Blues grind Saints down to stay clear at the top
Southampton huffed and puffed but Chelsea's class told at St Mary's as the champions made it six straight league wins over their hosts.
The gap at the top of the Premier Division now stands at nineteen points, and on this evidence it might as well be a hundred. Chelsea were not at their fluent best on the south coast, but they did what champions do: they soaked up Southampton's possession, struck twice, and left with a 2-0 win that never felt in doubt.
Saints had 60 per cent of the ball and seven corners, yet it was the visitors who carried the threat. Norberto Pico opened the scoring midway through the first half, arriving at the back post to finish after good work from Howard Parkins. It was a goal made in the image of this Chelsea side – patient until the moment was right, then clinical.
Nacho Valera doubled the lead five minutes after the restart, his fifth league goal of the campaign. Southampton pushed and probed, with Marcos Delfino and Pablo Gaona both guilty of wasting chances that might have made a game of it. But Elias Jimenez in the Chelsea goal was equal to what little came his way, and the champions saw out the final half-hour with the comfort of old hands.
The win takes Chelsea to 67 points from 24 matches, a tally that speaks of a side in total control. Southampton remain third, but the gap to the summit is now a chasm. Their recent run – wins over Manchester United and Aston Villa – counted for little here, and they have now lost six in a row against the Blues, home and away.
Delfino, who spent five years at Chelsea earlier in his career, ran himself into the ground against his old club, but it was another ex-Blue connection that summed up the afternoon: Southampton simply could not find a way past a defence that has now kept a clean sheet in three straight league games.
The champions march on. The rest can only watch.