Brentford maintained their unbeaten start to the season with a second half bombardment of Chelsea as they sealed a 3-0 win.
The Bees scored all three goals after the hour mark as Keith Andrews’ side rose to third in the Premier League standings.
Chelsea had the better of the chances in the first half. Brentford stopper Caoimhin Kelleher had to be alert to get down and push away a Pedro Neto effort from the right-hand side of the Bees’ area.
And then, just before half-time, Morgan Rogers saw a goalbound attempt blocked and turned behind for a corner.
Those half-chances were punished when Brentford opened the scoring just after the hour mark as they punished slack marking. Jaidon Anthony was left completely unmarked a yard out after a corner was nodded back across goal by Jannik Schuster, allowing Anthony the simplest of headers.
The visitors then attempted to get back into the game but never really fashioned anything concrete in terms of genuine scoring chances. Cole Palmer, fresh from an England recall, jinked and danced inside the box but couldn’t get a shot out from under his feet.
Eventually, Brentford soaked up the pressure and then hit the Blues on the counter to kill the game off with a second. Kevin Schade was put through on goal but after his initial attempt was saved by Emi Martinez, it fell kindly for Igor Thiago to bundle in his first league goal of the season.
Fabio Carvalho then rubbed salt in the wounds with a late third as Chelsea fell to a second defeat in their opening five league outings.
Andrews was understandably proud, when speaking post-match, not only by his team’s performance but also how they’ve started the season.
“It’s a lovely place to be,” Andrews said. “It’s amazing the way one game can dictate whether it’s a really good start or it’s the other way. Listen, it will be a nice place to be to go home and see my mam and dad tomorrow. I think it is important you enjoy nights like this. The club, fans and team is invested in the journey. I love how we go about it.
“It was a really good evening, it’s important that you enjoy evenings like this because you work so hard and there are so many tough days in this game and when you play against a west London rival, and you build up to a game and you go on a bit of a journey with the team, there are always bumps along the way, but we were in a really good place and it’s nice to see it come into fruition tonight.”
Deflated Chelsea chief Xabi Alonso said: “Everything was disappointing especially the result but we can do better. We must do better. 45 minutes we were competing well, but in the second half we dropped, and conceded the three goals. You need to be very focused, and once you concede from set-pieces, it gives them an advantage and control because once you concede the second goal it becomes much harder and we lost a little bit of our discipline when we were close to the box. We have to correct, it was our mistakes.”
