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Noni Madueke scored a second-half hat-trick as Chelsea secured their first Premier League victory under Enzo Maresca, staving off two comebacks from Wolverhampton Wanderers to emerge 6-2 winners at Molineux. After drawing a blank on the opening weekend against Manchester City, it took Chelsea less than two minutes to get off the mark for the campaign in the Midlands.
A Cole Palmer corner found its way to the back post, where Nicolas Jackson headed it past Wolves goalkeeper Jose Sa. The hosts almost made the ideal response before the 10-minute mark when Yerson Mosquera headed narrowly wide from six yards out, but just shy of the half-hour mark, Gary O’Neil’s men restored parity. Matheus Cunha - who had previously been denied an equalizer by the offside flag - was the man to hit the target again, curling past Robert Sanchez after being picked out by Rayan Aït-Nouri.
Maresca’s men evidently failed to learn their lesson, as they again left Cunha free to strike from the edge of the box, and only a Levi Colwill deflection took the ball onto the crossbar and over. That touch was vital, as three minutes later Sanchez caught the Wolves defence napping and pumped his goal kick long to Jackson, who prodded the ball through to Palmer to loft the ball over the backtracking Sa. However, Chelsea’s second lead of the game lived shorter than their first, as in the sixth minute of added time, Aït-Nouri curled a free-kick towards Toti Gomes, who headed the ball across goal to Jorgen Strand Larsen, and at full stretch the Norwegian scored his first goal for Wolves and send the sides in level at the interval.
The break did nothing to halt the scoring, as Chelsea restored their advantage just three minutes into the second half. Palmer fed the ball to Madueke who, from a tight angle, struck the ball across Sa and into the bottom corner, albeit with the help of a big deflection off Aït-Nouri. Just nine minutes later it was déjà vu, as Palmer and Madueke - in almost identical positions - combined again and the result was the same, though this time Madueke beat Sa with a clean strike to establish a two-goal lead for the visitors for the first time.
Wolves were shell-shocked, and things got even worse after the hour mark when they coughed up possession in their own half, allowing Enzo Fernandez and Jackson to combine and find Palmer, who once again slipped a pass to Madueke on his right, and the winger provided the finish to complete an extraordinary 15-minute hat-trick. Any faint hopes of a Wolves comeback were killed off in the space of two minutes, when a thunderous Mario Lemina strike was ruled out for offside, before Chelsea went down the other end and former Wolves man Pedro Neto pulled the ball back to João Félix, who rifled number six into the top corner.
The victory is Chelsea’s first at Molineux for five years, while Wolves are still without a point after a sobering afternoon on home soil.
