On Sunday afternoon, Everton suffered a nightmare visit to Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge, suffering a 4-0 defeat against Frank Lampard’s team. The team from the capital were highly clinical in front of goal, while Everton’s whole defence and midfield seemed to be missing for much of the game.
The Toffees had hopes of landing a European spot, maybe even qualification for the Champions League before the last few games. However, on the evidence of Sunday’s match, Carlo Ancelotti has his work cut out fashioning a functioning team out of the current squad.
The fact that goalkeeper Jordan Pickford was the Toffees best player at Stamford Bridge, despite conceding four goals, illustrates just how badly Ancelotti’s team performed.
It may have just been a bad day at the office, but the result has been coming as the current crop of Everton players are just not good enough for where the team aspire to be.
Chelsea played well, but they were certainly helped by a complete lack of resistant from the visitors.
This sort of performance had echoes of the days of Roberto Martinez, Ronald Koeman and Marco Silva. Ancelotti is a far more successful boss than his predecessors, so may just have a chance to turn the mess into a success.
The defeat at Stamford Bridge shows which areas of the team that needs improving, most of them from the showing in south west London. Everton academy graduate Tom Davies often gets a lot of criticism, but he deserved it yesterday for an invisible display.
Icelandic international and Toffees captain Gylfi Sigurdsson once again produced the sort performance that has fans asking why he is in the team.
Everton fans and boss Carlo Ancelotti will be hoping that the Italian gets major transfer funds in the summer to help strengthen a team that is nowhere near challenging for the Champions League spots.