Everton (A) Preview: Lineups, predictions and thoughts.

A tricky fixture awaits.......

Good Afternoon Everyone,

First of all, sorry I have been a little absent recently, its an extremely busy time of year in my day job. Which is why I have written this article rather than the usual Loan army today.

No loan army again this week (sorry for that), it takes a long time to research, watch videos and find stats and I just haven’t had the time to do that this week, I promise there will be a bumper version between Christmas and New Year!

On to the Toffees, and to be honest a fixture that fills me with dread every season. This is a huge wall to climb from a physical and psychological stand point. A win at Goodison Sunday would rocket Chelsea to the top of the table for the first time in 3 years, it could be just for a couple of hours but it could be for Christmas Day if Liverpool fail to win away from home at Spurs.

That would be a huge momentum builder even just to have that feeling for a few hours for this young squad. The task at hand is incredibly difficult first and there are no guarantees in this fixture.

Head-to-Head Record;

We have lost 5 of our last 6 trips to Goodison Park with the anomaly being a 1-0 win on the opening day of the 2022/23 season, courtesy of a Jorginho penalty.

The last fixture between the two was the stunning performance and 6-0 victory for Chelsea at The Bridge in April, unfortunately another bad omen for Chelsea is that we have not beaten Everton in consecutive fixtures for 7 years.

The positive part of all of this is Everton haven’t faced this Chelsea, Enzo Maresca’s Chelsea, who are confident, dynamic, young and hungry. As daunting as a trip to Goodison can be for any of us Chelsea fans the way we are playing and ripping teams apart does give me a sense of confidence and belief.

Predictions;

This is a difficult one to predict and really hard to decipher between head and heart.

My head tells me this is going to be incredibly difficult and dropped points are on the card, Everton are very solid defensively. There has only been 9 goals in Everton’s last 6 fixtures and they have kept 4 clean sheets in their last 6.

I am going with my heart and saying a 1-0 Chelsea win. I would snap your hand off for a clean sheet now, something we need more of to sustain our top 4 hunt. I would say Title Race but I’m not sure what that is……..

Lineup predictions;

I am a little unsure what Maresca will decide to do with the suspension of Cucurella this weekend. I wouldn’t mind seeing Renato Veiga at Left Back to add some height and physicality but also, I would like to see our best players on the pitch.

We may well see the continuation of Caicedo playing right back and Malo Gusto moving over to left back. That would leave us palying our usual formation with Caicedo inverting and Gusto having a more reduced, defensive role.

I spoke with Simon and he predicts a slightly different lineup to me, he predicts that Axel Disasi may start at right Back with him only playing 60 minutes against Shamrock.

This is Simon’s predicted lineup;

Lets hope Chelsea send us in tow Christmas in a happy mood with another good performance and result, who knows there could be an added bonus come Christmas Day!

Thank you all for reading

Luke Rushbrook