Chelsea 1 -Singha All Star XI 0: Initial Reaction

Chelsea won their pre-season opener, in a somewhat lackluster game. The Singha XI sat relatively deep, and rarely ventured out of their half. Chelsea seemed to lack a bit of cutting edge to break down the Thai defense, something that shouldn't surprise after just a handful of training sessions. In the end though, the Blues managed a win despite not creating a whole lot of excellent chances.

It's just the preseason, and the result of this game means nothing at all in the big picture. That said, it was our first chance to get a look at many of the new members of the squad, and it will surely give us loads to talk about. With that in mind, here are a few thoughts I had in the immediate aftermath of this one:

• Wallace showed flashes of immense amounts of talent, along with plenty of moments of trying to do far too much. For those of you that hadn't seen him before, that was a prime example of what we saw in him along with his relative inexperience.
• I know it's preseason and it's hard to take much from the game, but Lucas Piazon barely got involved in the action at all. Then again, Kevin de Bruyne was everywhere in the first half.
• That was an awfully nice penalty from Romelu Lukaku to open the scoring. Low and left...where have I seen that before?
• Aren't vertical stripes supposed to make you look bigger? Tomas Kalas looks like he's added some serious muscle since last spring at Vitesse Arnhem, despite the current lack of Vitesse's awe-inspiring vertical stripes.
• Chelsea looked like they had a real plan on set pieces today, something that's unsurprising at this point in the preseason. With De Bruyne and Juan Mata on the roster, we could be in for some real fun this year.
• Jamal Blackman is tall.
• One of the funniest parts of this game was watching the Singha players attempt to tackle Eden Hazard. At some point I really want to see all of Oscar, Hazard, De Bruyne, and Mata on the pitch at the same time just to see what the other team does.
• I was absolutely ecstatic when Bertrand Traore came on with about 15 minutes left to go. He's been around the club forever, but won't be able to officially join until he turns 18 in September. From the few times I've seen him in action though, he's looked like an absolutely sensational prospect that will immediately make our system better. The fact that he's playing friendlies for us this summer leads me to believe that his deal is already all but official, which should be taken as very good news by all Chelsea fans.