Stoke City has been defeated by Chelsea in a Premier League match played at Britannia Stadium on Saturday. Chelsea won the match by a big margin of 4-0. This was a great performance by the visitors, but, the home team also helped them by making some poor mistakes. This was Chelsea’s 12th victory in the ongoing Premier League. This victory took them ahead of Tottenham Hotspur in the points table. Chelsea is now at no. 3 with 42 points in 22 matches.
Chelsea was defeated by Swansea City in its previous match and as a result, Rafa Benitez made quite a few changes in the starting XI. Oscar, Ross Turnbull, Fernando Torres and Gary Cahill were left out and on their places; Ryan Bertrand, Petr Cech, Demba Ba and Frank Lampard were brought back into the starting line up.
On the other hand, Stoke City made just one change to the starting line up that had played against Manchester City. Matthew Etherington made way for Cameron Jerome.
In the first half, both the teams failed in capitalizing on the chances and there were no goals scored in the first 44 minutes. Just a few seconds before the half time break, Chelsea took the lead with the help of an own goal from Jonathan Walters.
Chelsea’s lead got doubled in the 63rd minute and it was Walters again who helped Chelsea with his second own goal in the match. The Irish striker tried to direct the ball towards the goalkeeper, but, his placement went wrong and the ball went into the bottom corner of the net. Walters looked perplexed after that goal.
Just after a couple of minutes, Chelsea earned a penalty and Frank Lampard converted it easily with a powerful shot to make the score 3-0 in Chelsea’s favour. Stoke City got into big trouble when they conceded another goal in the 73rd minute. This time it was Eden Hazard who found the net by latching on the pass of Juan Mata.
Stoke City failed in scoring any goal in the remaining time and lost the match.
Stoke City’s next match will be a FA Cup clash against Crystal Palace on Tuesday.