{"id":19064,"date":"2025-09-14T00:04:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T00:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=19064"},"modified":"2025-09-14T00:04:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T00:04:06","slug":"chelsea-blow-chance-to-top-premier-league-at-brentford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=19064","title":{"rendered":"Chelsea blow chance to top Premier League at Brentford"},"content":{"rendered":"
Chelsea missed the chance to go top of the Premier League as Fabio Carvalho’s 93rd minute equaliser salvaged a 2-2 draw for Brentford in Saturday’s west London derby.<\/p>\n

The world champions paid for Enzo Maresca’s experimental team selection as Kevin Schade fired Brentford into a first-half lead.<\/p>\n

Substitute Cole Palmer led the Chelsea revival on his return from injury to equalise before Moises Caicedo’s thunderous strike looked to have snatched all three points for the Blues.<\/p>\n

But Brentford’s persistent threat from long throw-ins got its reward at the death when Carvalho was left unmarked to tap in from close range.<\/p>\n

Chelsea remain unbeaten this season but sit only fifth, one point behind the leading quartet of Arsenal, Tottenham, Bournemouth and Liverpool.<\/p>\n

Maresca will wonder what might have been had he not seemingly had one eye on Wednesday’s Champions League trip to Bayern Munich.<\/p>\n

Jorrel Hato struggled on his full Premier League debut, while Wesley Fofana only lasted 45 minutes on his first start of the season.<\/p>\n

Facundo Buonanotte and Jamie Gittens were unimpressive in attacking areas as Chelsea were made to pay for wasting 45 minutes.<\/p>\n

“I think we were much, much better (in the second half),” said Maresca. “I think we deserve to win the game but it’s a shame. We lost two points.”<\/p>\n

Brentford saw Yoane Wissa join Bryan Mbeumo in leaving the club this week, stripping to Bees of a combined 39 Premier League goals last season.<\/p>\n

The onus is on Schade to step into void left by the departed duo. The German delivered with his first of the season on 35 minutes.<\/p>\n

Jordan Henderson’s through ball picked out Schade’s run and he cut inside Tosin Adarabioyo before firing into the bottom corner.<\/p>\n

– Set-piece ‘snobbery’ –<\/p>\n

Maresca wasted no time in showing his dissatisfaction with a flat first 45 minutes.<\/p>\n

Marc Cucurella, Reece James and Tyrique George replaced Hato, Fofana and Buonanotte at the break.<\/p>\n

George forced Caoimh\u00edn Kelleher into a fine save, but the game truly turned on the introduction of Palmer on 56 minutes.<\/p>\n

The England international missed the Blues previous two games through injury but showed no signs of rustiness to level five minutes after his arrival.<\/p>\n

Joao Pedro did well to head down Enzo Fernandez’s cross and Palmer pounced for his first non-penalty Premier League goal since January.<\/p>\n

Schade nearly restored Brentford’s lead straight away as Robert Sanchez got down smartly to his right to save.<\/p>\n

Palmer should have doubled his tally when he fired too close to Kelleher with just the goalkeeper to beat after an electric burst from Pedro Neto.<\/p>\n

But it was a more irregular source of goals who put Chelsea in front.<\/p>\n

Another Chelsea debutant Alejandro Garnacho’s cross was cleared to the edge of the box, where Caicedo was lurking and, after steadying himself, took aim to smash into the top corner.<\/p>\n

Garnacho, though, undid his good work by switching off deep into stoppage time and allowing Carvalho to turn in Kristoffer Ajer’s flick-on.<\/p>\n

Brentford boss Keith Andrews was promoted from the club’s set-piece coach after Thomas Frank left to take charge of Tottenham and said there has been too much “snobbery” around utilising long-throws.<\/p>\n

“It’s not new to us,” said Andrews. (Last season) big Champions League games it was quite prominent and I felt it would probably trickle down the game.<\/p>\n

“I felt there’s a little bit of snobbery in the game around scenarios like that, but if the big boys do it then it seems to be accepted.”<\/p>\n

A draw edges Brentford up to 12th with four points from their first four games.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chelsea missed the chance to go top of the Premier League as Fabio Carvalho’s 93rd minute equaliser salvaged a 2-2 draw for Brentford in Saturday’s west London derby. The world champions paid for Enzo Maresca’s experimental team selection as Kevin Schade fired Brentford into a first-half lead. Substitute Cole Palmer led the Chelsea revival on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}