Whether it was a Fortnum & Mason selection box or a stash of Freddos we may never know but after Thomas Tuchel said he munched his way through copious amounts of chocolate to soothe the pain of reliving Chelsea’s defeat to Real Madrid in midweek, his team displayed a ravenous appetite to make amends by bludgeoning Southampton.
Chelsea picked their opponents apart, Timo Werner and Mason Mount scored twice and Marcos Alonso and Kai Havertz also struck inside 54 minutes. Luckily for Southampton, Chelsea did not overly exert themselves from there, presumably because by that point they were thinking about boarding Monday’s flight to Spain, the return leg in mind.
Werner celebrated his first league goals since October but when you consider he also thrice hit the woodwork, as well as Fraser Forster’s inspired goalkeeping, it was a minor miracle Chelsea departed with only six goals.
As reactions go, this was rather comprehensive. Chelsea were purring from the moment Werner rattled a post on three minutes after taking aim from just inside the area and by the time Alonso drilled in the opener five minutes later, Werner had made another blemish on the frame of the Southampton goal, stooping to somehow head Ruben Loftus-Cheek’s ball against the crossbar from inside the six-yard box. Mount was Chelsea’s chief tormentor and on another day Werner would have departed with the match ball. Alonso came closest to adding a seventh but thrashed wide.
It almost felt satirical when at half-time the stadium announcer, seemingly reading off a script, offered a warm welcome to a family making their visit to St Mary’s. Chelsea would have had five goals at the break had Forster not clambered low to his right to claw a Loftus-Cheek header, diverted by Mohammed Salisu’s outstretched leg, to safety. A minute earlier, a deflected Mount effort dropped nervously wide. By then a rocked Ralph Hasenhüttl, hands on hips on the edge of the technical area, had already taken unprecedented action, replacing the midfielder Oriol Romeu with Yan Valery and shifting to a three-man defence in the name of damage limitation, those 9-0 shellackings, here to Leicester in 2019 and at Manchester United last year, lingering in the back of his mind.
“I needed to find a way to help them because in the first half we have been completely hopeless,” the Southampton manager said.
The midfielder Ibrahima Diallo replaced the striker Adam Armstrong for the second half but changes in shape and personnel made little difference for Southampton. With 54 minutes gone, Chelsea, all in yellow, continued to slice through Southampton at will. For the fifth, Werner feasted on the rebound after Forster repelled N’Golo Kanté’s dinked shot and then five minutes later Mount poked in from close range. The sixth was particularly galling for Forster, who kept out the substitute Christian Pulisic’s initial shot and then raked the ball away from Werner with his feet only for Mount to notch his second.
Pulisic, one of four changes from Wednesday, arrived in place of Havertz at the interval and Tuchel had the luxury of being able to withdraw Thiago Silva with little more than an hour played.
Chelsea began erratically. Antonio Rüdiger lost his bearings midway inside his own half and his back pass, meant for his goalkeeper, Édouard Mendy, went horribly awry and out for a Southampton corner with 97 seconds on the clock. But from there it was one-way traffic and Chelsea surged forward on the first of many counterattacks, this one culminating in Werner having his first dalliance with the woodwork.
Alonso made no mistake two minutes later, emphatically firing through the legs of a hapless Forster after Mount exquisitely hooked Loftus-Cheek’s cross towards the back post. If only Forster, who had the fortune of avoiding those ignominious 9-0s, knew what was to come.
Mount’s first goal was a peach. The midfielder arrowed a right-foot shot into the bottom corner on 16 minutes as Chelsea took advantage of more statuesque Southampton defending. Salisu did not deal with Loftus-Cheek’s cross and Mount put his studs on the top of the ball to get it under his spell before dispatching a superb strike into a pocket of Forster’s net with his next touch. The goalkeeper denied Chelsea a third with less than 18 minutes played, pawing a lashed Werner shot clear, but four minutes later he was fishing the ball out of his net once more.
Werner brushed off Jan Bednarek to score his first and Chelsea’s third and before half-time he again struck the frame of the goal, curling a shot against the inside of a post after gracefully moseying clear of Romeu, Bednarek and Kyle Walker-Peters but Havertz was on hand to tap in the leftovers for a fourth. It was comedic and clinical in equal measure, at least for the neutral. At that point, Valery was being readied and swathes of Southampton supporters headed for the exits.
“Oh when the Saints go marching out,” Chelsea’s visiting supporters gleefully sang.
