Ward-Prowse makes first repayment on £30m West Ham fee as Chelsea’s big-money stars fold

Is it particularly fair to compare James Ward-Prowse to Chelsea’s new signings two weeks into a new season?

No. But we’re not about to let that stop us, because as well as being unfair it’s also undeniably very funny.

Let’s not kid ourselves on that a 3-1 West Ham win was an entirely accurate reflection on a pleasingly full-throttle London derby at the London Stadium. But Chelsea were also their own worst enemies and can’t really claim to have been wildly unlucky, either.

They really only played convincingly well for one relatively short period of this game: between falling behind after seven minutes and missing a penalty in the 43rd.

The miss seemed to deflate them, and their second-half performance was one pockmarked with desperation and disjointedness as big-money signing after big-money signing was chucked on by Mauricio Pochettino seemingly more in hope than expectation.

One of those big-money men duly conceded a penalty to allow Lucas Paqueta to apply the nerve-settling final touch.

Chelsea, we have to assume, will improve as they become better acquainted beyond the transfer deadline. But also, they’re going to have to. Raheem Sterling played well. Carney Cukwuemeka took his goal splendidly. Beyond that, there was little reason for much cheer.

As for West Ham, back in league action at home for the first time since winning the Europa Conference, there was an immediate impact from their new central midfielder.

Ward-Prowse is a very different footballer to Declan Rice, but still a fine one. He already looks a really canny acquisition for the Hammers, who should have no repeat of last season’s domestic travails with this squad even in the post-Rice era. Ward-Prowse softens that blow considerably, and showed exactly what he can offer here.

There were barely six minutes on the clock when a perfect corner arced clear of the mismatched, overpowered Chelsea defence for Nayef Aguerd to plant a header into the bottom corner. And while Ward-Prowse made only 24 passes in a game where West Ham lived off counter-attacking scraps for long periods, he found one of his new team-mates with all but one of them.

His second assist still left a great deal of work for Michail Antonio to do, work he did magnificently, but it was also a brilliant and instinctive first-time pass to pick out his new primary target and hinted at the potential inherent in their relationship down the line. Ward-Prowse is not going to need time to settle into this team, and they are already visibly better for his presence.

All that was missing, as he himself acknowledged with a smile afterwards on Sky Sports, was a direct free-kick. That will come, though. What there was beyond doubt was a clear demonstration of what he will bring to this team and how well-matched they are for each other. The quality of his set-piece delivery is well known, but there really are few better and the Hammers have plenty of eye-catching targets for the kind of ball he planted on Aguerd’s head today. Antonio already knows that his runs will be picked out by the new playmaker.

West Ham have endured a difficult summer in the transfer market, but they’ve made a sensible and excellent job of filling the enormous and conspicuous gap left by Rice’s inevitable exit and spent only a third of the transfer fee in doing so. We can’t quite put our finger on it, but something about Ward-Prowse is just unimpeachably West Ham. It should have felt utterly incongruous seeing him in anything other than a Southampton shirt after all these years, but this instantly felt absolutely right.

The contrast between JWP’s immediate importance and impact and quality, and the assorted shamblings of Chelsea’s billion-dollar experiment in largesse and hubris was stark. Of course the game could have gone very differently had Enzo Fernandez scored from 12 yards at a time when Chelsea were on top. But he didn’t. And even when they were dominating the game, you never really found yourself sat back and marvelling at the football being served up by this supposedly superstar team assembled at eye-watering cost.

That’s unfair, of course. It will take time for it all to come together. Three or four months, maybe. Just enough time for Todd Boehly to decide who to spend £100m and give an eight-year contract to in January and further disrupt things.

Mauricio Pochettino is a fine coach who will come up with solutions if given the time to do so, but this was a sobering afternoon against a manager he had never previously lost to, and one who now sits rather more comfortably in the big chair at London Stadium after this win.

Chelsea remain miles away from where they want to be, and they may feel very clever about gaming the system with their long contracts and turning football fans into amortisation experts, but at some point they do need to actually come up with a football team that works. It still feels secondary to Todd Boehly showing everyone how clever he is with his big experiment.

Both these teams had desperately disappointing Premier League campaigns last year. We’ve just discovered which one we’re more confident is going to make significant improvements this year, and the results are, we have to say, surprising.