Abraham confident heading into Chelsea’s latest away test

Chelsea’s story of this stuttering season took another strange turn on Sunday at the Emirates. While the 2-1 win over Arsenal continued two significant trends — Chelsea winning more points away from home than at home, and Chelsea continuing to alternate wins and losses — it also provided something we hadn’t seen all season: a comeback victory! For the first time all season, Chelsea overturned a deficit to win.

It wasn’t looking too promising for most of the game, but the team kept fighting, kept grafting, and eventually found paydirt. Twice! Combined with the aforementioned trends, the win gives plenty of confidence heading into today’s New Year’s Day matchup against Brigthon & Hove Albion, as Tammy Abraham revealed earlier this week.

“We know our away form is good. It is just about us fixing our form at home. This gives us confidence, beating two of the big sides in two weekends.”

For Tammy, the Arsenal match was an important personal milestone as well, as he finally managed to score a goal against one of the traditional top six sides. It was just reward for the young striker who has been a revelation at Premier League level this season, stepping up his game from Championship level without missing too many beats.

“I am so glad to score the winning goal against one of the big-six sides and hopefully that kicks off for the rest of my career. I got the ball and pretended to go on my left foot before going back to my right foot and as soon as I turned, I saw the keeper running out and I just placed it in – a nice little nutmeg!”

“The top teams have top-class defenders and midfielders who know how to isolate the striker during the game. It is about staying focused and staying relaxed for when I got my chance, and I did.”

Of course, he has plenty of room left to improve, just as the rest of Lampard’s young team.

Recent narrative has concerned itself with the team’s mentality as much as its overall quality, but last weekend’s win showed promise in that regard as well, with dressing room “aggressiveness” matching the fight in the turnaround at the Emirates.

“We were not good enough in the first 20 to 30 minutes. Give credit to Arsenal, they dominated us in places like midfield which is key in football.

“Give credit to the manager as well, he made a change and the players bounced off that and in the second half it was a performance everyone wants to see. We were outnumbered in midfield so we needed to change and the change helped us a lot.”

“Our team never stops fighting. We were told at half-time to not stop fighting and to go out there and believe in ourselves and that is what we did in the second half.

-Tammy Abraham; Source: Chelsea FC

Let’s keep it going!