Chelsea have a gold badge on the shirt for the next four years but they had lead in their boots for much of their opening game. This was a flat start to a possible title challenge from the new world champions, who were unable to lift themselves after being dragged back down to earth during this feisty London derby, and it could have been worse given that Crystal Palace’s diminishing faith in authority was not exactly helped by Eberechi Eze having the only goal of the game ruled out by a pedantic VAR intervention.
It would have been some way for Eze to sign off for Palace, assuming that his widely anticipated move to Tottenham goes through this week. The playmaker appeared to have given Oliver Glasner’s excellent side the lead when he blasted an early free-kick past Robert Sánchez, although Palace’s mistake was forgetting that nothing is ever truly certain in modern football. They have already had one prize snatched away this summer – Uefa demoting them to the Conference League over a failure to comply with multi-club ownership rules – and endured more frustration when Darren England, the on-pitch referee, was sent to the pitchside monitor and penalised Marc Guéhi for straying within a metre of the Chelsea wall as he grappled with Moisés Caicedo.
