WHY SAY ANYTHING?

As avid readers of these chronicles will be aware, our last article began with a short summation of Burnley’s game against Başakşehir of Turkey. We lamented the lack of interest shown by the TV companies in general in showing the game live on their platform and, in particular, BT Sport for only being remotely interested when Burnley played Aberdeen and even then only the leg at Turf Moor.

We must now hold up our collective hands and admit that they were right. Having pointed out that, with three sports channels, BT HAD to be showing something less interesting on at least two of them, it turns out we were wrong.

The reponse to our article was disappointing to say the least and goes some way to demonstrating why Burnley, despite their obvious success and charm, is not the club to lead with when attempting to captivate readers wishing to be entertained from a football perspective.

So today we return to the norm with apologies to those few Burnley fans who probably got quite excited to see their club being headlined in a major publication such as ours.

Now it is the turn of the top six, (again), to return to the spotlight as we look at their weekend games.

Today it is the three London clubs starting with Tottenham Hotspur’s “home” game with Fulham.

This was a game Spurs would have been confident of taking three points from given their victory at Newcastle last week and Fulham’s defeat to Crystal Palace.

They certainly started as though they wanted to get the game won quickly and Lucas Moura went close on a couple of occasions and on at least one of them should definitely have scored.

It wasn’t too long before he was on the scoresheet with a well placed goal from just outside the area. Half-time and Spurs led 1-0.

In the second half Aleksandar Mitrović briefly gave Fulham some hope when he equalised but it wasn’t to be. Late in the game Kieran Trippier restored Tottenham’s lead before Harry Kane…….yes, you read it right and yes, it is August, Harry Kane scored the third and the day, which had been reasonably easy ended with a scoreline reflecting that ease.

A little extra…..

As we await the kick-off at Stamford Bridge there is just time to report on the two potential top-six pretenders.

West Ham lost at home to Bournemouth 1-2 meaning they have now lost their two opening games and sit bottom of the Premier League.

Everton, on the other hand, beat Southampton at Goodison where Richarlison scored another good goal for them after Theo Walcott had given them an early lead. The final score was 2-1.

So in these early days of the new season Marco Silva is heading in the right direction whereby Manuel Pellegrini most certainly is not.

Over to The Bridge…..

Anyway, to the day’s final game.

Following last week’s very different results for these two clubs the majority of football supporters and even the occasional “expert” were expecting a relatively easy win for Chelsea.

That certainly looked as though it was going to be the case when Pedro scored after ten minutes.

Just before the twenty minutes mark Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang fired an excellent chance over the bar when it looked easier to score and, within a minute, Álvaro Morata had increased Chelsea’s lead to 2-0.

All this and not even halfway through the first half yet. It could be a long game for Arsenal.

After 40 minutes it was 2-2 and, amazingly, Chelsea were on the rack and Arsenal had found something, now if only they knew what! Anyway two very quick goals from Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Alex Iwobi put a very different complexion on the two team talks.

The second half couldn’t be as good, could it?

As is often the case in games like these the second half wasn’t as good because the manager’s make sure that the game isn’t as open and so was the case with this one.

In fact it wasn’t until the introduction of Eden Hazard that the game tipped Chelsea’s way and even then not until the 80th minute when one of his trademark runs and crosses was turned in by Marcos Alonso.

He had been brought on along with Mateo Kovačić who was making his Chelsea debut.

So an entertaining game ended 3-2 for Chelsea and Arsenal join West Ham at the bottom end of the table.

Tomorrow we will be looking at the games between Manchester City and Huddersfield and Brighton and Manchester United.