Costa’s Goals That Have Won 3 Points This Season

Finally, Diego Costa will serve a one-match ban after collecting his fifth yellow card of the 2016/17 season. Costa has been on four yellow cards since the sixth match of the season and it took all of 10 matches for him to get the fifth – and what an innocuous tackle that was? 

A seemingly needless hack at the back of Joe Ledley’s legs fetched the Spaniard that fifth booking and an early Christmas leave.

But we chronicle the most important of his 13 goals – goals that have assuredly won all three points for Antonio Conte.

The Spaniard kept Chelsea in the top echelon in the first three weeks. On the opening day, Costa scored the winner in the 89th minute against West Ham to kick off the Conte regime. In the second week, it was another late goal. 

A glorious pass picked out Costa from Cesc Fabregas, and he finished low and hard past the Watford goalkeeper – and this one arrived in the 87th minute. That was six from six in the first two and could not be achieved without Costa’s late goals.

The third week was more of the same as Costa almost single-handedly won a point for Conte as Chelsea scored first through Costa but were pegged back by two Swansea goals but Costa was on hand to rescue a point nine minutes from time with a spectacular overhead kick.

Then there came the consecutive losses to Liverpool and Arsenal which saw Conte go from a 4-4-3 to a 3-4-3 formation and saw the Blues embark on an 11-match winning run that has taken them nine points clear.

Costa magnified his relevance to the team by scoring the three goals that have given Conte outright victory in three of their last four matches. He scored the decisive goals against Middlesbrough, Manchester City, Sunderland and Crystal Palace on Saturday.

So even though Costa has scored 13 goals – we say Costa’s most important goals have accounted directly for 16 points out of the 40 that the Blues have on the board at the moment.