Chelsea are now only five wins away from the Premier League title, after comfortably overcoming an attack-minded Bournemouth team 3-1 at the Vitality Stadium.
Chelsea dominated proceedings, and Victor Moses was finding increasing amounts of space on his return to the starting line-up. So it was no surprise when Moses pulled the ball back to Diego Costa, who spun his marker before slicing an effort that deflected off Adam Smith to give Chelsea a dubious lead. But there were no arguments about Chelsea’s second goal scorer, as a superb raking through ball from N’Golo Kante found Eden Hazard in behind the Bournemouth backline, who calmly took the ball round Artur Boruc and finished into an empty net.
Despite Chelsea’s apparent air of superiority, the Blues lead was halved on the brink of half-time, when Josh King’s effort took a big deflection off David Luiz to fly past Thibaut Courtois. Although Chelsea could still feel lucky to have gone in leading at the break, with Benik Afobe having earlier hit the post with a fantastic volley.
The second-half consisted mainly of Bournemouth’s high press attempting to find a way through Chelsea’s rigid defensive structure. Ryan Fraser did drag a shot just wide of the goal, but other than that the league leaders defence stood strong, and the game was then all but over when Marcos Alonso curled a stupendous free-kick into the top corner of the net to put Chelsea 3-1 up.
Chelsea have now reestablished their seven-point lead at the top of the table after Tottenham had earlier beaten Watford 4-0 in Saturday’s lunchtime kick-off.
