chelsea draw at home with everton

the Sam Allardyce revolution continues apace at Goodison Park. Another unbeaten game, another clean sheet, more to the point, another elevated opponent left scratching their heads as to how they did not seize three points: everything is going right for the Big Man since he arrived on Merseyside.

“We scrapped it out, dug it out, battled it out,” beamed Allardyce afterwards. “Defensively you can’t knock the players in terms of keeping such a talented team at bay.”

He was right there. An Everton side who, for an alarming few weeks in the autumn, gave every appearance of forgetting how to defend, locked out the champions, completely frustrated a sparkling Chelsea front line. And it was not through a surfeit of luck. This was a proper rearguard action, disciplined, organised, effortful, with Michael Keane, Jonjoe Kenny and Jordan Pickford demonstrating that young English players still know precisely how to behave when their backs are to the wall.

What will have pleased Allardyce even more was that it suggested he has a squad, more than just a team. Wayne Rooney, who has been on sparkling form since Allardyce arrived in the Goodison dug out, was laid low with illness, so the home side were obliged to step out shorn of their talisman.

But then Chelsea too were depleted. With Alvaro Morata suspended for his fifth yellow card of the season, Eden Hazard was playing up front for the visitors, in the middle of a front 30, or more precisely a trio of number tens.

This, however, was not playing up front in the manner of, say, Zlatan Ibrahimovic. As became clear from the kick off, Hazard was everywhere, dropping deep, playing on the wings, happy to pick up the ball from his centre-backs.

But if the opposition’s tactics were hidden in the fog shrouding Goodison, this was a Big Sam defence they were taking on. Each man knew his place, each man knew his role. Not least Phil Jagielka, stepping into the team for the first time since Allardyce’s arrival and immediately understanding what was required. He was obliged twice in quick succession to clear off the line with Pickford beaten, first with his feet from Marcos Alonso then his head from Tiemoue Bakayoko.

“Even when they got past the goalkeeper, Jagielka decided Chelsea weren’t going to score,” said Allardyce. “That’s not luck.”

Chelsea, with their swift, intelligent interchanges dominated possession. According to the statistics they had more than 75 per cent of the ball. But, as Everton supporters are all too familiar after watching their team under Roberto Martinez pass themselves to distraction without any tangible success, that sort of analysis means nothing if not translated into goals. Sure, the visitors had opportunities - Pedro, unleashing a fiery shot which Pickford pushed over, perhaps the best of the lot. But the longer Chelsea failed to capitalise on domination, the more the possibility of a Big Sam smash-and-grab lurked on the horizon.

And Everton had chances in the first half. Not least when the endlessly industrious Dominic Calvert-Lewin did brilliantly to dispossess Andreas Christensen as they both chased a hopeful long ball. The Everton youngster then ran into the box, but, ignoring Gylfi Sigurdsson unmarked to his left, was comfortably dispossessed by the always alert Cesar Azpilicueta.