Noni Madueke will remember Wolverhampton more fondly than early impressions had suggested as it provided the setting for his first glorious hat-trick in Chelsea colours.... CLICK TO READ THE FULL NEWS HERE▶▶
The young winger had caused uproar in the proud west Midlands city with a foolish social media post on Saturday night that proclaimed: “Everything about this place is s***”.
He’ll now regard Molineux as an honourable exception.
Make no mistake, the knives were already out for the billionaire Blues after an insipid opening-day loss to Manchester City.
Chelsea thrashed Wolves 6-2 at Molineux in the Premier League on Sunday afternoon
The Blues put in an impressive display to ensure Enzo Maresca got his first Premier League win
The Blues put in an impressive display to ensure Enzo Maresca got his first Premier League win
Noni Madueke went home with the match ball after his hat-trick which came across 14 minutes
All of Madueke’s goals on Sunday were assisted by Chelsea team-mate Cole Palmer (centre)
Things didn’t look any more positive at half-time either when goals from Nicolas Jackson and Cole Palmer had been cancelled out by Matheus Cunha and Jorgen Strand Larsen.
At that stage, Chelsea looked thrilling going forward but weak and flimsy going the other way with £200million midfielders Enzo Fernandez and Felipe Caicedo utterly dominated.
Then Madueke, who had personally looked lively in the first half, took over. The England under-21 international fired three goals in 14 sensational minutes. To add to the surreal nature of the drama, all his strikes were similar, receiving passes from Palmer on the right-angle of the penalty area and finishing low and hard into the corner, the first via deflection.
He greeted his all-important first goal with unabandoned joy vaulting the hoardings to celebrate with the Chelsea fans and getting mobbed by team-mates.
When he completed his hat-trick, he held up three fingers for emphasis and pointed in gratitude at Palmer.
The England international had a role in all six Chelsea goals and if ever there was an argument for the hat-trick hero not being named man-of-the-match, this was it.
Madueke later apologised for the rude post about his hosts which had already caused damage before it was deleted.
‘I just want to apologise to everyone that I might have offended,’ he said. ‘It is just a human mistake, an accident. It wasn’t meant to be out on my socials like that. I’m sure Wolverhampton is a nice town and I’m sorry.
‘In terms of the boos I expected it but it is part of the game. You have to be able to play under that sort of pressure.’
Madueke’s hat-trick came after he was booed by Wolves fans for calling Wolverhampton ‘s***’
Palmer arguably scored the goal of the game with a stylish lobbed finish late in the first half
Maresca claimed he wasn’t fully aware of Madueke’s error of judgement until after the match.
But he was correct in assessing the 22-year-old’s contribution on the pitch. ‘It was a fantastic performance, even in the first half before his goals. He is the kind of winger I like,’ purred the manager.
The negative reaction that greeted Madueke’s first touch was ear-splitting but he used it as fuel.
After just 60 seconds, he dribbled through the Wolves defence and forced a save from Jose Sa. From the resulting corner taken by Palmer, Chelsea scored when Cunha’s inadvertent flick-on found Jackson unmarked to head in at the far post.
It was the perfect start for the visitors who were without injured Romeo Lavia and the so-called unwanted “bomb squad” of players headed by Raheem Sterling.
Yet nobody seems to self-destruct like the Londoners either.
Instead of building on his early goal, Jackson decided to celebrate in front of the Wolves end, causing a scuffle between both sets of players and rousing Molineux to a point where a home equaliser looked inevitable.
Joao Felix, making his first appearance since rejoining Chelsea, scored his team’s sixth goal
Matheus Cunha (left) and Jorgen Strand Larsen (right) scored for Wolves during the first half
Cunha, who scored a hat-trick at Stamford Bridge last season, hit the crossbar and had a goal disallowed but levelled after 27 minutes when Rayan Ait-Nouri sped past Fernandez and played him in. He mocked Jackson as he returned to the centre circle and got a shove in return. It was that kind of chaotic affair.
Palmer’s brilliance restored the visitor’s lead after 45 minutes when Jackson flicked on goalkeeper Robert Sanchez’s clearance and the England international lobbed over Sa who was caught in no-man’s land.
Even then Maresca’s players couldn’t reach the interval level. The marking was non-existent as Ait-Nouri floated a free-kick in the sixth minute of injury-time and Strand Larsen converted his first goal goal for the Old Gold.
Has there ever been a club quite as Marmite as this Chelsea? The excessive spending by owner Todd Boehly has left them with 43 players and many fans cheering every failure.
Yet when their good players click, the end result can be like a brilliant tidal wave. And in this second half, Wolves were simply swept away with beaten manager Gary O’Neill admitting: ‘I saw things in us I’d not seen before.’
Maresca took the bold decision to hook £89million Mykhailo Mudryk who had been hopeless with former Wolves favourite Pedro Neto on in his place for the second period.
The team immediately looked better balanced. Caicedo, Jackson and Palmer were all involved in the move after 49 minutes that saw Madueke’s shot take a nick of Ait-Nouri and in.
There was nothing complicated about Palmer’s next two passes for Madueke, who is London-born but spent his formative years at PSV before joining Chelsea for £29million in 2023. But the passes were played at precisely the right time and tempo, and Madueke buried them.
There was even time for more good news from Chelsea with Joao Felix coming on for his second Chelsea debut and scoring after Palmer and Neto had sliced open the Wolves defence.
The Londoners were beaten twice by Wolves last season and this was their first victory at Molineux since 2019 and their first six-goal haul outside Stamford Bridge since 2022 under Thomas Tuchel.
Maybe Wolverhampton won’t ever be Madueke’s holiday destination of choice, but he won’t mind returning if it means more chaotic afternoons like this.
