It’s Blue Saturday this weekend as the league champions from London travel to take on the Merseysiders from Goodison. A record-breaking 6-3 Chelsea victory brought all three points to The Bridge, and on the face of it there maybe seems little likelihood of a repetition. For starters, Roberto Martinez’s Everton have failed to score in six of their last 13 home league matches (they have won four of those) and they have not scored in three of the last four.
The champions, whose victory this season came on the road with 10 men at the Hawthorns, are yet to manage a clean sheet this campaign and, despite those half-dozen strikes in August 2014,Jose Mourinho would probably not want his present team to play with such swashbuckling fashion as in that nine-goal thriller. The Londoners have already suffered two-thirds of the total losses of the previous campaign, including a home defeat last time out.
The gap up to leaders Manchester City is now eight points – though we may recall from winter 2015 how swiftly such a lead can vanish in the Premier League.
The 12.45 kick-off time (BST) can lend a general soporific air to proceedings (though Everton ran riot at Southampton recently). The Blues have earned mixed results from this early start-time over the last two seasons: beating Everton (pictured below) and West Ham at the Bridge, drawing at Spurs, losing twice at Newcastle and winning at Hull. Last season Mourinho‘s men also won magnificently on Merseyside at Everton’s bitter red rivals.
- Match preview by chelseafc.com (Rick Glanwill and Paul Dutton)
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