Stoke City 0 - Chelsea 4: Initial reaction

Well that was fun. Stoke City were undefeated at the Britannia this season, but Chelsea broke that little streak with a very, very odd 4-0 win. It's a nice way to bounce back from the embarrassment of losing to Swansea City and QPR at the Bridge, isn't it? Here're some quick thoughts:

• Chelsea crosses earned two goals today, but both were converted by Jonathan Walters, who opened the scoring with a lovely diving header just before halftime and then nodded home a corner to make it 2-0 after the break. Although attacking Stoke high is generally an insane thing to do, it paid off in really odd fashion here.
• 4-0 probably isn't the 'correct' score. The two sides were fairly easily matched until late on, at which point Stoke got tired and couldn't press Chelsea as heavily. The script of the game, if you like, has a (still impressive) 2-0 Chelsea win all over it. This way was better though.
• That said, Asmir Begovic was magnificent today. He pulled off a pair of great saves against Frank Lampard (although he could do nothing about the penalty), denied Demba Ba and stopped Ashley Cole early in the second half. This game could have been out of sight if not for the Bosnian's display.
• How good was Eden Hazard's goal? You don't often see shots swerve into the side netting like that. Magnificent.
• If you'd offered me six points from Everton away, QPR at home and then Stoke away, I'd have taken it. I wasn't really expecting the one loss to be the middle game though. Two of our better results this season are sandwiching our worst.
• John Terry came back. He gave away a penalty. Walters missed it. Perfect.

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