West Ham United drew 1-1 with Chelsea on Saturday in the Premier League. Chelsea’s new signing Joao Felix gave the visitors the lead in the 16th minute after taping in from a close range a beautiful through from Enzo Fernandez.
The Host equalized in the 28th minute through former Chelsea right-back Emerson. Both teams had a goal rude out as offside.
England and West Ham midfielder Declan Rice have heap praise on Chelsea forward Joao Felix for his outstanding performance at the London Stadium. The Portuguese international was arguably the best player on the pitch among the two teams. The England international admitted that 22 years old caused a problem for the West HAM defense and midfielder with his movement on and off the ball.
What did Declan Rice say about Joao Felix’s performance against West Ham?
The West Ham Skipper told Stadium Astro after the game: “I’ve played against a lot of midfielders and No.10s, and the first 10 or 15 minutes today as a player, you know, a top player.
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“The way he worked from side to side to get on the ball and find space, he’s an unbelievable player.
“I noticed that straight away. You have to be really on your game with players like him.”
Declan Rice also revealed that West Ham targeted Chelsea’s flanks as they noticed their wingers did not track back when they lost the ball.
He added: “With the team they put out, they started really sharply, really quickly. They had some really, really good players on show.
“It took us a little while to get going and adapt to their system. But once we found out their weakness, getting the ball down the sides of them, and realized their wingers weren’t really tracking back.
“We managed to get the goal from that and exploit that. The last 20 minutes was there for us and we could have nicked it.”
Chelsea started the game very well and could go up by three goals in the first 20 minutes, but the team’s intensity started dropping when they scored the first goal.
On the team’s level of creativity in the first 20 minutes, Graham Potter said: “You could see in the first half the potential of the team and the possibility of the team and the quality of the team at times. The thing that disappoints is, in the Premier League, you can’t control everything all of the time; it’s impossible. When you don’t, you just have to make sure you don’t concede and build again.
“That’s the bit from a regret from us, the first goal gets West Ham back into the game too cheaply from my perspective. So that’s something for us to learn and the second half is probably more of a reflection of where we’re at in terms of the work we need to do.”
Chelsea will return to action in the Champions League against Dortmund Wednesday.
