Everton 1-0 Chelsea: Chelsea punished

Steven Naismith celebrates scoring the winning goal

How many times have we heard it before? You MUST take your chances in the Premier League and if you don’t, you will ALWAYS be susceptible to being punished. That is exactly what happened to Chelsea yesterday and it’s the first major blip of our season.

Yes, it’s early days and we shouldn’t get carried away but we should all be waking up this morning sitting top of the league with three points last night.

Before we look at the Chelsea performance, I have to hold my hands up and congratulate Roberto Martinez on his first win as Everton manager and his team. On paper and you have to be honest, Chelsea have by far the better quality and I mean no disrespect when I say that but, those players have to perform.

Every single Everton player worked their socks off and you have to admit that Gareth Barry was outstanding on his debut. The thought of adding Romelu Lukaku up front to give them a better focal point up top will excite the Evertonians and I predict that Everton will have a cracking season.

Now as for Chelsea, where do we start? I was surprised that Eto’o was thrown straight into the starting line-up. Despite saying that, I would start him personally in the week. He did okay but has had little time to work in training with his team mates to get used to playing with each other. In saying that, he should have done better with his header from a Ramires cross and should have scored when Andre Schurrle squared the ball to him. But for a last ditch tackle from Gareth Barry, he would have done.

His movement was okay but there is a lot more to come from him. Torres came on and hardly had a touch of the ball. If anything, I would have brought him in for Eto’o earlier.

Juan Mata remains a concern for me. Again, I would have made a different decision to Jose and would have kept him on the pitch. The thing we have to remember about Mata is his ability to pick up the ball and see a pass to open the door. It doesn’t matter if he hasn’t been effective for 89 minutes, all it takes is the one ball to unlock the defence. I will admit that he should have done a lot better with the chance he had late on in the first half after some good interchange play between Hazard and Eto’o.

Andre Schurrle also did okay when he played. Yes he should have done better with the chance he had in the first half and once again showed he is willing to work hard. However, he wasn’t influencing the game enough so I would have replaced him with De Bruyne as a like for like change.

Ramires was his industrious self. Mikel was solid enough in midfield and looking at the game, it’s important that Chelsea fans can see that at times, if it wasn’t for Mikel making interceptions or tackles at key moments, things could have been a lot worse.

Ivanovic was solid again but his delivery from wide areas was disappointing. Ashley Cole spent too much time arguing with the officials and giving away free kicks in the game. He was done on more than once occasion for pace and was caught out of position on more than one occasion.

We never saw enough of Cole getting forward down the wing either? The way we play with our attacking three interchanging positions, it’s important that if possible, our full backs push on up the pitch. I cannot remember Cole doing that often enough. It wasn’t his best game.

John Terry was his normal self. He plays deep enough to sweep up in behind Luiz and did so for the most part. People do not realise just how good his touch is on the ball. Once or twice, it looked like he was being given the ball in dangerous areas with players around him, but he remained calm and composed and played it easily, right or left-footed.

Substituting Juan Mata was a mistake from Jose Mourinho

Now as for David Luiz, the game highlighted everything about the Brazilian for me. For 99% of the game (despite silly fouls and free kicks being given away late on when we were chasing a goal) Luiz was outstanding. His ability to read the game and see what is happening and developing in front of him is different class but he is prone to making a mistake and I am sorry to say he did yesterday and it cost us.

How many times did we see him step in front of the attacker and win the ball? How many times did he step forward and make an interception and come away with the ball to start off another attack? How many times did he pick a pass to someone in attacking areas and find a Chelsea shirt? He was outstanding.

However, for the goal he made the wrong decision to step out from the defensive line on the edge of the box and left Terry and Ivanovic exposed with a man over at the far post. If you watch the goal again from the camera angle behind the goal, as soon as he steps out, Terry realises there are men over behind him but also that he needs to remain in position as he is to close down the space in front of him.

Luiz should have been lined up behind him to enable Ivanovic to make the man on the far post and Luiz to pick up Naismith.

So as soon as the cross comes over, we are in deep trouble and we all saw what happened. Credit to Everton for taking advantage of the situation but it should never have come to that.

A goal down, Chelsea struggled to break Everton down and we needed attacking flair of the likes of Mata, Hazard, De Bruyne or Oscar to interchange and combine but we remained static in our positions as we chased the goal.

Every time Eden Hazard picked the ball up, he was on the left hand side and Everton were doubling up men to deal with him. Why didn’t he change positions with Oscar and spread it out wide right? He may have popped up on that side but would always move back to the left hand side.

The tackle on Oscar looked like a penalty to me but we cannot sit here, moan, and complain about that as we should have been at least 2-1 or even 3-1 up by that stage.

It’s disappointing and so frustrating. Chelsea must do better in front of goal and for me, to unlock the door, Juan Mata needs to remain on the pitch at least until the game is won.