Chelsea's midfield trio dominate the game and your community player ratings

Mourinho says that Oscar has gone through an evolution lately, but that this is not his final form.  And that should make you amazingly excited, because his current form is absolutely amazing.  Another goal, another assist, controlling the play -- he's doing it all.

This is Oscar's third Man of the Match of the season (most on the team) and third in our last five games (Bolton, Villa, Palace).  He just missed a fourth against Arsenal, too, by finishing a tenth of a point behind Hazard.

A ridiculous number of touches for Fabregas, especially after what to me seemed like a rather subdued first half.  Mourinho pointed out in his post-match that part of the reason for that was Palace's man-marking of Fabregas with James McArthur, a strategy that was no longer viable when it was 10-v-10.  Not that the strategy was all that effective prior to that anyway as Chelsea controlled the game from minute 1 to minute 94.

Given a bit more freedom in the second half, Fabregas flourished and even found himself in position to score arguably our best (team) goal of the season.  Is it any surprise that Fabregas was at the heart of both this team-move goal and the one that Schurrle scored?

Last but not least, here's Matic to complete Chelsealona's dominant midfield trio, all three of whom had at least 100 touches and attempted at least 96 passes.  Ridiculous numbers, really, though perhaps not entirely unexpected given that at times in the second half, our possession edge was 80-20.

As Mourinho said, truly the only thing that was missing was the third goal, which would've prevented that little bit of anxiety in the final 3-4 minutes.