With countless competitive rivalries and traditionally heated derbies, you’d be forgiven for missing out on a few of the Premier League’s feisty side arcs.
Be it Diego Costa’s square-offs against Martin Skrtel or a bit of friendly fire involving Emmanuel Adebayor and Lord Bendtner himself, even the Prem’s side stories are animated.
Fans online discovered a recent example of one such feud, involving Chelsea fullback Cesar Azpilicueta and Man City’s Jack Grealish.
Similarly, another freshly-brewed rivalry popped up on the radar yesterday, with the players involved being Kai Havertz and Dan Burn.
The pair had a notable flare-up last season during Newcastle United‘s visit to Stamford Bridge. The tightly contested game saw Havertz leave an elbow on Burn while competing for a header, the defender in turn made sure to raise an accusatory finger at the German.
On that occasion, it was the forward who had the last laugh, as he latched onto a flighted pass and capitalized on a mistake by Burn to give Chelsea all 3 points.
Yesterday, however, things panned out very differently.
The players met at St James’ Park, with Havertz coming on as a substitute in a game thoroughly dominated by the Magpies.
Holding onto a 1-0 lead, Newcastle continued to frustrate Chelsea, who simply couldn’t stitch together a single attack. Visibly annoyed, Havertz was already on edge, and then came a vengeful Dan Burn to make matters worse.
With the German’s elbow fresh on his mind, the defender gave Havertz a proper rough-housing, eventually leading to an all-out outburst from the forward.
His actions led to a shoving contest between both sides right after full-time, with Burn and Havertz as the prime protagonists.
With a clean sheet in the bag and the German in his pocket, Burn took this round, and quite comfortably if we may add.
Round 3 is all set to be contested back at Stamford Bridge, and we cannot wait to see who comes out on the top in the tie-breaker.