royal blue mersey 
18-04-2024 11:56
18-04-2024 11:56
Chelsea 6-0 Everton: Three Takeaways | Humiliated
Quite what Sean Dyche was thinking when he devised his game plan for Everton’s visit to the capital on Monday night is anyone’s guess. Stunned Blues fans watching on TV and those committed souls unfortunate enough to be present in the stadium witnessed a massacre on similar lines to that inflicted on the Viking army at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, all the way back in 1066. The intent - confirmed by the man himself post-match - was to exert early pressure on a Chelsea side who have often looked vulnerable and disjointed this season.
Consequently, the Toffees tried to press the hosts in the opposing third of the pitch, jumping on any attempt to play out from the back. Of course, for this to work a defensive high-line has to be implemented and boy, was Everton’s line high! On occasion, the entire outfield ten was in the Chelsea half — dangerous tactics for a defence devoid of pace, with the exception of Jarrad Branthwaite. Barely 25 seconds in, a wide-open Cole Palmer glided through acres of space in midfield, causing consternation and foreshadowing what was to come.
For ten minutes it appeared that the Blues boss may be onto something, as his charges bullied their opponents into coughing up the ball and created a gilt-edged chance for Beto to convert. Quite how the luckless Portuguese striker managed to shin over the bar from point-blank range is a mystery; the opportunity was calculated at an xG (Expected Goals) statistic of 0.95 - considerably higher than from the penalty spot. However, the to-and-fro, hectic nature of the game would be Everton’s undoing, with the hosts punishing them just three minutes later, courtesy of Palmer’s stunning finish.
This team does not come from behind to win, so the slight possibility that they’d secure a first league win at the Bridge since 1994 already appeared forlorn. They've only managed to score twice in a game on one occasion in the last four months - a 2-2 draw with Tottenham Hotspur, in February - so when Palmer headed home a second in the 18th minute the visitors’ chances of emerging with even a point all but vanished. In the 29th the game was officially over with the Chelsea attacker’s hat-trick, courtesy of an unbelievable error by Jordan Pickford. Commence fun for the home side, humiliation for the Blues. Pushing up the backline against a team with the pace the opposition possesses was a prescription for disaster. James Garner and Amadou Onana exacerbated the problem by occupying high positions, whether to join the press, or to recycle possession, leaving huge spaces behind them in the midfield for Chelsea’s wingers to cut into, or for Palmer to exploit from his central playmaker position. As soon as Everton’s frenetic pressing scheme was bypassed havoc ensued, with the midfield stranded upfield and the defence in full retreat as the home side poured forward at speed.
The visitors made Chelsea look every bit like the elite side of former years, or at least one that had spent a net of almost €742m on transfers over the last two seasons. The West Londoners played around Everton as if they were cones on the training pitch — such was the discrepancy in speed and ability. Dyche gambled everything on a side who’ve missed opportunities all season to be clinical in the opening ten minutes, or for something to fly in inadvertently, but this side has surely used up its allocation of fluke goals during recent weeks. Is that a strategy? Once Everton’s tempo slackened, they were annihilated.
"It's the most embarrassed I've felt as an individual as part of a team in my time as a footballer" James Tarkowski says there's 'no excuses' on his sides behalf after tonight's defeat against Chelsea pic.twitter.com/HVXnB6nz85 — Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) April 15, 2024
Mea Culpa Time
James Tarkowski faced the music post-match and gave a mea culpa on behalf of himself and his teammates, whom he acknowledged had not performed up to the required levels. Nobody would argue with that assertion, or that it was heartfelt, but what followed - an explicit excusing of Dyche and his staff for any role in the debacle did not sit right with me. This explanation was mirrored by the Everton boss during his TV interview shortly after, which seems a little too coincidental. Dyche was keen to put all the blame on his players and to accept none himself.
For some fans, this gels with how they see things; after all, watching a team routinely play badly while failing to win matches for several months is not conducive to making one want to defend them overmuch. Players don’t typically lose their jobs for underperforming, though they will (usually) get dropped, or moved on, whereas the manager tends to carry the can for poor results and ultimately get fired. While this entails them wandering off into the sunset with a nice severance package - such as the £7m Everton paid Frank Lampard - no fan wants to see the boss fail, if only for obvious reasons. The team very obviously struggled out there, though the constant trotting out of the theory that this same group has let down any number of Blues managers, going back to Marco Silva, is the product of lazy thinking. Of the eleven who started at Stamford Bridge, only three - Pickford, Seamus Coleman and Abdoulaye Doucoure - have played a league game for an Everton boss not named Dyche or Lampard.
According to the manager, the tactics were sound, because the team created one great chance to take the lead, but this is delusional. This fiasco was reminiscent of naïve away outings under Lampard - against Spurs, Crystal Palace and Southampton - where the team pushed up aggressively and were destroyed on the counter, once early intensity levels dipped. Their attempts to stop Chelsea became ragged and undisciplined. Battles were lost, gaps opened up and the hosts clinically punished an increasingly bedraggled Everton.
Coleman and Vitalii Mykolenko were hung out to dry in foot races against rapid wingers Mykhaylo Mudryk and Noni Madueke. Chelsea were successful in 54.3% of their 35 dribble attempts. Individually, the Toffees players were simply outmatched, but it is the job of the manager to mitigate against a such a deficiency in talent; instead he exposed the weaknesses of his players by the way he chose to approach the game. Collectively, Everton have been a better unit than Chelsea all season, but we didn’t play a team game on Monday.
Dyche needs to take a long look at that match and assess his own part in what went wrong. If he’s honest with himself and takes responsibility, then Everton have a chance; if he carries on like this, blundering forward with blinkers on, then we are is serious trouble.
Random Observations
Onana has again been criticised by some Blues fans for an apparent lack of effort. On a night where nobody deserved any praise, the Belgian was not alone in that regard, but this certainly was a poor performance by him. He deserved to come off at halftime, but you could have substituted all eleven without getting much of an argument. The 22-year-old is being looked at by elite sides and will be a key figure for his country over the summer, but I don’t think he understands what Dyche wants him to do; I don’t either.
Mauricio Pochettino probably could not believe his luck. After two deeply unimpressive performances by his expensively-assembled team - in only drawing against ten-man Burnley and a hapless Sheffield United, two clubs propping up the division - he likely anticipated a tough night of trying to break Everton down. Instead, his side were made to look like world-beaters.
In the opening half, when Everton weren’t being dribbled past (12 times), or losing ground duels (40% success rate), they were clumsily giving fouls away (12). A feature of this game and something that has occurred with increasingly regularity is the Blues defence playing hyper-aggressively. Time and again Tarkowski charged into midfield, only to either be turned, or to give up a foul. He’s at his best when holding his ground and making blocks, with Branthwaite using his pace to cover in behind. Everton built a strong defence earlier in the campaign based on those foundations and the manager needs to get back to that.
The nagging concern I have is that some of the team may be losing faith with Dyche’s methods. There’s been a definite dip after the international break, since which Everton have played just thirty minutes of solid football (against Newcastle United) in four matches, and it’s not like the team were pulling up any trees beforehand. On Monday, they hit rock bottom. It’s true that without deductions the club would be on 35 points and virtually safe, but the Toffees have fluked one win in 15 league matches and are playing garbage at a crucial stage of the campaign.
Statistics provided courtesy of fotmob.com
Consequently, the Toffees tried to press the hosts in the opposing third of the pitch, jumping on any attempt to play out from the back. Of course, for this to work a defensive high-line has to be implemented and boy, was Everton’s line high! On occasion, the entire outfield ten was in the Chelsea half — dangerous tactics for a defence devoid of pace, with the exception of Jarrad Branthwaite. Barely 25 seconds in, a wide-open Cole Palmer glided through acres of space in midfield, causing consternation and foreshadowing what was to come.
For ten minutes it appeared that the Blues boss may be onto something, as his charges bullied their opponents into coughing up the ball and created a gilt-edged chance for Beto to convert. Quite how the luckless Portuguese striker managed to shin over the bar from point-blank range is a mystery; the opportunity was calculated at an xG (Expected Goals) statistic of 0.95 - considerably higher than from the penalty spot. However, the to-and-fro, hectic nature of the game would be Everton’s undoing, with the hosts punishing them just three minutes later, courtesy of Palmer’s stunning finish.
This team does not come from behind to win, so the slight possibility that they’d secure a first league win at the Bridge since 1994 already appeared forlorn. They've only managed to score twice in a game on one occasion in the last four months - a 2-2 draw with Tottenham Hotspur, in February - so when Palmer headed home a second in the 18th minute the visitors’ chances of emerging with even a point all but vanished. In the 29th the game was officially over with the Chelsea attacker’s hat-trick, courtesy of an unbelievable error by Jordan Pickford. Commence fun for the home side, humiliation for the Blues. Pushing up the backline against a team with the pace the opposition possesses was a prescription for disaster. James Garner and Amadou Onana exacerbated the problem by occupying high positions, whether to join the press, or to recycle possession, leaving huge spaces behind them in the midfield for Chelsea’s wingers to cut into, or for Palmer to exploit from his central playmaker position. As soon as Everton’s frenetic pressing scheme was bypassed havoc ensued, with the midfield stranded upfield and the defence in full retreat as the home side poured forward at speed.
The visitors made Chelsea look every bit like the elite side of former years, or at least one that had spent a net of almost €742m on transfers over the last two seasons. The West Londoners played around Everton as if they were cones on the training pitch — such was the discrepancy in speed and ability. Dyche gambled everything on a side who’ve missed opportunities all season to be clinical in the opening ten minutes, or for something to fly in inadvertently, but this side has surely used up its allocation of fluke goals during recent weeks. Is that a strategy? Once Everton’s tempo slackened, they were annihilated.
"It's the most embarrassed I've felt as an individual as part of a team in my time as a footballer" James Tarkowski says there's 'no excuses' on his sides behalf after tonight's defeat against Chelsea pic.twitter.com/HVXnB6nz85 — Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) April 15, 2024
Mea Culpa Time
James Tarkowski faced the music post-match and gave a mea culpa on behalf of himself and his teammates, whom he acknowledged had not performed up to the required levels. Nobody would argue with that assertion, or that it was heartfelt, but what followed - an explicit excusing of Dyche and his staff for any role in the debacle did not sit right with me. This explanation was mirrored by the Everton boss during his TV interview shortly after, which seems a little too coincidental. Dyche was keen to put all the blame on his players and to accept none himself.
For some fans, this gels with how they see things; after all, watching a team routinely play badly while failing to win matches for several months is not conducive to making one want to defend them overmuch. Players don’t typically lose their jobs for underperforming, though they will (usually) get dropped, or moved on, whereas the manager tends to carry the can for poor results and ultimately get fired. While this entails them wandering off into the sunset with a nice severance package - such as the £7m Everton paid Frank Lampard - no fan wants to see the boss fail, if only for obvious reasons. The team very obviously struggled out there, though the constant trotting out of the theory that this same group has let down any number of Blues managers, going back to Marco Silva, is the product of lazy thinking. Of the eleven who started at Stamford Bridge, only three - Pickford, Seamus Coleman and Abdoulaye Doucoure - have played a league game for an Everton boss not named Dyche or Lampard.
According to the manager, the tactics were sound, because the team created one great chance to take the lead, but this is delusional. This fiasco was reminiscent of naïve away outings under Lampard - against Spurs, Crystal Palace and Southampton - where the team pushed up aggressively and were destroyed on the counter, once early intensity levels dipped. Their attempts to stop Chelsea became ragged and undisciplined. Battles were lost, gaps opened up and the hosts clinically punished an increasingly bedraggled Everton.
Coleman and Vitalii Mykolenko were hung out to dry in foot races against rapid wingers Mykhaylo Mudryk and Noni Madueke. Chelsea were successful in 54.3% of their 35 dribble attempts. Individually, the Toffees players were simply outmatched, but it is the job of the manager to mitigate against a such a deficiency in talent; instead he exposed the weaknesses of his players by the way he chose to approach the game. Collectively, Everton have been a better unit than Chelsea all season, but we didn’t play a team game on Monday.
Dyche needs to take a long look at that match and assess his own part in what went wrong. If he’s honest with himself and takes responsibility, then Everton have a chance; if he carries on like this, blundering forward with blinkers on, then we are is serious trouble.
Random Observations
Onana has again been criticised by some Blues fans for an apparent lack of effort. On a night where nobody deserved any praise, the Belgian was not alone in that regard, but this certainly was a poor performance by him. He deserved to come off at halftime, but you could have substituted all eleven without getting much of an argument. The 22-year-old is being looked at by elite sides and will be a key figure for his country over the summer, but I don’t think he understands what Dyche wants him to do; I don’t either.
Mauricio Pochettino probably could not believe his luck. After two deeply unimpressive performances by his expensively-assembled team - in only drawing against ten-man Burnley and a hapless Sheffield United, two clubs propping up the division - he likely anticipated a tough night of trying to break Everton down. Instead, his side were made to look like world-beaters.
In the opening half, when Everton weren’t being dribbled past (12 times), or losing ground duels (40% success rate), they were clumsily giving fouls away (12). A feature of this game and something that has occurred with increasingly regularity is the Blues defence playing hyper-aggressively. Time and again Tarkowski charged into midfield, only to either be turned, or to give up a foul. He’s at his best when holding his ground and making blocks, with Branthwaite using his pace to cover in behind. Everton built a strong defence earlier in the campaign based on those foundations and the manager needs to get back to that.
The nagging concern I have is that some of the team may be losing faith with Dyche’s methods. There’s been a definite dip after the international break, since which Everton have played just thirty minutes of solid football (against Newcastle United) in four matches, and it’s not like the team were pulling up any trees beforehand. On Monday, they hit rock bottom. It’s true that without deductions the club would be on 35 points and virtually safe, but the Toffees have fluked one win in 15 league matches and are playing garbage at a crucial stage of the campaign.
Statistics provided courtesy of fotmob.com