Chelsea beat Bournemouth 5-1 at Stamford Bridge and jumped from tenth to fifth. It was their first league win since the end of August, after a 3-0 defeat at Brentford going into the international break.
Two minutes and 29 seconds
Jordan Henderson scored after 66 seconds of his home debut, a shot from outside the box into the bottom left corner from Cole Palmer's pass. Inside the next minute and a half Henderson set up Morgan Rogers, the £117m British record signing from Aston Villa, who shot into the top right corner from the left of the box.
Chelsea were 2-0 up after two minutes and 29 seconds. According to Sky Sports that is the fastest two-goal lead in the club's Premier League history. Opta's The Analyst has it as the third-fastest by any side in the competition.
"It has never happened to me in such a short period to score that many early goals, so let's see if we can keep doing that," Xabi Alonso said. "Maybe, I'd prefer to score the first one in the last minute."
Same again after the break
Chelsea did it again at the start of the second half. Pedro Neto set up João Pedro, who scored into the top right corner within a minute of the restart. Evanilson pulled one back on 51 from close range after a corner. João Pedro restored the three-goal lead on 67 from Pep Chavarría's cross, and three minutes later Henderson curled a free kick into the top right corner.
João Pedro now has 19 goal involvements in 2026, 14 goals and five assists. Only Bruno Fernandes, on 22, has more.
Henderson at 36
Henderson joined on a free in August after his Brentford contract was ended by mutual agreement. At 36 years and 115 days he is the oldest Chelsea player to be directly involved in three goals in a Premier League game, taking that record from Gianluca Vialli.
"It's a good day, my home debut. It's nice to be at Stamford Bridge," he told Match of the Day. On the free kick: "I've been working on it in training for the last week or two."
Alonso confirmed it: "He's been using this international break to practice the free-kick." He went on: "We signed him for everything. If he's able to score two beauties like today we are more than happy for him. But apart from the goals he's done many good things. I think that today was a very complete performance."
Not as one-sided as 5-1
Bournemouth won seven corners to Chelsea's one and had 50.1 per cent of the ball. The Analyst even had them ahead on expected goals, 1.46 to 1.08. Chelsea were clinical with six shots on target from ten, and Emiliano Martínez made three saves. Chelsea have still not kept a clean sheet since January. "A win with a clean sheet will come," Alonso said.
Rose
Marco Rose did not dress it up. "We played not good, so a deserved loss, especially the way we started both halves," he said. "We were not ready, we were not sharp enough. Even our pressing was not Bournemouth-like in many situations."
Bournemouth have three points from six games, all from draws, and are winless under Rose. They have conceded 12 league goals, the most in the division. They play Sturm Graz in the Europa League on Thursday. Chelsea go to Everton next Saturday.
