3 Chelsea players Everton must watch-out for: Everton without James Rodriguez

Here are three Chelsea players who I think will cause Everton some real trouble on Saturday night:

Everton will face one of their most difficult tasks of the season against Frank Lampard’s in-form Chelsea side. The Toffees are coming into this game in poor form after a loss to Leeds United and a draw with relegation-threatened Burnley, and without James Rodriguez, it could be a rough 90 minutes for Evertonians to sit through.

Chelsea are currently on fire in the league, with Lampard’s side winning four and drawing one of their last five games, compare that to Everton who have won one, drawn one and lost three leaving them in 9th, this could be an abysmal performance by Everton, but a huge win could turn the Toffee’s form around, especially going into a tough run of fixtures.

Ben Chilwell

Chelsea have found the solution in their left-back problem with Chilwell’s fantastic form since he joined the blues. After Chelsea paid a questionable price tag of around £50m at the time, but now nobody can question Chilwell’s value as he’s been arguably the best left-back in the Premier League based off form.

The former Leicester man is currently Chelsea’s best-performing player based off his average rating of 7.52, which puts him 9th in the Premier League, the highest average rating of any defender in the division right now.

Chilwell is similar to Lucas Digne because he is an ideal modern-day full-back, he can bomb forward and contribute to Chelsea’s very dangerous attack but he can also come back and defend for the blues. This has been shown by his 1.6 tackles, 1 interception and 2.4 clearances per game, beating Andy Robertson in everything except interceptions.

The Englishman also is great at contributing to the Chelsea attack, Chilwell currently has 2 goals and 2 assists in his first eight Premier League appearances along with 1.6 key passes per game. He’s also great with his passing, with an 82% pass accuracy on around 71 attempts per game showing he can create for Lampard’s Chelsea from a full-back position.

How can Everton neutralise Ben Chilwell?

One way Everton can keep Ben Chilwell out of the game is by pressing the Chelsea full-back, Chilwell doesn’t possess a lot of natural speed which means he can be troubled by more athletic players like Doucoure or Iwobi, but Chilwell is also great with the ball at his feet so the Everton players need to understand when to press Chilwell so he doesn’t beat them and create an opportunity.

One thing Chilwell also seems to struggle with is his ability to cross the ball. People may look at his 1.5 completed crosses per game, which is higher than Robertson, and argue that he’s a fine crosser, but when you take a deeper look into it, 2.8 of his crosses are inaccurate, which is almost double his completions.

People may also argue that Chilwell doesn’t have the most support in the box from crosses due to Chelsea’s preference for nice passing football, but if Everton can force Chelsea to cross and take advantage of this fact then it could make Everton’s night a lot easier.