Premier League Roundup: Wolverhampton Wanderers condemn Chelsea to back to back losses

Wolves came from a goal down to dampen Chelsea‘s title aspirations with Pedro Neto scoring a late winner in a 2-1 victory at the Molineux on Tuesday night.

Olivier Giroud put Chelsea ahead after a rather drab first 45 minutes where only a Kurt Zouma header that rocketed back off the crossbar threatened either goal.

If Chelsea had managed all three points, they’d have been joint-top but Daniel Podence had other ideas as he fired home a wonderful individual effort in the 66th minute.

VAR also reversed a decision that awarded Wolves a penalty on 81 minutes by Stuart Attwell but Neto kept on piling the pressure at the Chelsea backline and got his reward deep into stoppage time as he fired a quality finish into the bottom corner.

The loss handed Chelsea their first back-to-back defeats in 2020 and leaves them three points off Liverpool and Tottenham having played a game more.

Watch the highlights of the match below

Managers reactions

Nuno Espirito Santo: “It was a good performance after the situation that happened in the last minutes against Villa, when we played a good game but had a big blow at the end. That did not take away from how we played. We played a good game three days ago and a good second half today.

“Daniel Podence is a technical, talented player. He and Pedro Neto are doing well, evolving and trying to take up different positions on the pitch. With Raul [Jimenez] it was different and now with Fabio [Silva] it is different. It will require from us a lot of hard work. What we did today was good but it can only serve as an example of how we should proceed.”

Frank Lampard: “I am disappointed to lose the game. We had it under pretty good control at the point of 1-0. I don’t think we were playing brilliantly but we had control so we should have hung onto 1-0, control the game and control the counter attacks, which we didn’t do.

“We were playing very well, with a long unbeaten run, but maybe the lads thought we were playing well. When you think you’re playing well these things can happen. The players will need to think about their performance during the next few days. This is the Premier League, we need to do better.”

Stats and facts from the match (Backed by Opta)

• Chelsea have lost consecutive Premier League games for the first time since December 14, 2019.
• Each of Wolves’ last 83 goals in the Premier League have been scored by non-British players (excluding own-goals) – only Arsenal have had a longer such run in the competition (171 between October 2005 – February 2008).
• Chelsea’s opener came with their first shot on target of the game on 49 minutes.
• All four of Podence’s Premier League goals for Wolves have come against London clubs (2 v Crystal Palace, 1 v Arsenal and 1 v Chelsea) with three of those four coming on home soil.
• Neto’s strike for Wolves at 94:39 was the latest winning goal scored in a Premier League game against Chelsea since we have exact goal times in the competition (since 2006-07).