West Ham 3-0

Independent:

West Ham United 0 Chelsea 3 Frank Lampard hammers his former club

By MIGUEL DELANEY

This time, no close shave. A crew- cut Jose Mourinho may have said on Friday that it’s “not good to compare” this current Chelsea team with his old one, but they are increasingly illustrating many of the same fine qualities.
Just at the point when a poor run of results looked set to become a problem, they showed a remarkable capacity to claim the kind of win that levels everything out again. Between 2004 and 2006, his title-winning teams never went three successive league games without a victory and that is still the case.
Chelsea responded to the dropped points and poor performances against Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion with a commanding victory. Frank Lampard, meanwhile, responded to a 10-game drought to score twice against his old club.
For all that Mourinho will have wanted to quickly inject an intensity into his team again, Chelsea were not immediately imposing. There was still a slight reticence about their play with only Hazard on the left offering any sense of liveliness.
West Ham were comfortable, and even had the better of the early chances, which will make it all the more galling for Sam Allardyce, their manager, that they gifted the away side the opening goal in such a calamitous way. After 20 minutes, Guy Demel, the defender, tried to play a relatively aimless Chelsea cross back to Jussi Jaaskelainen in the West Ham goal, only to misjudge and meekly hit the ball with his thigh. That allowed Oscar to nip in ahead of the goalkeeper, draw the approach and go over under the challenge. Even if there was an element of innovation about the way the Brazilian went down, a collision was inevitable and referee Chris Foy couldn’t but award the penalty that Lampard smashed into the roof of the net.
The real grievance for Allardyce was not to go behind to such a good team but to lose that first goal so cheaply when Chelsea were then playing so limply. The game was transformed. Still without a striker in the absence of Andy Carroll, West Ham’s entire attempt at containment and countering was rendered irrelevant.
On 34 minutes, Chelsea’s two star attackers rendered their defenders irrelevant too. Receiving the ball just inside the opposition half, Hazard flicked on to Oscar before peeling off to the right. That opened up even more space in front of the West Ham backline, which the latter duly maximised. Oscar surged forward with the ball before beautifully slipping it into the bottom corner. Two goals down, Allardyce evidently felt he had no choice but to make two significant switches before half-time with Joe Cole and Jack Collison hauled off for Mohamed Diamé and Modibo Maiga.
It almost paid off as, after 65 minutes as Maiga was presented with a chance to pull one back.
After much better footwork from the surging Demel on the flank, the right-back squared for Maiga to finish from just yards out but he could only pull it wide.
In truth, it would have pushed West Ham’s luck too. Chelsea could have been out of sight by then, with Gary Cahill having a header cleared off the line by Mark Noble and Oscar powering wide after a flowing move. Amidst all this, Samuel Eto’o was displaying some sublime touches.
West Ham were at least then displaying greater fight too, with the use of an actual forward clearly helping, even if he hadn’t helped himself with his finishing. Minutes from the end, though, Lampard showed him how. After a Branislav Ivanovic cross found its way to the edge of the box, the England midfielder found the bottom corner with a drive. Chelsea were simply a cut above.

West Ham (4-2-3-1): Jaaskelainen; Demel, Collins, Tomkins, O’Brien; Collison (Maiga, 40), Noble; J Cole (Diamé, 40), Morrison, Downing; Nolan (Jarvis, 76).

Chelsea (4-2-3-1): Cech; Ivanovic, Cahill, Terry, Azpilicueta; Mikel, Lampard; Ramires, Oscar (Schürrle, 83), Hazard  (Essien, 84); Eto’o (Ba, 79).
Referee: Chris Foy.
Man of the match: Lampard (Chelsea)
Match rating: 7/10

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Observer:

Chelsea ease to victory at West Ham courtesy of Frank Lampard's brace
David Hytner at Upton Park

For José Mourinho and Chelsea, there was beauty in this East End stroll. Needing victory after the loss at Newcastle United and the fortunate home draw against West Bromwich Albion, they found opponents only too happy to oblige.
West Ham United were a shambles in the first half. Sam Allardyce persisted with his 4-6-0 formation and the manager watched his players offer nothing and, seemingly, look to do little more than cling on.
So bad were his tactics and his team that he made two substitutions in the 40th minute, with one of the new faces being a striker, Modibo Maïga. Joe Cole was furious to be withdrawn and he stormed straight off to the dressing room.
The damage was done by then. Chelsea took advantage of West Ham's lack of ambition and, also, defensive slackness; the opening goal, thrashed home from the penalty spot by Frank Lampard against his old club, followed a faintly ludicrous lapse. Oscar got the goal that his man-of-the-match performance deserved after the half-hour and that was pretty much that.
Mourinho's team were helped on their way but they were stable, confident and incisive. They might have struggled at times when opposing teams have flooded the midfield but not here. Mourinho's only gripe was that the third goal took so long to come and, at 2-0, Chelsea risked allowing West Ham back.
Maïga did fluff their only chance on 65 minutes, and it was a glorious one, but a comeback never looked likely. Lampard scored again, shooting home after yet another flowing move and West Ham, despite showing more spirit and purpose in the second-half, could not escape being booed off.
Allardyce believes that the striker-less strategy is the best way to compensate for the absence of Andy Carroll and it did work in the 3-0 win at Tottenham Hotspur on 6 October. Since then, though, there have been two points taken and the club have been left to teeter above the relegation places.
The tactic, quite simply, feels negative at home and when any manager tears up a blueprint after 40 minutes, it is tantamount to an admission that he got things horribly wrong in the first place.
What Allardyce did not need was the darkly comic moment that served to put Chelsea in charge. Gary Cahill's chip did not appear to present a problem but Guy Demel contrived to create a big one, when his attempt to get the ball back to Jussi Jaaskelainen with his thigh went askew. Oscar nipped in, Jaaskelainen sent him spinning and the only discussion concerned the colour of thegoalkeeper's card.
Mourinho said it should have been red; the referee Chris Foy ruled that it was not even yellow. Oscar was running away from goal and it was not a clear scoring opportunity. Lampard relished converting in front of the Bobby Moore stand and the supporters who continue to jeer him.
Chelsea ratcheted up the intensity, Lampard twice went close and Oscar's goal came as no surprise. It was another soft concession. James Collins lost his bearings after Eden Hazard's flick and Oscar ran and kept running before, in the absence of any challenge, he threaded low into the corner from the edge of the area.
Allardyce chuntered about Cole's reaction to his removal. "All any player ever does is think about himself," Allardyce said. "It's up to him the next time he gets a chance to make it impossible for me to substitute him."
Allardyce also removed his captain, Kevin Nolan, in the 76th minute, a decision that was greeted by cheers from the home crowd.
Chelsea might have had more before the interval – Jaaskelainen made one save from Samuel Eto'o – and the visitors could revel in lovely individual flickers, with Hazard running Oscar close for star billing. Eto'o showed his touch and skill.
Mourinho had started Mikel John Obi in front of the back four to counter West Ham's high balls and allow Lampard to get forward while the team was configured to allow Hazard to eschew any defending. He enjoyed himself and so did the travelling fans. "Frankie Lampard," they told their West Ham counterparts. "He's won more than you."
Chelsea pushed for more. Cahill had a header cleared off the line by Mark Noble and Oscar was off target following a Chelsea counter. Maïga's point-blank miss, after Demel's wonderful run and cross, seemed to sum things up for West Ham and Lampard twisted the knife with his second.
Mourinho said that a "third game without a win would not have been acceptable" but for Allardyce, comfort was scarce. "We've lost our home fortress," he said. "We are struggling in front of goal and now, we are suffering with our defensive errors."

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Telegraph:

West Ham United 0 Chelsea 3
By Oliver Brown

Frank Lampard rather enjoys sabotaging his former club.
Despite the unrepeatable slurs he endures whenever he returns to this corner of E13, he has now scored five goals in his past five encounters with West Ham, and none better than the luscious strike with which he rounded off a superlative contribution on Saturday night to lift Chelsea into third place in the Premier League.
It was refreshing, too, to see him celebrate with such exuberance, subverting the absurd maxim that one should mark a goal against one’s ex-employers like a lapsed monk.
By rights, and there is never any such thing for a player who leaves a club for a loathed enemy, Lampard ought to be accorded a little more respect by West Ham’s fans.
He was part of a young side that led the club to a fifth-place finish in the Premier League in 2000 and yet he is treated here like the devil incarnate. Small wonder that this superb brace, which brought to an end his longest goal drought as a Chelsea player, was the source of such relish.
It was likewise a relief for Jose Mourinho, as Chelsea reasserted their authority with a first clean sheet in seven matches, courtesy of record scorer Lampard and a beautifully-taken first-half goal by Oscar.
As Lampard put it: “We knew if we kept conceding silly points we were going to be out of the race, so I very pleased to be a part of this.”
By contrast West Ham left the field to boos after an abject performance, in which Guy Demel gifted an early penalty and substitute Modigo Maiga was guilty of a horrendous miss that killed off any hope of a comeback.
West Ham, as has become increasingly common, were suffocatingly negative.
Sam Allardyce appears to be on a strange crusade this season, exhorting his players to defend with such grim obduracy that their opponents fall into a kind of glazed stupor. But there is scarcely much point in reverting to a 4-6-0 system when you start with two strikers seething on the bench, in Carlton Cole and Maiga, and when you fall two goals behind within 34 minutes.
It is a damning reflection upon this team’s indecision, and sapping lack of ambition, that the first half could be so sterile and that they could still found themselves holed below the waterline so quickly. The breakthrough of Lampard’s penalty was a prime case in point.
Guy Demel was specifically told by Jussi Jaaskelainen ‘time, time’ and yet inexplicably chose to knee the ball back in the direction of his stranded goalkeeper. It was such a witless move that the ever-likely Oscar needed no second invitation to steal in, only be upended by the suddenly exposed Finn.
Referee Chris Foy rightly chose not to show a red card to Jaaskelainen, who did dive in strongly on Oscar but caught the Brazilian as he was going away from goal.
Lampard, meanwhile, could not wait to take the ball to the spot, lashing it home with a ferocious strike. He wheeled exultantly in front of the West Ham stands, arguably a just decision for the fearful abuse that the fans mete out to him here, over his perceived perfidy in leaving them in 2003.
While West Ham had shown the faintest flickers of a threat, not least when John Terry had to block Mark Noble’s follow-up shot from a Kevin Nolan header, Chelsea looked in control.
By the 34th minute they all but had the match won as Oscar struck at the culmination of an attack of devastating simplicity. James Collins, charged with marking him, chose instead to close down Eden Hazard and the 22-year-old from Sao Paulo had more time than he could ever expect on the training ground to tee up his shot and slot the ball expertly beyond Jaaskelainen.
Allardyce, at a loss to configure his starting XI, had to act, and quickly.
Maïga was brought on at the expense of James Collison, while Mohamed Diame replaced the unfortunate Joe Cole, hooked after only 39 minutes and reacting to his manager with a thunderous look and a contemptuous brush of the hand. West Ham fans, intensely fond of Cole despite his less than stellar impact since rejoining his former club last winter, booed the switch loudly to heighten a mutinous mood inside the Boleyn Ground.
Chelsea, well-drilled by Mourinho in the wake of that fractious draw with West Bromwich Albion, kept a firm grip on West Ham’s throats. Even Gary Cahill was not afraid to join the offensive, watching his bullet header cleared off the line by Ravel Morrison.
They were equally effective on the counter, as when Cesar Azpilicueta picked off Noble’s pass with ease and angled a slick ball to the feet of Samuel Eto’o before overlapping.
The Spanish lofted an enticing cross to the far post but Oscar, contriving an audacious volley, for once could not convert.
Eto’o, in particular, seemed the fittest he has been since his Premier League baptism, and almost grabbed a goal himself with a wonderful whipped effort that drifted fractionally past the far corner.
For the sake of their pride, West Ham did at least make an effort at a fightback. Demel, desperate to atone for his hideous earlier lapse, ran determinedly down the right to slide a ball across the face of Petr Cech’s goal that screamed ‘bury me’.
Instead, Maiga, a man with an average of a goal every two games at Sochaux, continued his dismal form at Upton Park by directing it straight into the advertising hoardings.
Lampard, ultimately, could not resist having the last word, with a block by Joey O’Brien directing straight into his path, and he was unerring in unleashing a typically ferocious strike past Jaaskelainen. For these London rivals, the balance of power has seldom looked so lopsided.

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Mail:

West Ham 0 Chelsea 3: Frankly, it's too easy! Lampard returns to haunt former club (again) with two goals in comfortable win

By MARK RYAN

Frank Lampard tasted fresh freedom, scored his first goals for ten league matches and reignited his ‘bromance’ with Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho.
As for Sam Allardyce, there was no outward display of affection towards any of the West Ham players who underperformed for him, becausehe says ‘all players ever do is think of themselves’. And his relationship with Joe Cole, substituted inside 40 minutes, seems to have hit a very rocky patch.
First to the messages of love exchanged between Lampard and Mourinho.
The 35-year-old midfielder ended a ten-goal scoring drought, the longest of his career in the top flight, to seal only Chelsea’s second away win of the season with two goals — making it five in as many league games against his old club.
Released from the shackles of defensive responsibility, he responded by taking the pressure off a man he clearly adores.
Lampard said: ‘We knew if we’d thrown away any more silly points we’d be out of the title race, so I’m very pleased to be part of this win.
‘I’ve been playing a holding role of late but I’ll play anywhere for this manager. Once we were ahead, we were superb.’
Chelsea led thanks to Lampard’s 21st-minute penalty, fired past Jussi Jaaskelainen with disdain.
Perhaps he shared Mourinho’s view at the time, because his manager had been bending the ears of any official who would listen, insisting that Jaaskelainen should have been sent off for bringing down Oscar.
Unusually for Mourinho, he had relented by the time he voiced his opinions to the media, insisting that, although he thought it had ‘possibly’ been a red card, he was by then ‘happy’ to leave the ultimate judgement to referee Chris Foy. It might have been  different if his team had lost.
But by then Oscar had skipped through to slot Chelsea’s second, released by a magical flick from Eden Hazard. Then, with eight minutes, left Lampard arrived on the edge of the area to sweep home a typically feisty finish and complete Mourinho’s joy.
No wonder we were treated to the following outpouring of love. Mourinho said of Lampard: ‘I think he’s in a moment when he has nothing to prove to you, the fans, to me or to himself.
'He just needs to enjoy the last years of his career, try to play the maximum he can, try to score, because it was always part of his DNA as a player before.
‘I was his manager in the best period of his career possibly, and I am here to enjoy the last years of his career.’
That is the kind of praise you receive when you have saved your manager from further embarrassment, because, as Mourinho had already pointed out, ‘a third game without a win would not have been acceptable’.
Allardyce was unable to feel a similar glow when he talked about the substitution of Joe Cole. It was Cole’s display of frustration, as he took off his shirt and disappeared down the tunnel, which prompted some cold-hearted remarks from Big Sam.
‘Every player is frustrated because all every player ever does is think about themselves. I have to think about the bigger picture. If he’s frustrated then fine, next time he gets a chance he’s going to play so well for me that the last thing I can do is substitute him. If he doesn’t play quite as well and I think I need to take Joe Cole off, I’ll do it.’
Allardyce clearly did not see Cole as a threat to Mourinho’s men, even though the former Chelsea midfielder almost scored early on, seeing his shot blocked.
Allardyce added: ‘I brought  my captain Kevin Nolan off  too because I didn’t think he drove the team on as well as he normally does.’
Modibo Maiga missed a  point-blank chance to put  West Ham back in the game after Guy Demel had sent in a dangerous low cross.     
Allardyce sounds distraught and needs wins quickly, now that the fans are booing.
‘Our world has been turned upside down because last season we lost only four games at home in the entire season. This year we’ve already lost four at home so we’ve lost our fortress,’ he said.
Many more public attacks like this and Allardyce might risk  losing the dressing room too. No danger of that for Mourinho.

West Ham: Jaaskelainen, Nolan, Tomkins, Collison (Maiga 40), Morrison, Noble (Jarvis 76), O'Brien, Collins, Demel, Downing, J.Cole (Diame 40).
Subs not used: McCartney, Adrian, Taylor, C.Cole

Chelsea: Cech, Ivanovic, Cahill, Terry, Azpilicueta, Mikel, Lampard, Ramires, Oscar (Schurrle 83), Hazard (Essien 84), Eto'o (Ba 79).
Subs not used: Schwarzer, Cole, Mata, Willian.

Goals: Lampard (pen) 21, Oscar 34, 82

Att: 34,977

Ref: Chris Foy
Man of the match: Frank Lampard

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Mirror:

West Ham United 0-3 Chelsea: Lampard double piles pressure on Sam Allardyce
By Steve Stammers

The former Hammer was on target twice as Chelsea won with ease
Frank Lampard last night continued his personal vendetta against West Ham as Chelsea cruised back into title contention at Upton Park.
The England midfield star brought his goal tally against the club where he learned his trade to five in five Premier League games as Chelsea moved to third in the table.
There were the ingredients for a fascinating clash that would have an impact at both ends of the table.
A Chelsea win would oust Southampton from third spot while West Ham would enjoy some relief on the edge of the relegation zone.
But the massive advantage for Chelsea was the strength of the squad at the disposal of manager Jose Mourinho. He had seven internationals to cover every eventuality.
West Ham, in contrast, looked short of firepower with Sam Allardyce reluctant to call on misfiring Modibo Maiga and Carlton Cole, still striving for match fitness.
Mourinho said: “From the first minute we looked very tough, solid, comfortable. From We were in control.”
Mourinho is still intent on challenging Ashley Cole to re-establish himself in the first team at Stamford Bridge. He may be an England centurion but currently Cesar Azpilicueta is proving something of an obstacle to his ambitions.
Needless to say, two East End sons who have been guaranteed a hostile welcome on every visit to home territory are John Terry and Frank Lampard.
Nothing changed yesterday in the cold and gloom of Upton Park. But it was Lampard who came out the winner.
The abuse was cruel and vindictive – and it bothered Lampard not one bit. He stayed assured and commanding and in front of him were the elusive Edin Hazard and the talented Oscar.
West Ham were forced to defend deep with the occasional forward foray. James Collins and James Tomkins needed to defend manfully but their work was undone by a brainstorm from Guy Demel on 20 minutes.
A forward ball from Gary Cahill was hopeful at best and Demel had time to select any option to clear. He chose the wrong one as he attempted to guide the ball back to Jussi Jaaskelainen off his thigh. It fell woefully short and Oscar pounced only to be brought down by the goalkeeper.
Referee Chris Foy had no hesitation in pointing to the spot. Lampard was delegated to take the spot-kick and despite ferocious attempts from those in the Bobby Moore stand to distract him, he drove the ball firmly into the net. The only debating point was why ­Jaaskelainen was not shown a card for the ­challenge.
Mourinho said: “I expected a red card. The keeper was the last man. He made contact with Oscar to bring him down.”
Worse was to come in the 34th minute. Oscar and Hazard performed a neat exchange and the Brazilian broke clear to score from the edge of the area.
Allardyce (left) reacted – but not in the way a ­discontented crowd wanted. He took off local hero Joe Cole who reacted by tearing off his shirt and disappearing down the tunnel. Jack Collison was also replaced and on came Mohammed Diame and Maiga.
Chelsea went looking for the goal that would surely end West Ham’s resistance and it almost came in the 53rd minute.
Lampard drilled in a corner and Cahill rose above the West Ham defence to head ­goalwards but Mark Noble cleared.
Chelsea’s dominance was interrupted by a spectacular run in the 65th minute from Demel. He muscled past two challenges, crossed low but Maiga shot wide.
Lampard got the crucial third in the 82nd minute when he drove home a cross from Branislav Ivanovic.

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