Everton 0-3 Chelsea: 5 things we learned

Chelsea romp to victory at Goodison Park

Antonio Conte’s Chelsea took another huge step towards the Premier League title today after beating Everton 3-0 at Goodison Park.

Tottenham will be hugely disappointed with the result, and Chelsea began to close in on another title in Conte’s first season at Stamford Bridge.

Here are 5 things we learned from the big clash at Goodison Park.

1) Chelsea overcome their one big remaining hurdle

The Blues were toe to toe with Everton today for 65 minutes of the game, and that is exactly how many fans expected the game to play out. However, as soon as Pedro bagged the first, Chelsea became so much more comfortable, and took all 3 points from their most difficult game left in the run-in.

Their remaining fixtures are against Middlesbrough, West Brom, Watford and already relegated Sunderland. The league seems pretty much in the bag for Conte’s men.

2) Have we learned how to stop Hazard?

Chelsea themselves may have been impressive today, but Eden Hazard was once again quiet. This may be down to a tactic stumbled upon by Manchester United and Jose Mourinho. Mourinho man-marked Hazard in their clash at Old Trafford on Easter Sunday and kept him quiet that day. Everton took a similar approach and assigned Idrissa Gueye the job of marking Hazard, and it went some way to keeping the Belgian out of the game.

3) Everton gave it a go

As previously mentioned, Everton were well within this contest for a long time today. They’re a very difficult team to beat at home, they’ve only lost 1 Goodison fixture all season, but Chelsea are a very difficult team to stop as they have proved many times this season. They are champions-elect for a reason, and once they scored the first one today, Everton couldn’t hold on and were outclassed.

4) Lukaku would be a good addition

If Diego Costa leaves Stamford Bridge this summer, Chelsea shouldn’t have to look very far for an ideal replacement. Lukaku is powerful and a clinical finisher and would be a great buy for Antonio Conte at the end of the season, but he’ll come at a big price, as reported here.

5) Chelsea’s moments of magic are what will secure the title

The reason they’re going to win the league is because that they’re able to product moments of magic to break the deadlock in matches when they need it most. Pedro’s goal today was another example, what a strike, and it opened up the game for Chelsea to go on and get a couple more goals before the match was over.

Is the title race over? Or can Tottenham still catch Chelsea? Let us know what you think!

By Ben Kelly – @benkelly_10