Premier League scores, Week 11: Chelsea aspires to be a soul-crushing monster

The Premier League has provided a lot of entertainment through parity in recent years. Between the influx of television money, the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson, and Jose Mourinho seemingly melting down emotionally, the playing field has leveled. It’s great to watch a league in which any team can beat any other team on any day. But there’s a certain joy in watching a monster absolutely devour their prey, and Chelsea aspires to be that monster.

Antonio Conte’s team isn’t a great one quite yet. It’ll take him another summer transfer window and plenty of time with his players to get them playing exactly the way he wants. But their recent performances — including their big win on Saturday — suggest they want to stamp their authority on the Premier League and beat the living hell out of everyone they face. That ruthlessness is something the Premier League has been missing for years. We’re happy someone is bringing it back.

Saturday’s scores

Sunday’s scores

There’s a lot to unpack from Chelsea’s huge five-goal victory. First and foremost, they were very good. Just look at how they carve up Everton’s defense with some excellent play for the first two goals:

But then there’s all the bad for Everton. Manager Ronald Koeman set his team up to fail with a defense that man-marked Chelsea’s attackers. When the hosts moved the ball well, the Toffees did a poor job adjusting. And yet goalkeeper Maarten Stekelenburg — who really hasn’t been good consistently since he left Ajax five years ago — should have saved both of these goals.

But neither Koeman nor Stekelenburg can be blamed for the rest of the game. Everton simply failed to respond, creating zero shots on target. They attempted only one shot, and it came after Chelsea’s fifth goal. Chelsea was so good in the opening 20 minutes that Everton looked demoralized and couldn’t recover.

Despite Jose Mourinho’s criticisms, Conte celebrated after every goal as if his team had just won the title. It showed off what Chelsea has that other teams don’t right now: they don’t just want to win — they want to beat the living hell out of everyone they play.

OK by their standards, of course, which would be “having enough points to stay up before the final day of the season.” And on the evidence of their past three games, Burnley can find a way to scrape 40 points from 37 or fewer matches. They fought back in a fun back-and-forth game against Crystal Palace, with Ashley Barnes finding a 94th-minute winner after Palace had equalized with a late penalty.

Burnley is up to ninth place with 14 points, thanks to a run of three games unbeaten. They found a 90th-minute winner against Everton two weeks ago, then held Manchester United to a draw, thanks to the heroics of goalkeeper Tom Heaton last week. Maybe 90th-minute winners and heroic goalkeeping performances aren’t sustainable, but a little confidence and some buffer between them and the drop zone might go a long way for the Clarets. There are some bad teams in this league, after all.

One of those bad teams is Sunderland, who got their first win of the season away to Bournemouth. Perhaps the biggest factor was a change of formation, with David Moyes going back to the 1990s, picking a classing big man–quick man striker pairing. Jermain Defoe and Victor Anichebe had great chemistry and proved tough to deal with for Bournemouth, with Anichebe’s physical play complementing Defoe’s movement well. Anichebe scored the opener by bulldozing a couple of defenders, then drew the penalty for the winner.

Sunderland is still a bad team, but Moyes has finally found something that relieves pressure and causes opposing defenses problems. It’s a start, at least.

Following a couple of incidents of fans fighting at West Ham’s new home — formerly the Olympic Stadium — the club asked police to come in and help the stewards with security for the first time. Increased security also necessitated some season ticket holders moving from their original seats to different ones in another area of the stadium.

Fans who turned up to the stadium a bit early also found problems, with turnstiles closed because of technical problems. They eventually opened them, and the game kicked off on time.

There were no serious incidents in the stands this week, though some West Ham fans weren’t thrilled about how things went with the new security measures.

This stuff isn’t great. The reduced atmosphere and home-field advantage — due to the stands being much farther from the pitch and less vertical — appear to have affected the team, and fans aren’t thrilled about the prices and transit access relative to their old home. It stinks for the players, the fans, and the taxpayers, too. Seemingly, the only people benefitting from the Olympic Stadium deal in any way are West Ham United’s owners.

Kevin de Bruyne is back from injury. Manchester City just whooped West Brom, 4-0, then beat Barcelona in Champions League. It looked as though it was time for them to start running away from the pack. But they gave away a stoppage time equalizer to Middlesbrough, letting Chelsea overtake them in the table. And while City dominated the game, they could hardly call Boro lucky. Silly turnovers in midfield gifted Boro a few half-chances before they finally found the equalizer. It’s clear that Pep Guardiola still has a lot of work to do.