Liam Rosenior hailed his Chelsea stars for creating history at Stamford Bridge after they dramatically came back from two goals down at half-time to win a Premier League game for their first time ever.
Never before had the Blues achieved victory while trailing by such a margin at the break in this competition and this clash ended in a furious brawl with West Ham, who saw Jean-Clair Todibo red carded for grabbing Joao Pedro by the neck.
Nuno Espirito Santo’s side were arguably fortunate they did not see more dismissed as their anger spilled over towards the end of a dramatic London derby, with Chelsea’s stoppage-time winner coming from Enzo Fernandez.
Chelsea have now won six of their seven games played under Rosenior, who has Arsenal in the Carabao Cup semi-final second leg next and said: ‘Hopefully this is a huge breakthrough for the squad. Someone’s just told me it’s the first time in Premier League history we’ve won from 2-0 down. It’s a massive thing to do against a side in good form.
‘So there are a lot of positives and a lot of things we need to improve. I’m not shying away from that. But to see the heart, the mentality, the spirit of the group and their quality in the second half makes me a very, very happy man.
‘My biggest learning is there’s a spirit and a fight and a resilience in this group that I really, really like, that I’ve demanded from the first day of stepping in. We don’t have many training sessions, but we spoke about reacting positively to setbacks.
Liam Rosenior reacts to Chelsea scoring their late winner over West Ham at Stamford Bridge
‘We’ve spoken about reactions to losing the ball, pressing, energy, intensity. All of that was there in the second half, which wasn’t there in the first half. I don’t put that just down to the changes I made. It’s very difficult. The reaction of the team in the second half tells me that we’ve got something really, really special here if I can utilise the squad in the correct way.’
West Ham deserved their half-time lead through Jarrod Bowen and Crysencio Summerville after an abysmal first 45 minutes from Chelsea, with loud boos from those inside Stamford Bridge.
However, Rosenior’s triple substitution helped turn this match around as the new trio – Joao Pedro, Marc Cucurella and Wesley Fofana – all played big parts in Chelsea’s three goals.
Fofana assisted Joao Pedro for Chelsea’s first goal before Cucurella’s diving header made it 2-2. Two minutes into stoppage time, Joao Pedro set up Fernandez for their dramatic winner.
When Adama Traore threw Cucurella to the ground in anger before the end of the game, a gigantic shoving match broke out between both sides. Traore avoided a red card, along with Konstantinos Mavropanos, who appeared to try to slap Cole Palmer.
But Todibo was not so fortunate as referee Anthony Taylor was sent to his pitch-side monitor to see how he grabbed Joao Pedro by the neck with both hands and showed the West Ham defender a straight red card for violent conduct.
‘I haven’t seen the images,’ Espirito Santo said. ‘There was confusion. A lot of stress for both teams. I need to see the images.’
On Todibo now set to miss three matches for West Ham at a crucial time, the Hammers boss added: ‘That is disappointing but I have to see the images so I can judge properly what happened. VAR intervened. They saw the images.’
Espirito Santo added on the game itself: ‘We controlled, we scored, we combined well. The first half was really good. The second half, we started well, but we allowed Chelsea to react.’
Enzo Fernandez scored in stoppage time to complete the comeback from 2-0 down
Asked about the Chelsea fans’ anger at the moment, amid so many changes happening at their club, Rosenior said: ‘It’s on me. I hope in time they’ll say it’s the best decision this club’s ever made. But I can’t focus on that. This is a really proud club with an incredible tradition, history, recent history of winning trophies. They want that and I want that, too.
‘For a manager to come in midway through a season with not many sessions and have six wins out of seven games, it’s not a bad way to start.
‘As long as the team showed a fight and the energy and the intensity that they did in that second half, the fans showed that they’ll be with us and they’ll support us and I’m really enjoying being part of this football club.’
This victory came after Chelsea’s comeback versus Napoli to finish in the Champions League’s top eight, which was also inspired by a half-time substitute. Rosenior brought on Cole Palmer, who assisted both of Joao Pedro’s goals to secure that win.