Hull City Stay Unbeaten as Mohamed Belloumi's Brace Earns a 2-2 Draw at Chelsea

Chelsea led this game twice and still could not win it. Hull City, up from the Championship this summer, matched them shot for shot and goal for goal at Stamford Bridge, and left London with a hard-earned 2-2 draw that stretched their unbeaten start back in the Premier League to four matches.

Chelsea ahead early, pulled back twice

Morgan Rogers put Chelsea in front inside seven minutes, finishing a rapid counter after a Hull corner broke down. Hull needed until the 28th minute to level, Belloumi converting after Jorrel Hato misjudged a bounce inside his own box, and the same player put the visitors ahead just six minutes later, his shot from the edge of the area deflecting in off Levi Colwill and past Emiliano Martínez.

Palmer sets up the leveller, then no more goals

Chelsea needed until the 66th minute to get back level a second time, Cole Palmer carving out space to feed João Pedro, who smashed the equaliser into the roof of the net. It was Chelsea's most fluent spell of the afternoon, and it produced only parity — Hull held on from there, despite picking up five yellow cards to Chelsea's one as the closing stages turned scrappy.

Belloumi, the €5.5m signing turning heads

Belloumi is 24, Algerian, wears the number 10 shirt, and cost Hull just €5.5 million when he arrived from Portugal's Farense in 2024. Two goals in six minutes at Stamford Bridge, against a Chelsea back line assembled for many multiples of that fee, is exactly the kind of afternoon that turns a promoted club's bargain buy into a player the rest of the division starts planning around.

The Premier League's form side is a promoted club

Hull went into the weekend third in the table on seven points from three matches, with two wins and a draw and not a single goal conceded — a record no other side in the division could match, promoted or otherwise. The draw stretches that unbeaten run to four games and takes them to eight points, still without a defeat since coming up. Chelsea, by contrast, arrived 4th on six points from two wins and a defeat to Arsenal the previous weekend, and have now conceded at least two goals in every single one of their four league matches this season — a pattern their new head coach will want to see broken sooner rather than later.

Goals by half

Chelsea's mixed month

This was Chelsea's third result out of four to swing on individual moments rather than control of the game: a 3-2 opening win at Fulham, a 4-3 home win over Brighton in which they led and were pegged back repeatedly, then the loss at Arsenal, and now this. Cole Palmer remains Chelsea's most reliable source of end product under new head coach Xabi Alonso, but a defence that has shipped at least two goals in every one of their four matches is the more pressing story at Stamford Bridge heading into the next international window. Alonso's first month in charge now reads two wins, a loss and a draw — seven points from a possible twelve, with the underlying numbers suggesting a side still finding its balance between the two ends of the pitch rather than one settling into a clear identity.

Match stats