Blues ease to first pre-season win

[BlueLion. 21,491]

Chelsea began their pre-season preparations in style with a 5-0 hammering of Wycombe Wanderers.

In front of a capacity crowd at Adams Park, a youthful Chelsea side - featuring one or two first-team stalwarts - proved too much for the League Two outfit, as the hosts were undone by a sparkling offensive performance.

Patrick Bamford opened the scoring with a cultured side-foot volley from Nathan Aké's left-wing cross, before moments after the half-time interval, 16 year-old Izzy Brown beat goalkeeper Matt Ingram with a thundering finish.

Chelsea captain John Terry then added a third when he swept home a set-piece delivery, before Branislav Ivanovic headed home a fourth from a well-worked Jeremie Boga free-kick.

Brown then supplied the goal of the game with two minutes remaining as he sumptuously lofted the ball home into the top corner from fully 20 yards.

As ever in pre-season games, the result is elementary, but for José Mourinho this will have been an impressive performance by what was, essentially, a Chelsea youth eleven.

Though the experience of Mark Schwarzer, John Terry, Branislav Ivanovic, Nemanja Matic and Mohamed Salah will have had some impact on the game - particularly with the defensive duo both netting - this was the perfect opportunity for a number of the Blues' academy prospects to impose themselves further upon the plans of the Chelsea boss.

Particularly impressive were the aforementioned Brown and Boga, whilst Kurt Zouma, a January acquisition from St Etienne, looked equally as composed playing at both right-back and centre-half.

Chelsea now turn their attention towards a fixture away at AFC Wimbledon on Saturday afternoon, but what will most likely again be a youth-dominated Blues squad will head to Kingsmeadow in good heart after this impressive performance.

Wycombe rarely threatened, though the hosts did almost capitalise on a piece of hesitant goalkeeping by Schwarzer towards the end of the first half - thankfully, from a Chelsea perspective, goalscorer Bamford was in the right place to hack clear off the line.

Bamford cut a lone figure for much of the opening exchanges, but the England youth international - who spent the back end of last season on loan at Championship side Derby - looked to be his clinical usual self as he volleyed home, after Aké did superbly to hook Oriol Romeu's clipped ball into the penalty area.

That early strike seemed to give Chelsea the impetus, and though it was the hosts who fashioned the next-best opportunity of the half, the Blues were able to retain that momentum early in the second half as goals from Brown and Terry gave them something of a buffer between them and their dumbstruck hosts.

First Brown finished with aplomb from Boga's cut-back, finishing high into the roof of the net, whilst Terry showed the composure of a veteran striker when he side-footed home a well-worked corner routine past Ingram at his near post.

There was little longer to wait as Ivanovic atoned for an earlier miss when he glanced a header over the exposed goalkeeper, and but for a couple of contentious offside decisions, young Dom Solanke may well have joined the Serbian on the scoresheet.

Instead, after Boga had seen an effort well stopped by the young Wycombe goalkeeper, it was up to Brown to have the final say, as he gloriously curled the ball well beyond Ingram's reach from the edge of the area to cap off an excellent team performance.

At this very early stage of pre-season, a predominantly youth-orientated Chelsea squad will be playing to catch the eye of Mourinho, and one or two will surely have seen their stock soar after promising displays.

For the old guard, it was a case of a job well done as the Stamford Bridge outfit came through without any major injury concerns (though Todd Kane was replaced with a slight groin niggle), and further buoyed by the recent arrivals of Diego Costa and Filipe Luis to bolster their assault on silverware this coming season.