If you didn’t stick around to watch the second half of Everton/Chelsea, then you missed out on one of the greatest finishes of this Premier League season.
After an abysmal first half of football, that saw very little chances and both teams playing really conservatively, they really needed to step things up to not bore fans at the stadium, and watching on the TV, to death. And that is exactly what Everton and Chelsea did coming out of the tunnel for the second half.
The goal scoring started quickly in the 50th minute with a cross by Leighton Baines as he tried to find Romelu Lukaku in the box. However, he found John Terry who tried to clear the ball away but managed to muck that up and put the ball into his own net. Just six minutes later, Kevin Mirallas scored a fantastic goal — after having a goal disallowed in the first half — that put the visitors up by two goals with 35 minutes to play.
Chelsea looked lethargic, their defense was getting burned by the speedy Everton forwards, their offense looked lost as they had no way of advancing up the field. That is, until a Tim Howard miscue helped them get on the board. Howard tried to clear away a long pass by Cesc Fabregas destined for Diego Costa, but completely fanned on the attempt and took out his own defender. This left Costa with a wide-open goal and he scored the easiest goal he will ever score to reduce Chelsea’s deficit by one.
The Blues kept the pressure on the Everton defense, who looked rattled after conceding a goal, and just two minutes after the Costa goal Fabregas scored the equalizer.
Some meticulous passing by Chelsea broke down the Everton backline as it was Costa who fed Fabregas this time, who took a shot on goal that was deflected and Howard could only watch as the ball rolled into the net for the 2-2.
The game seemed destined for a draw until the 91st minute when Ramiro Funes Mori scored an amazing goal to give the Toffees what looked like a winner in the dying moments of the match. Take a look as Funes Mori scores a flying karate kick-style goal for the 3-2:
Ramiro Jose Funes Mori (2:3) Chelsea vs Everton pic.twitter.com/t3tBQtsY1N
— Cristián Rios (@CristianRiosOk) January 16, 2016
Seven minutes were added for stoppage time, which gave Chelsea more than enough time to score an equalizer. After attacking the net for what seemed like the entire seven minutes, Chelsea finally broke though and scored an equalizer and it came at the hands of John Terry. The man who earlier seemed to doom his team to their tenth loss of the season, ended up rescuing them with a last-gasp cheeky backheel that saved a point for the Blues.
Terry’s goal did not come without controversy, as it came in the eight minute of a seven-minute stoppage time and not to mention the fact that he seemed to be offside. You be the judge:
“@TransferSources: It was a class goal from John Terry! pic.twitter.com/z5sWfU4ftk” @JHeat94
— Matt Nunez (@NunezMatt) January 16, 2016
Whatever you may think of the goal, the fact of the matter is the goal stands — much to the chagrin of Everton supporters — and Chelsea found a way to save a point from this fixture. But, this brings up the question of: Can Chelsea salvage this season and not manage to be in the bottom of the table fighting off relegation? Because as much as a point helps, they desperately need to string together some wins.
