From Traore to Wilson, winners and losers from today’s Premier League 3pm games

The 3pm kick-offs for this Premier League gameweek are now in the bag.

We saw some lovely football, some shocking misses, an incredible comeback and so much more! Who were the winners and losers from the Premier League’s 3pm kick-offs? Read on and find out!

Winner: Adama Traoré

Adama Traoré is an unreal dribbler. There’s literally only a handful of guys in the world who are better than he is at taking a man on. He’s such a muscular combination of pace, power and technique that he’s almost impossible to stop. Men as big as him can’t usually keep the ball glued to their feet, but Traoré was born in sight of the Camp Nou and raised in La Masia.

That said, the big criticism of him is that he doesn’t produce enough “end product” i.e. goals and assists. For a guy who can dribble as well as he can, he should be impacting the scoresheet more. This is true, but Adama is 22 and since leaving Barcelona three years ago has played exclusively on bad teams. Well, now he’s in a decent side and let’s see what he can do.

Oh! He can score a stoppage-time winner for his club, running late into the area to pick up Leo Bonatini’s pass, take a touch and then fire it hard and low just inside the near-post. Fabianski was left with no chance and Traoré announces himself in the Premier League.

Loser: Callum Wilson & Nathan Aké

Chelsea were better than Bournemouth and deserved their win, but that’s a conclusion reached at full-time. About an hour into the game when it was 0-0 you wouldn’t have been surprised if Bournemouth that stolen a win, let alone a draw.

That they didn’t pull off a historic win is down to two men: Wilson and Aké. Both men missed gloriously good chances. Aké’s in the second half as a Diego Rico corner fell down into his path and he somehow blazed it over the bar from close range. That was bad, but Wilson in the first-half was worse. As a striker he’s in the team to bury these chances and when Diego Rico’s spectacular cross found Wilson running onto it inside the box, unmarked, you would have expected the net to bulge. But no, Wilson barely even made contact.

Then the inevitable happened.

Winner: Pedro

Chelsea beating Bournemouth at home seems inevitable now, but it only became that way after the introduction of Pedro. Maurizio Sarri’s system relies on a lot of passing and possession, true, but also intense off-the-ball movement to take advantage of the spaces that get created by the ball possession.

At Napoli this manifested with the left side being ball-heavy and the right side being off-the-ball heavy. But Pedro began this game on the bench and so Willian and Hazard were just drifting all over the place with their possession, making it hard for them to open up holes in Bournemouth’s system with any reliability.

When Pedro came on, the play moved to the left and Hazard more exclusively. Pedro’s intelligent movement away from possession led to him coming into the action from space as Olivier Giroud laid the ball back to him. Pedro swerved aside his defender and thumped it into the bottom corner. 1-0. After that Chelsea began playing liquid football, largely because Pedro was now around to be the release valve for the team’s possession focus.

Loser: Carlos Sánchez

There are many West Ham players who could go here, or just West Ham as a club really, but Carlos Sánchez has to be the one. The Colombian was always a strange signing for the Hammers owing to his declining skill-level and the relentlessness of the Premier League. And he was caught out again today by Wolves.

With the game petering out, Sánchez had the ball at his feet in space. When he got the ball, Ruben Neves immediately moved to press him. Instead of getting rid of the ball instantly, Sánchez tried to dribble Neves and got dispossessed. 10 seconds later and Wolves had the ball in the back of the net and West Ham’s first point of the season went up in smoke. Four defeats in four games… ouch.

Winner: Lucas Digne

Lucas Digne was, by virtue of Jordi Alba’s brilliance, thought of as some kind of useless player simply because he couldn’t unseat the pint-sized Catalan. Well, Digne is out of Alba’s oddly huge shadow and back in a starting role, now for Everton, and showing his huge quality.

Digne has started the last two games for the Toffees and in those starts he’s bagged an assist each time. Today against Huddersfield he showed his persistent attacking skill to keep going with the ball, riding a challenge and getting his head up before bending a beautiful cross i for Dominic Calvert-Lewin to immediately equalise. If Digne continues this kind of creative form then Everton will have a very good season indeed.

Winner: Danny Ings

A fit Danny Ings has great potential to perform, and right now he is fit. At the very start of the second half, he made one of those trademark runs behind the Crystal Palace defence. For once the ball actually ended up reaching him, and Ings showed absolutely no hesitation by slotting the ball into the back of the net with a calm outside of the foot finish.

If Danny Ings can stay fit, and that’s a big “if” because remember Ings has played just 14 Premier League games all through his three years with Liverpool, then Southampton may finally have the goalscoring forward that they have craved since Graziano Pellé was in his pomp.

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