Enzo Maresca must prepare for more frustrating tests as Chelsea run out of ideas against Everton

Evening Standard

·22 December 2024

Enzo Maresca must prepare for more frustrating tests as Chelsea run out of ideas against Everton

Chelsea’s flying start to season will lead to sides showing them more respect

Chelsea’s final Premier League trip to Goodison Park ended in the same sense of disappointment as so many of the recent others.

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Faced with the chance to go top of the Premier League, however briefly, the Blues were Sean Dyche-d, dragged into the ugly rhythms of a wet, wild afternoon and frustrated to the tune of a goalless draw. Chelsea’s last 11 visits to this old ground have now yielded just two victories. They will be glad to see it go.

Everton, buoyed by the confirmation this week of their takeover by the Freidkin Group, were predictably steely, this their seventh clean sheet of the season, the joint-most of any team.

Amid a defensive crisis of sorts, missing Marc Cucurella to suspension as well as Wesley Fofana, Benoit Badiashile and Reece James to injury, only Chelsea’s own shutout will have offered Enzo Maresca some small silver lining.

Robert Sanchez produced his best performance for months to register only his fourth clean sheet of the campaign, while Tosin Adarabioyo was excellent at centre-back, handy since Maresca suggested this week that both Fofana and Badiashile will be out for some time.

Going forward, though, Chelsea ran out of ideas horribly quickly, hitting the woodwork early on through Nicolas Jackson but then mustering just one unthreatening, long-range effort on target in the entirety of the second-half.

Chelsea are likely to regularly face similar tests in the months ahead

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As the trend, even among the least monied Premier League clubs, leans towards more progressive managers and a more expansive style, coming here to face this Dyche team increasingly feels a specialist test.

Few teams still have a goalkeeper whose first instruction is to hit the channels and few have a centre-forward who runs them as willingly as Dominic Calvert-Lewin. The midfield is built exclusively on industry and the centre-backs - both outstanding here - born of the old school. Every aspect of Dyche’s system prioritises function over flair.

Conversely, though, it is probably the kind of game Chelsea will have to get used to in the second half of the season.

Enzo Maresca’s side have found themselves in a kind of sweet spot so far this term, not yet commanding the kind of respect that has opponents setting up to limit damage from the start.

Most have tried to man-mark Cole Palmer, with limited success, but otherwise come to play, hoping to pray on old vulnerabilities. Few have found them and most have been torn apart, including on the run of eight straight victories across competitions that came to a halt here.

That will surely change now that the Blues’s fine start to the season has been confirmed as no fluke.