David Moyes’s side had gone into Saturday’s game as one of the stories of the Premier League’s opening weeks, seven matches into the campaign across all competitions without a single defeat. Two wins and four draws from their first six league games, built almost entirely on a defence that refused to budge, had carried Everton as high as fifth in the table. Chelsea, further back in sixth but level on points, arrived on Merseyside with a point to prove of their own, after a season that has not always gone to plan under Xabi Alonso.
It was Pedro Neto who ended one run and extended another. The winger, who spent much of the summer being talked about as a player squeezed out of Alonso’s favoured system, scored twice in the second half to win it, turning a tight afternoon into Chelsea’s third league win of the season and Everton’s first defeat of it.
A defence that had carried Everton this far
Everton’s run had never really been about goals. Across their first six league fixtures they had scored eight and conceded five, numbers that belong to a team happy to make life difficult rather than dazzle anyone. The platform behind that record has been the centre-back pairing of James Tarkowski and Jarrad Branthwaite, a partnership former striker Alan Smith recently praised as a “brilliant platform” for everything else Moyes wants to do, and five clean sheets from seven games in all competitions backed that assessment up.
Saturday followed the same pattern for long enough. Everton sat in deep, well organised banks and looked to break quickly when the chance arose, and for 45 minutes it worked, the sides going in level at the break despite Moisés Caicedo striking the post and then the crossbar from a Jordan Henderson corner. It was feisty too. Five yellow cards were shown in total, including one for Tarkowski after a 34th minute scuffle with Chelsea’s Morgan Rogers, a sign of how much both sides wanted the three points.
The breakthrough came three minutes into the second half. Rogers slipped a pass into the box from the left, and Neto finished calmly into the corner to put Chelsea ahead. Everton responded almost immediately, Tom Armstrong equal to the moment at the other end as he cleared a header off his own goal line to stop the gap widening further, and for a long stretch after that it looked as though a single goal might be enough to settle things either way. It was not to be for the home side. Deep into stoppage time, Henderson drove a free kick into the wall, the ball span loose, and Neto was the one who reacted quickest to make it 2-0 and put the result beyond doubt.
Chelsea finding their feet at exactly the right moment
This was not a vintage Chelsea performance, and Alonso would likely admit as much himself. Caicedo’s two near misses were a reminder that the visitors could easily have been further ahead, or just as easily still searching for the breakthrough come the final whistle. But results like this one tend to matter more for what they represent than for how they are achieved, and for a Chelsea side that has spent much of the autumn being judged against the standards Alonso is eventually expected to reach, doing the unglamorous version of the job well is exactly the kind of result that gets remembered fondly later in a season.
Neto’s turnaround in form is a story of its own. Back in the summer he was being used out of position at wing back, openly discussed as a player without a guaranteed route back into the side once everyone around him was fit, and he even found himself at the centre of a minor dressing room flashpoint with captain Reece James after being criticised for his defensive work in an earlier match against Fulham. Two goals at Hill Dickinson Stadium, both of them the product of good decision making rather than good fortune, are the kind of afternoon that quietens that conversation for a while. Speaking after an earlier cup win this season, Neto had described the mood inside Chelsea’s camp as “really joyful” under Alonso, adding that “everyone is playing with a smile on their face.” There was little to smile about for the opposition this time, but Chelsea’s players will recognise that feeling well enough.
There was a more sober note from Alonso afterwards, too. James, Chelsea’s long serving captain, remains out with a long term knee issue that has required surgery and still has no firm return date, and the Spaniard made a point of mentioning him when asked about the win, saying simply that “we’re all disappointed, especially for him.” It is a reminder that even a winning afternoon for Chelsea arrives against the backdrop of a captain who has missed an enormous amount of football over the years through injury, and whose presence on the pitch Alonso is still waiting to call upon in full.
What it means for both clubs
The numbers read differently for both teams now. Chelsea move to 13 points from seven league games, above Everton’s 10 from the same number of matches, a reversal of where the two clubs stood heading into the weekend. For Everton, the dent to the table is real but probably secondary to the symbolic loss of an unbeaten record that had started to generate genuine belief around the club. Moyes has built sides before on exactly the kind of defensive solidity Tarkowski and Branthwaite have provided this season, and one defeat, at home, against a side finding form at just the right moment, is not in itself a reason for alarm. The bigger question for Everton is whether they can find enough further up the pitch to turn some of those draws into wins between now and Christmas, because a side averaging little more than a goal a game will eventually need more than Thierno Barry’s early season sharpness to keep climbing the table.
For Chelsea, the significance is less about the table position and more about momentum. A team that has spent long spells of this season being picked apart for what it is not yet, rather than praised for what it already is, finally has a result to point to that was earned the hard way, on the road, against one of the league’s form sides. Alonso’s rebuilding job was never going to follow a smooth, straight line, and afternoons like this one, scrappy and far from perfect, tend to matter more by the end of a season than the eye catching wins ever do.
Both sides return to action with plenty still to play for, and a fresh reminder of how quickly things can turn in the Premier League. If you want more coverage like this through the rest of the season, following It Was Always… Football is the easiest way to keep up with it.