Chelsea defeated Everton thanks to a lot of work down the left-hand side that eventually originated their goal.
The Blues earned a few important firsts in the Premier League today at Hill Dickinson Stadium.
Pedro Neto’s first league brace of his career did the trick as they followed up on last week’s 5-1 thrashing of Bournemouth.
It was also Chelsea’s first clean sheet of the new league season, while they became the first team to win three points against Everton. The Toffees were one of just three unbeaten teams heading into GW7, alongside leaders Manchester City and also Brentford.
And despite getting the goals from their right winger, Chelsea actually used the opposite flank to cause most of the damage.
How did Chelsea create countless advantages down the left flank against Everton?
Game plan persistence
Xabi Alonso made it a priority for Chelsea to attack the right-hand side of Everton’s defence right from the start.
It was clearly the Toffees’ weak link, with a slower centre-back in James Tarkowski and a defensively fragile duo on the flank in Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Merlin Rohl.
Working the ball down that side also helped them win corners, that gave them their best chances before the goal. Moises Caicedo hit the post with a stunning first-time effort and Maxence Lacroix saw Harrison Armstrong clear a header of his off the line.
In the end, six of their 13 assisted shots were created in the left flank, as opposed to seven in the rest of the pitch.
Jorrel Hato even went as far as recording his second most touches in the attacking third (19) in a game for Chelsea.
The Dutchman is usually deployed as a left-centre-back or an inverted full-back. He did tuck inside a number of times today at the Hill Dickinson, but had more reps holding width and going all the way to the byline than ever.
It was precisely his overlapping run that ignited the attack that ended with Pedro Neto finding the net for the first time.
Though we must mention how poor of a job Rohl did tracking him. His lack of attention made Hato run unmarked and overwhelm Maitland-Niles who had to fight for position against Morgan Rogers and then switch onto a running Hato with speed and momentum to his favour.
The Morgan Rogers factor
Speaking of which, Rogers was a big factor in Xabi Alonso’s game plan. The Englishman didn’t have a particularly stand-out performance. But the combination of size and skill was everything the Spanish manager needed to generate advantages.
Rogers was the third Chelsea player with the most touches, ahead even of defenders Maxence Lacroix, Levi Colwill and Josh Acheampong. Only the midfield duo of Jordan Henderson (73) and Moises Caicedo (72) had more on-ball actions than Rogers (68) – and not by much.
He also led the Blues in line-breaking passes in the final third and defensive-line-breaking passes.
But his battles against Maitland-Niles were decisive. Of Rogers’ 13 duels of the day, four featured the Everton right-back on the opposite side – and he won every single one.
Not to mention him holding the ball off and playing Hato through with a back-heel pass in the lead-up to the goal. It doesn’t count as a duel, but it was a crucial moment that put one against the other – and Rogers once again got the better of Maitland-Niles.
Everton side of things
As for Everton, they did a decent job competing despite the clear gap in quality between both sides. The hosts had the first big chance of the game, but Thierno Barry couldn’t connect properly with Jack Grealish‘s cross and headed it straight at Emi Martinez.
It was always going to be difficult relying on Barry while creating few chances. The Frenchman looks more confident this season, but is still underperforming his expected goals tally (-1.7) while leading the league in big chances missed (11) – over twice as many as the next closest player (Erling Haaland with five).
Though this was Everton’s toughest game of the season after a relatively light schedule to start the new campaign. And it will get even tougher next week when they face reigning champions Arsenal at the Emirates.