Chelsea’s performance in beating Norwich City in the early kick-off on Saturday was pretty much a textbook display.The scoring started early and the chances continued to flow throughout. It took a few minutes to get to grips with a double change by the Canaries at half-time, when they went from two to three up front, but once Ben Chilwell scored our fourth goal on 57 minutes, there was no looking back, especially with our opponents reduced to 10 men soon after.Unsurprisingly the 7-0 victory is our biggest against Norwich. The previous best was 4-0.Yesterday was the 25th time a Chelsea men’s side has scored seven or more goals in a game and the 16th time in league matches, six of those in the Premier League era.

Hat-trick man Mason Mount is grabbing the headlines. His three goals came from the most shots by any player in the game and he takes to 20 the number of different players to score a hat-trick in the Premier League for the club, only one behind Arsenal’s record total.

Chilwell on the scoresheet again

At Brentford last weekend, Ben Chilwell became the first Chelsea defender to score in three consecutive Premier League appearances and he extended that to four against Norwich, although some of the positions in attack he occupied do add to the question of whether his way current way of playing left wing-back can be classed as a defensive position.The last English Chelsea player to score in four league matches in a row was Frank Lampard, Yesterday, Chilwell also supplied the most crosses in the match with four. Second goal scorer Hudson-Odoi crossed three times and Mount twice.

With the other wing-back, Reece James, also on target, the six goals scored by Chelsea players in the match were all netted by Englishmen. For the last time that happened, you have to go back over 40 years to October 1980 when Colin Lee was the hat-trick scorer and Mike Fillery, Clive Walker and Gary Chivers were the other scorers in a 6-0 win over Newcastle.

Commanding Kova

Mateo Kovacic stood out in midfield, making a sublime assist pass for Hudson-Odoi to score the second goal. The Croatian’s six key passes doubled the next best tally from Mount. Kovacic was accurate with five out of eight attempted long-ball passes, and he won more tackles that anyone else in the game – five in total.

Toni Rudiger came up from the back to enjoy the attacking fun to the extent that he had the second most shots in the game, with one of his four on target. In the 20 minutes Hakim Ziyech was on, the Moroccan had three attempts at goal.

Our 23 total shots and 13 shots on target were the most by the Blues in any game this season. Norwich had just three shots, one on target, and won zero corners. They successfully complete 299 passes to our 567.

Chelsea are now unbeaten in 18 matches against Norwich in all competitions. We have won 13 of those.

Taking chances

Chelsea’s efficiency in front of goal continues to be the best in the Premier League this season by some distance. Our shot conversion percentage compared with last season is one of the clear improvements that has driven us to the top of the table with the season reaching its quarter-way-through stage. In 2020/21 we were down in 14th position for turning shots into goals throughout the whole of last season.