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@MobyChe
Chelsea v Everton How Everton kept the League's Top scorers at bay Tactical Review Thread
Chelsea lined up in their usual 4-2-3-1 with 2 changes from last week's game against Brentford, Disasi comes in for Cucurella but in the line up Gusto plays as a LB while Disasi as a RB. Everton were without McNeil whilst playing thier 4-3-3 formation
Chelsea's used a 3-2 shape today in settled Build-up with Disasi inverting into the 3rd CB whilst Gusto pushed up into the LHS while Sancho was wide. Enzo and Caicedo formed the pivot .
Everton to counter Chelsea's Build-up formed a very centrally-oriented 4-5-1 mid-block shape in which the wingers are basically playing as midfielders, while 5 midfielders try to block the central spaces because they know Chelsea are good at finding spaces in the pockets to progress the ball. Mangala and Doucoure marked both Enzo and Caicedo, sticking to them like glue while Gueye was mostly the one tracking Palmer
This midblock wasn't just dropping deep without a fight, they were actively pressing Chelsea whilst in the midblock, preventing them from entering their half easily. Doucuoure and Mangala were actively trying to force Enzo and Caicedo backwards, when the Cbs got the ball with back passes, the wingers were put under pressure when they received back to goal. They were put under pressure so any wrong pass was going to be punished but Chelsea did well largely to be neat on the ball from there
Jackson dropped deep from ST to help Chelsea find ways to progress the ball which would drag an Everton CB and trigger a Palmer 3rd man run to receive the pass behind Gueye to exploit the space the CB left. It was certainly a Solution
But Everton picked up on that and Tarkowski stopped following Jackson so closely into midfield because it opened up space. But this time becuase he left it for the Everton midfielders to handle, it meant there was more space in behind Everton's midfield in front of the CBs if Jackson held it up.
Everton started to just outnumber Jackson later on there so his influence between the lines began to wane, as it was tracked better by their midfielders
Another way we tried to get past the Everton mid-block was through balls in behind them. with Everton quite high trying to stop us from progressing the ball, there was space in-behind them and we often set Jackson away with them https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
With the Central orientation of Everton, the space would naturally be outwide but this is where their wingers come into play, Ndiaye and Harrison acted as Fullbacks a lot when Neto or Sancho had the ball in 1v1 situations, The 4-5-1 Everton midblock stretched to when they were in a low block, so they were doubled on and even trippled up on
But what I didnt like from Chelsea this game was that the wingers lacked adequate support with movement from the 8's, Palmer was mostly stationed behind Jackson and hardly ran the half-space channels, Gusto tried but was tracked and didnt support Sacnho a lot
But the Everton Fullbacks Young and Mykolenko were very tight to Sancho and Neto, helped by their Wingers, even though the switch to them was on so it was hard for them, but we needed them to try to get past their man more
It happened a lot more in the 2nd half, Sancho tried to be more direct but was often doubled and tripled up on, got past Young a bit more but look at Harrison there showing the dedication to stopping the wingers from doing anything productive
When Chelsea tried to put in crosses, Everton we're strong at defending them so it didn't work, the balls were repelled back from whence they came and we didn't have enough presence in the box like v Brentford for obvious transition threat reasons Eve have especially at home.
But Chelsea had good corners, especially in the first half and Jackson missed his chance which he didn't see till the last minute so it's hard to press him for it from a setpiece opportunity. Setpieces from Enzo's deliveries generally were threatening.
Everton's way of getting up the pitch since they basically refused to play out, was direct balls to Calvert-Lewin(DCL) but this was what Maresca planned for very well, playing Tosin, Disasi and Colwill at CB. Tosin who was the one mostly marking DCL won 4 of his 7 aerial duels as Chelsea managed to isolate him all game. few Everton teammates were close to him as they were focused on stopping Chelsea from the very beginning
It only worked a few times when DCL managed to win the ball and bring his teammates into the game but Samchez bailed us out there, the box offside trap almost cost us dearly there
Chelsea matched up with the physicality of Everton, apart from the CBs winning their duels, Caicedo and Enzo won their duels, Enzo won 8/11 duels, Caicedo won 7/8 of his and those almost single-handedly created big chances on their own generating transition moments but they were few and far between
Everton also had their transition ball-carrying threat of Ndiaye, Doucoure especially when they managed to get away from our Counter press which wasn't much, to be honest, but, Sanchez and Tosin had to save us those 2-3 times that happened. https://x.com/Mobchevid/status...
Maresca changed something in the 2nd half around the 61stmin with Gusto moving into the pivot and Enzo moving into the LHS instead, and it did change something, Chelsea looked a bit more threatening in moments as Enzo started to get the ball to Palmer centrally a lot more and is a far bigger goal threat than Gusto
Some Thoughts: Maresca didnt make changes until the 75min, which was too late in my opinion as Everton nullified all our threats till then and we didnt look like scoring in the 60+ min he needed to change something, probably bring in Guiu who is a box striker instead of Nkunku that wouldn't challenge them much in the air, Neto would have been better served going to the left to challenge Young with direct pace a lot more. I feel Maresca should have gone with his Diamond midfield formation but I understand that the transition threat of Everton against just Caicedo would have been not fair on him plus Cucurella isn't available as he helps massively with stopping those attacks. i didn't feel like we took enough risk trying to score.
But that's just tactical. Chelsea ended up creating one of their lowest XG's of the season with 1.17 created according to Sofascore. They created a bit in the first half with those Jackson chances but they weren't as clear-cut because of the situations fo them both but if we score one, we win. but these are one of those days, massive credit to Everton who set up to deny us and they did, showing they are one of the best defences in the league, denying both us and Arsenal in back-to-back weeks. But to put a positive light on it. we didn't lose at a ground we don't seem to get a lot of joy from and Chelsea will be happy to see the back of that stadium
End of Thread Likes, Reposts and Comments are duly appreciated as always Thank you