Chelsea 4-0 Southampton: Match report & 4 talking points from Stamford Bridge mauling | OneFootball

FROM STAMFORD BRIDGE - Chelsea ended a three-game losing streak with a comfortable 4-0 stroll at home to Southampton on Tuesday night.

First-half goals from Christopher Nkunku, Pedro Neto and Levi Colwill before Marc Cucurella's late strike made a mockery of Enzo Maresca's prediction that this would be a "tricky" game. The Blues have struggled for form this calendar year, but their difficulties were dwarfed by those of the visitors, who have now lost 12 of their past 14 Premier League games.

Victory for Chelsea took them back into the top four, although Manchester City and Newcastle United could both leapfrog the west London outfit with wins of their own on Wednesday night.

How the game unfolded

"There is a huge difference between us," Southampton's increasingly downbeat head coach Ivan Juric sighed pre-game. "They are an incredible team with incredible players." That chasm in quality was not immediately apparent. However, after a nervy opening 20 minutes, Chelsea soon rammed home their superiority.

Enzo Fernandez and Cole Palmer roamed between the lines of garish, yellow Southampton shirts, effortlessly picking each other out as though they were playing between rows of neon cones.

Palmer had a close-range effort impressively smothered by Aaron Ramsdale, although that merely led to the corner which produced Christopher Nkunku's opener. Tosin Adarabioyo made first contact on the out-swinging delivery, steering it towards the back post for Nkunku to stoop and nod in after 24 minutes.

Southampton were not entirely toothless - the lumbering figure of centre-forward Paul Onuachu, a 6'7 striker who spends as much time battling with his own limbs as opposition centre-backs, forced Filip Jorgensen into an excellent first-half save - but Chelsea were well worth the two-goal lead Pedro Neto provided ten minutes before the interval.

Operating once again as a mobile central striker, the fleet-footed Portuguese forward scampered around Nkunku's left shoulder as Chelsea caught Southampton in transition, blasting a venomous first-time effort straight through Ramsdale.

Chelsea concluded their first-half blitz with a towering header from Levi Colwill, the Southampton-born centre-back who still lives on the south coast and commutes into London. Perhaps he won't be catching a lift home on the Saints team coach.

As a flaccid second half meandered towards its inevitable conclusion, the tireless Marc Cucurella delivered another twist of the dagger in Southampton's lifeless corpse. Capping off a pitch-long counter-attack from a Saints corner, Chelsea's wild-haired left-back kept his cool to control Tyrique George's measured cutback and pick out the bottom corner.

Check out the player ratings from Chelsea vs Southampton here.

Unrest in the west

Chelsea fans protested before the match / Justin Setterfield/GettyImages

When Chelsea faced Southampton in the reverse fixture on the south coast, fans in the away section jubilantly boasted: "We've got our Chelsea back." The message behind the considerable protest which took place before Tuesday's rematch was simple: "We want our Chelsea back."

Beyond their similarly loose pursestrings, the club's current ownership regime could scarcely be more diametrically opposed to Roman Abramovich's trophy-laden reign. While the Russian oligarch ruthlessly strove for immediate success, notably sacking Roberto Di Matteo six months after winning the 2012 Champions League, Maresca has repeatedly pointed out that the club aren't even targeting qualification for Europe's premier club competition this season.

The Italian has been forced to backtrack on that pessimistic stance in recent days, but swatting aside a historically atrocious iteration of a Premier League football club will not force the bed sheets to be put away for long.

Cole Palmer's drought drags on

Cole Palmer did not have his best game on Tuesday / Julian Finney/GettyImages

"Cole is a human being," Maresca reminded everyone on Monday. Palmer delivered his own refresher course on that fact with a destructively wayward display in front of a public that remains defiantly rapt in adoration of their playmaker.

After Palmer violently lashed a half-volley several yards above Ramsdale's crossbar shortly before the hour mark, the latest in a catalogue of snatched swipes and spurned shots, Stamford Bridge rose to salute the 22-year-old in a 40,000-strong burst of encouragement.

Joe Aribo, a naturally attacking midfielder who sporadically popped up at centre-forward in last season's Championship campaign and was making just his second career appearance at centre-back, was tasked with man-marking Palmer. Chelsea's slippery talisman unsurprisingly escaped Aribo's watch, but wasted the perennial pocket of space he carried around with him.

Palmer's scoring drought now stands at seven consecutive games - he hasn't created a goal for his teammates since 1 December.

The handsome scoreline - and efficiency of his teammates - ensured that there were no sharp-tongued exchanges from the sulking playmaker. All Palmer's frustration was reserved for himself as he finished the game with seven unsuccessful efforts on goal.

Pedro Neto doubled Chelsea's lead on Tuesday / Gaspafotos/MB Media/GettyImages

In the space of less than two full matches as a central striker, Neto matched Nicolas Jackson's output across his final ten appearances before he sustained a serious hamstring injury at the start of the month (one goal, two assists).

It got swept away by the negativity swamping the second-half collapse against Aston Villa on the weekend, but Neto's unique brand of waspish nuisance value has stored the energy which Chelsea's frontline has been lacking in Jackson's absence.

With Neto scurrying around the central slice of the pitch, Nkunku looked far more comfortable drifting in from the left flank with Palmer feeding a frontline completed by Jadon Sancho on the right wing.

Can Southampton avoid unwanted history?

Ivan Juric may be looking a little too far forward / Harry Murphy/GettyImages

Juric has openly admitted that he is already looking to "create something good for the future". However, Southampton still have some work to do in the current campaign to avoid becoming the worst team in Premier League history.

The Derby County side from 2007/08 hold that particular wooden spoon with a measly total of 11 points. Much like Southampton, the Rams had nine points from their first 27 games and had conceded 57 goals - eight fewer than the Saints.

Southampton just need one win - or three draws - to avoid this bleak statistical ignominy, but quite where those results are coming from appears desperately unclear. The away end at Stamford Bridge was at least half-right in its assertion: "You're nothing special, we lose every week."

A trip to Anfield is their next league outing before a reinvigorated Wolverhampton Wanderers travel to St Mary's before next month's international break. A visit from similarly woeful Leicester City on 3 May will be ringed in red.