By Lachlan Fearnley – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29388409
In the space of a few weeks, Antonio Conte has gone from laughing off rumours of the sack to clearing a space on his shelf for the Manager of the Month award. October has bought four league wins, 11 goals, none conceded and as a result the Blues are just a point off top spot. Everton, meanwhile, ended a run of five games without a win when overcoming the Hammers 2-0 at Goodison.
Everton’s record on the road to top-six sides makes for pretty horrid viewing for Toffee’s fans as they’ve won just one of 28 such trips since 2011/12 and that was at Southampton. 18 of these ended in defeat, while they were behind at the break in 11 of these losses. In their only game in this sample under Ronald Koeman they did manage draw at Man City, where they played deep and looked to hit their opponents on the counter using the pace of Bolasie and Barkley. Chelsea reject Romelu Lukaku netted on that day and he is seen as the main danger for this new look Blues defence. However, the wing-backs in Conte’s new system should be able to nullify the counter and restrict the supply to the Belgian.
Earlier on in the season Chelsea were relying on late goals but more recently they’ve been getting off to flyers, leading within the first 10 minutes in the last three. With Hazard and Costa in top form, we’ll back more of the same from Conte’s men to continue Everton’s poor record when travelling to the top teams.
Best Bet: Chelsea/Chelsea HT/FT at 2.15
