Sunderland v Chelsea Betting Tips

Chelsea proved their capacity to ‘win ugly’ in their 1-0 defeat of West Brom at home, and they now travel to the Stadium of Light to take on a Sunderland side who suffered a 3-0 at Swansea at the weekend. The
hosts sit bottom of the pile with 11 points after 15 games, and Chelsea have now won nine games on the spin to top the table by three points, and they will feel ebullient about their chances of taking three points home from the North East.

Chelsea’s detractors would have argued prior to the weekend that they’d secured the bulk of their recent wins by exposing the defensive shortcomings of other teams, but Saturday’s display demonstrated that they were able to break down the team who have conceded the third-fewest goals on the road this season (West Brom, eight). They lost their last away game against Sunderland 3-2 just before the halfway mark last season, and the last three fixtures between these two sides have yielded 13 goals, so goals could easily be on the cards. This is especially likely given that Diego Costa is in red-hot form: he has either scored or assisted in 15 of his last 17 league games.

One concern for Sunderland will be their goalscoring: they have failed to score in five of their last nine across all competitions, and Chelsea have kept clean sheets in seven of their nine wins in this run. Consequently, Chelsea to win to nil seems worth a punt at 2.2.