Everton v Chelsea Tactical Analysis

A damning 2 defeats in a row

In the tumultuous tale of Chelsea's recent exploits, the plot thickened at Goodison Park, where the Blues found themselves with a task to unlock Everton's resolute low block. As the echoes of a second consecutive defeat reverberated through the club, this encounter unfolded as a perplexing chapter in Chelsea's complex narrative.

Let’s dissect the nuances of a match where the low block proved an impervious fortress, leaving Chelsea grappling with the sting of back-to-back losses.

Chelsea lined up in their 4-2-3-1 formation with James back in the side (unfortunately not for long), Badashille pairing Disasi, Gallagher back in after a suspension, and Broja in for Jackson in a very rotated side due to playing 3 games in 7 days. While Everson lined up in their usual compact 4-4-1-1.

Everton’s lineup

Chelsea’s lineup

The midfield trio of Enzo, Gallagher, and Caicedo have been tried and tested but there was a difference between how we have been using them in recent weeks to how we used them yesterday, especially Enzo and Gallagher.

Enzo was also started as the 10 in a higher position than he should be. That one I don’t understand, especially since he stopped the experiment weeks ago after it was a clear mis-profiling of Enzo who is meant to initiate moves and having more touches of the ball than Gallagher. Gallagher tarted in a deeper position and had 111 touches and 84 completed passes. Enzo had 47 touches and completed 31 passes. For a team that has Gallagher, who is much better than Enzo in the opposition’s box, those numbers are meant to be switched completely between the 2 players.

The game plan from both teams was clear from the start, Everton tried to limit Chelsea’s influence in transitions by setting up their standard mid-deep block, while the onus was on Chelsea to break them down, a tough one considering our recent history against them.

Everton mostly stayed in a mid to deep-block but tried to put Chelsea under pressure at times when they tried to play out of the back - they chose their moments well as they forced Chelsea to kick the ball long. Chelsea did have the chance to use Caicedo more in the build-up more than they did. The press could be easily bypassed.

Let me break down an example…

Caicedo receives the ball from Sanchez and passes it back to Sanchez, meaning it attracted the press to him from Calvert-Lewin, he then freed Sanchez to find another pass.

Sanchez then has 3 options, an easy pass to Disasi, Badashille and another passing lane to Caicedo, but chooses Badashille and it attracts the press from Calvert-Lewin.

The passing lane opens back to Caicedo even more favourably after the exchange between Sanchez and Badashille that took Calvert-Lewin out. As you can see below…

But he didn't take the free option, and instead took the easier route of playing it to Disasi.

It is a valid option too especially when it is a means to an end, but Disasi also makes the wrong decision after having James to easily play it to, so he can find once again a free Caicedo. If we used Caicedo as a hub of play, we would easily be getting out of this situation.

We lost the ball…., Palmer managed to hustle to win it back, but still shows how we could be better playing out of those situations.

When Chelsea did play out (Not much), they tried to isolate Broja with the Everton CBs, but most of the time they were a match for it. We also couldn’t capitalize when we did work it out of the back.

“Broja channel running“

Everton didn’t have many chances to score goals, especially in the first half, as Chelsea limited them to long balls and handled all the balls into the channels to them, especially Badashille on Calvert-Lewin as he won most of the battles. Chelsea also limited set pieces as well and when the balls came in, Badashille, Disasi and Sanchez handled them (Sanchez did not too comfortably),.

Everton however capitalized on moments as it only takes one of those to get us these days considering the number of mistakes we make. We failed to handle on counter-attack and there are a lot of things wrong with this goal and the manner we conceded it. Those moments come as a result of the poor counter-press we employ. When we lose it the players aren’t close enough to immediately jump to recover the ball, instead, they have an empty midfield and space to run at our backline.

Breaking down Everton’s first goal to highlight this…

Chelsea has the attack, 5 in attack although, not in all 5 attacking lanes. We filled the lanes at times but it has to be consistent and well worked to stretch low blocks.

We lose the ball in attack but no one is close enough to either Mykolenko or McNeil at the bottom of your picture to be able to stop them straight from starting a counterattack. There is too much gap between the players. That’s a poor structure.

Gallagher has to try to recover the situation but he’s already behind McNeil, could the backline be much closer to dealing with this threat? Everton had 7 players in their defensive third of the pitch with 6 Chelsea players, so it means Chelsea has more men to spare to deal with McNeil. Colwill is pushed up from his LCB position in possession, but Disasi doesn’t push up and instead was doubling up on Calvert-Lewin with Badashille. The issue there is it means you’re not compressing the pitch and limiting space for other teams to play in, you’re instead widening the gap to give space for more counter-attacks.

Gallagher couldn’t stop him and he had a free run at the backline, the system failed but then, individual quality also had to step up to diffuse the situation. Disasi had the chance to slow him down especially with Caicedo arriving, they can both stop or slow him down,.

But Disasi backs off and gives him space to pick out a pass. Badashille also loses sense of where his man (Calvert-Lewin) is and he has a 1v1 .

Sanchez deals with the situation very well.

But Colwill doesn’t close down Doucóure quickly enough to stop the shot. We concede.

The goal in action…

Still vulnerable to set pieces

We handled most of what Everton threw at us on set pieces in the air but the problem that we didn’t handle yesterday was dealing with the 2nd balls. Sanchez didn’t deal with one convincingly earlier in the game and Petrovic didn’t claim his as well, but it was one of his first touches as a GK and not easy in the circumstances, and we struggled to prevent the 2nd ball and mop up the loose ball.

How did we struggle to beat Everton’s low block?

We often struggled to go through Everton’s block to create chances as we kept on recycling the ball, having the ball but not in threatening areas. We tried to play through the wings like I said for Broja running the channels. Another threat we tried to leverage on was Mudryk and his mostly constant beating of Ashley Young and Patterson when Young went off. It was very improved but we couldn’t take advantage of his crosses and cutbacks.

The times we did get through them was when we were able to attract the press from Everton’s midfield because Gueye and Garner are both accustomed to trying to proactively win the ball rather than to protect the space behind them, and when we did that, we got in behind their midfield and had a run at their defence, but he decision making was poor. It happened through well-worked passing actions, switches that stretch their midfield and through some individual ability of Palmer and Enzo to escape the press. We were able to generate a good number of transition moments with it but failed to capitalise.

Let’s see how we did that.

Another way we also managed ger to attack an unsettled Everton defence, bypassing the midfield was by winning the ball high, or from a counterattack of ours we managed to pinch the ball at times from Everton’s midfield players and had a run their defence again, but poor decision-making (wrong pass or action) caused it to falter too.

Although we had these moments, we very much struggled with sustaining pressure on Everton as described by the goal. Chelsea’s counter-pressing structure (structure that sets up to win the ball once it’s lost) is very poor and it allows space for teams to counter-attack constantly. That way you can’t put teams under huge amounts of pressure and make them crumble by even their own player mistakes. We either lose the ball by trying to be too direct or can’t win it immediately when we get it back. We only did it better at the end of the 2nd half before Everton’s second goal.

Considering we faced a low block which we seemed to struggle with, we managed to pull them apart from their shape multiple times and had their backline backpedalling after bypassing the midfield. But the fact we couldn’t muster a single big chance from these moments described is very very poor decision making from the player’s part, and tells us that as much as the coach has some blame for some of the profiling and system issues, the players should be doing much better in these situations.

There are system issues of the backline still being far from the midfield which makes our counter-press poor which led to Everton’s first goal but the game. The game was another poor reflection of how our players failed to make the most of the times they got in behind Everton’s midfield and be effective in both boxes. After the game and after watching it again to analyze the game, I have almost 2 contrasting feelings, but I still stand on the fact both the players and the coach have work to do for us to be winning games. Although the players and the coach sometimes look on different pages about the style of play, I firmly believe some of the injured players like Carney, Nkunku, Chilwell, Fofana ( or if we get an aggressive CB in January ) and Lavia, and Poch fixes these issues, going back to what he did in preseason as well as against Man City, we will look better (conversation for another day). For now, we need to get a result in a very good opportunity for a pick-me-up against Sheffield United at home.

Seun