Mauricio Pochettino on Sunday urged Chelsea to “believe in the process” after Michail Antonio’s superb strike and Enzo Fernandez’s penalty miss condemned the Blues to a 3-1 loss against West Ham United.
After the previous weekend’s 1-1 draw against Liverpool, Pochettino’s side wasted a lively performance as they paid the price for sloppy defending and wasteful finishing at the London Stadium.
Antonio blasted West Ham’s decisive second goal after halftime and Lucas Paqueta added a late penalty to leave Pochettino still waiting for his first English Premier League win since taking charge in the summer.
Photo: Reuters
Chelsea’s Carney Chukwuemeka had scored an eye-catching first-half equalizer to cancel out Nayef Aguerd’s early opener for West Ham, but the turning point came when Fernandez’s penalty was saved by Alphonse Areola just before halftime.
Antonio netted soon after the interval and Chelsea could not respond, despite Aguerd’s dismissal for a second booking midway through the half.
Paqueta, reportedly the subject of an FA probe into betting breaches, applied the knockout blow in the final seconds.
“Teams like us, we need to get the right balance. I think there were a few actions we didn’t manage well and we conceded,” Pochettino said. “We create many chances and should have won the game with our first half. It was the frustration when we miss the penalty. We were playing well and we didn’t get the reward. Disappointed, but this is only the beginning. We need to believe in the process.”
Earlier on Sunday, Aston Villa won for the first time this season as they routed Everton 4-0 to erase the bitter taste of the previous weekend’s thrashing at Newcastle United.
Tipped to improve on last season’s strong finish, Villa were hammered 5-1 on Tyneside in a shockingly bad start to their campaign, but Unai Emery’s side got back on track in the Villa Park sunshine as goals from John McGinn, Douglas Luiz, Leon Bailey and Jhon Duran brushed aside woeful Everton.
Emery will hope Villa’s biggest victory of his reign kick-starts a season in which they are to compete in Europe for the first time in 13 years after qualifying for the UEFA Europa Conference League.
“Today we were very, very angry to get our performance at home and to forget last week’s match,” Emery said. “We needed to react like we did. We did a lot of things good, but there are some moments we can do better.”
Everton have less lofty ambitions after narrowly avoiding relegation last season and Sean Dyche’s men already look destined for another grim fight for survival.
Beaten 1-0 at home by Fulham the previous weekend, Everton have lost their opening two games in tame fashion.
It is only the third time Everton have been beaten in their first two league matches without scoring a goal and the first since 1955-1956.
As if that was not bad enough, Dyche also had to contend with the sight of Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Alex Iwobi both coming off injured.
“I won’t make any excuses. Really soft goals changed the feel of the stadium and the feel of our performance,” Dyche said. “Villa had more edge. They were far better than us. That was not good enough. It was way off where we want to be.”
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
RSS