of No 9.” Delap’s replacement, Marc Guiu, received very little service. Alejandro Garnacho’s second-half header against a post was the closest Chelsea came to breaking the deadlock.
Andoni Iraola took a leaf out of Leeds’s book and Bournemouth hounded Chelsea from the start. The visitors, behind within six minutes at Elland Road, were let off the hook twice early on. Antoine Semenyo thought he had given Bournemouth the lead when he pounced on a loose ball inside the area, only for the VAR to intervene because Evanilson was marginally offside from Alex Scott’s incisive pass into the box. After six goals in his first seven games this season, Semenyo has now not found the net in seven.
The offside flag spared Reece James’s blushes moments later. Marcus Tavernier found space on the edge of the Chelsea box and hit a shot that Robert Sánchez patted down in front of him. Justin Kluivert beat James to the ball and went down, but the Dutchman’s appeals for a penalty that surely would have been given were cut short by the assistant’s flag.
A moment of quality from Palmer set up Chelsea’s most dangerous move of the half, with Marc Cucurella heading Pedro Neto’s cross over at the back post. After Delap went off, Bournemouth rallied again before the break. Semenyo tested Sánchez and Evanilson could not toe in the rebound at the back post.
Chelsea were more of an attacking force after the restart. Enzo Fernández, Neto and Palmer all had efforts saved by Djordje Petrovic, who left Stamford Bridge last summer, while Garnacho was unlucky to see his header from Neto’s cross go behind off a post.
Bournemouth’s combination of two right-backs, Adam Smith and Álex Jiménez, had done a decent job of nullifying Chelsea’s threat down the left. The one time Jiménez was caught upfield in the second half, Garnacho shimmied inside and bent a shot that landed just wide of the far post.
It was Semenyo who remained Bournemouth’s goal threat. In this fixture at Stamford Bridge last season, he lashed his side into a second-half lead by beating Sánchez at his near post. He tried a similar approach with 10 minutes to go here, thumping a left-foot shot that, this time, Sánchez was able to bat away.
“I think we had better chances than Chelsea,” said Iraola, whose team have dropped into the bottom half after six winless games. “We’ve had, at the beginning of the season, games where we’ve played worse and you manage to get a goal, one set piece, you win 1-0. Now everything is costing us, but I think we can build on this performance.”
