London: An imperious Romelu Lukaku led Chelsea to an overwhelming 2-0 win over Arsenal in a London derby which showed that Chelsea may well be regarded as favourites to challenge for the league title. Their £97.5million signing from Inter Milan, Lukaku, was voted man-of-the-match, with his side in dominant form throughout the match.
Chelsea manager, Thomas Tuchel, praised Lukaku: “Nobody likes to play against him. Everybody is aware of his physicality, but there is also his link-up play. I’m very happy with the way he’s integrated already, he’s a smart guy. He likes to be in the group, he’s a democratic leader, he talks to everybody, very friendly, very humble and competitive.”
Tuchel added: “He gives something to our game we didn’t have so much last season. To protect balls, to play direct into the last line and you can’t start better than with a goal. I didn’t expect too much, I wanted to see his strengths and capability to adapt and to link up between Kai Havertz and Mason Mount and he did very good.”
Arsenal were totally outplayed in the first half They were too easy to pass through and around with incredible ease. Within 15 minutes they conceded the first goal. Mateo Kovasic played a fine pass to Reece James on the right whose cross was tapped in by the lurking Lukaku with Pablo Mari beaten and Bernd Leno missing the ball. It was his first goal for Chelsea in his ‘second coming’ having made his debut for the club nearly a decade ago and leaving without a goal to his name.
After a further 20 minutes of Chelsea’s domination, came the second goal. Marcos Alonso combined with Havertz on the left to start the move before Mount put the ball to James who seemed to play with freedom on the right and the wing-back brilliantly slammed the ball into the roof of the net.
Lukaku could have had a third goal for his side but was unlucky to see his powerful header tipped against the bar in an excellent save by Leno in the 78th minute. Earlier in the second half, with Arsenal showing improvement, Edouard Mendy tipped over the bar a fine shot by Bukayo Saka. The Arsenal man also had a penalty claim turned down by the referee and VAR in the first half after he was tackled by James.
Mikel Arteta, the Arsenal manager, who faced criticism from unhappy fans after defeats in the opening two matches, with several players missing with injuries and Covid, said: “We cannot control (the criticism), we try to explain what we are facing but the expectation for this club to win every single match and when that doesn’t happen, we have to accept the criticism.”
He added: “The worst thing you can do is throw in the towel, we are not going to do that. Hopefully things will get better the moment the players are back. We’ll see a different squad and level and different results.”
