Cole Palmer scores on return to starting line-up as Chelsea ease past Everton | OneFootball

Cole Palmer scored on his first Stamford Bridge start in almost four months as Chelsea beat Everton 2-0 to move back into the Premier League’s top four.

After four winless matches, Enzo Maresca could hardly have asked for a better moment for his most influential player to announce his return from the groin injury that has wrecked his season up to now, and it came in the 21st minute, the England forward sweeping his side into the lead from Malo Gusto’s clever pass.

Fresh from scoring a first-ever career goal in November, it was Gusto who then got the second from Pedro Neto’s cross before half-time.

Everton’s last win at Chelsea came in 1994 whilst David Moyes had never tasted victory on this ground. After four league wins in five and with the Blues in faltering form, it looked an opportune moment to settle both of those scores, but Maresca’s talisman ensured the day would be all about him.

This has been the most difficult year of Palmer’s career, suffering two significant injuries and making a fraction of the impact he enjoyed during his first 18 months at Chelsea.

His last goal from open play on this ground came in January, but when his chance came finally to correct that aberrant stat, he took it as though he had been banging them in all season.

Wesley Fofana played a short ball in midfield to Gusto, whose pass through the lines was wonderfully calibrated. Palmer’s run caught Everton cold and he breezed through the centre of their defence and smacked the ball by Jordan Pickford at his near post.

It can be no coincidence that whenever Palmer’s form drops, Chelsea drop points. His barren spell last season – two goals between late December and May – coincided with the team’s descent from second in the league into a scrap for the top four, and though Maresca has insisted there is far more to his team, things undoubtedly function far smoother throughout the side when he is present and purring.

He was withdrawn just before the hour mark, his work done and the manager conscious of managing his playing time.

Alejandro Garnacho attempted the spectacular in search of Chelsea’s second with a wicked drive that cleared the bar by a fraction, then suffered a horror miss when he pounced on Carlos Alcaraz’s woeful pass but tapped wide of an open goal.

Everton had begun in a dangerous groove but their confidence was rocked by Palmer’s goal. Finally they carved out an opening just before the break, Idrissa Gueye getting in down the right and crossing to where Thierno Barry was inches from knocking in his second Toffees goal.

Chelsea’s second was delightfully simple. Neto made it, zipping around Vitalii Mykolenko on the right and crossing low for Gusto, arriving in the box at speed and knocking it past Pickford.

Jack Grealish missed a golden chance to bring Everton back into it with a shot on the slide that sailed across goal and wide before Reece James was denied from a free-kick by a save by Pickford.

The final chance was Everton’s, Iliman Ndiaye rolling the ball against the post with Robert Sanchez beaten, but Chelsea by then had done enough.