Everton vs Chelsea 07/12/19

7 December 2019

Relegation-threatened Everton welcome fourth-placed Chelsea to Goodison Park, hoping to extend their unbeaten Premier League (PL) run in H2Hs to four straight games (W1, D2).

Three successive PL defeats have seen Everton slip to 18th in the table, with midweek’s dismal 5-2 away loss to city rivals Liverpool ending Marco Silva’s adventure at Goodison. Unsurprisingly, three of their four PL victories this term have come on home turf, although only one has arrived against an upper-half-of-the-table side. The hosts have overseen massive problems in the final third lately, drawing a blank in two of their last five PL home matches, while scoring over 1.5 goals only once in the remaining three in the sequence. If that’s not troubling enough for Everton, the fact they’ve failed to find the net in two of their previous three top-flight home H2Hs with Chelsea could give them a reason to be wary. Encouragingly for the home side, they’ve kept a clean sheet in two of those above H2Hs.

Meanwhile, the visitors have bounced back after two consecutive PL defeats, beating Aston Villa 2-1 at home last time out. Interestingly, four of Chelsea’s previous five PL results (win/loss) have all been hard-fought, seeing the winners on the day prevail by a single-goal margin. Franck Lampard is yet to solve his team’s defensive problems, as the Blues shut out their rivals only once in their last six league outings, conceding 2+ match goals twice in that period. Nonetheless, Chelsea’s away success this season has been highly dependable on their unstoppable attack that has scored at least two goals in five of seven PL road trips. Impressively, the Pensioners have opened the scoring inside the first 45 minutes in each of their last seven PL away games, adding at least another goal before the break on four of those occasions.