\n<\/p>\n
Chelsea claimed a 6-4 victory over Australian side Western Sydney Wanderers in a pre-season friendly on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Dastan Satpayev, Dario Essugo and Jamie Gittens scored a goal apiece before Joao Pedro bagged a nine-minute hat-trick to seal victory for the Blues in a thrilling contest.<\/p>\n
Marco Palestra made his unofficial debut, while Estevao marked his return from injury in the contest.<\/p>\n
Pedro grabbed his chance to make an immediate impression on manager Xabi Alonso.<\/p>\n
Alonso brought on the Brazilian in the 63rd minute, with Chelsea trailing 3-2 at the time.<\/p>\n
Pedro just needed three minutes to make an impact. He weaved his way past his markers to set up Jamie Gittens for Chelsea\u2019s third goal.<\/p>\n
Two minutes after Awaniyen Lual restored the Wanderers\u2019 lead, Pedro got in on the act.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old showed composure to pick out the bottom corner for 4-4. Four minutes from time, he displayed his decisiveness to put Chelsea ahead before sealing the victory on the stroke of full-time.<\/p>\n
Pedro\u2019s performance offered an early indication of why Chelsea view him as a key player.<\/p>\n
Alonso praised the former Brighton & Hove Albion star after the match, highlighting his determination for the new season.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s very hungry \u2013 Joao is really, really determined to have a great season,\u2019 he told Chelsea\u2019s official website.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wants to \u2013 after a great last year, where he scored many goals \u2013 I think that he wants to keep scoring more and more. But we need to help him, as on his own it\u2019s not possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe will have the players around him, and they need to have this hunger to score as well. It\u2019s not just about the striker, but every time that we win and our striker scores, I am happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pedro was Chelsea\u2019s top scorer across all competitions last season. He bagged 23 goals and nine assists in 52 games.<\/p>\n
The Brazilian has been linked with Barcelona, but Chelsea are not prepared to listen to any offers for him.<\/p>\n
They will be hoping Pedro can build on last season\u2019s performances in the 2026\/27 campaign.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea claimed a 6-4 victory over Australian side Western Sydney Wanderers in a pre-season friendly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}