Everton v Chelsea : You decide - Gonzalo Higuain or Olivier Giroud to start?

We are just hours away now ahead of Everton v Chelsea and our chance to close the gap our top four rivals. The question remains: "Should Olivier Giroud start ahead of Gonzalo Higuain?"

Cast your minds back people to three of our most recent Premier League games - Tottenham, Fulham and Wolves. Two wins and a draw, I want to focus on the two games other than Fulham. In that game, Fulham played so open at the back that Gonzalo Higuain was able to make runs into space to score and have other opportunities. In the other two he struggled.

No disrespect to our neighbours here when I say this but Tottenham and Wolves are both better teams, Everton on Sunday again will be better than Fulham and like the other two, will make life difficult for us to open the door to create clear-cut opportunities.

Take the Wolves game last week. Looking back at the performance and how the game played out in general, it was obvious that it was crying out for a change to our attacking approach. Thankfully, in somewhat of a surprise move, Maurizio Sarri delivered with a tactical switch to his 4-3-3 formation and played in a 4-2-3-1 which eventually rescued a point because of the brilliance of Eden Hazard, despite that, we really struggled to come up with a solution to their negative, defensive approach.

It's games such as that where we have seen Higuain not really involved. In his defence he has hardly had anything to run onto or work with in dangerous areas and he becomes ineffective. He tries to link possession with our attacking wide players or with runners from midfield but it never really seems to have clicked quite yet having the desired effect.

As for Olivier Giroud he gives us another dimension - to play the ball in the air! Not only that but we have seen numerous times here at Chelsea his ability with the ball at his feet, his willingness to be the link-man, to drop deep and support our play, to move off the shoulder of the last defender and, as we witnessed on Thursday, to drop deep and play a return pass to a willing runner in behind their defence to open the door.

Everton will approach the game to sit in, to dig deep and play has compact as possible. They will try to make life difficult for Chelsea, to frustrate us and look to hit us on the counter-attack. The game-plan nearly paid off for Wolves last week and if anything, despite their current league position, Everton have better players in attacking areas.

For me marking Gonzalo Higuain is easier than Olivier Giroud because you know exactly what the Argentinian is looking to do whereas with the Frenchman you have no idea.

I expect the usual suspects to make their return to the Chelsea starting line-up so my predicted ten players other than the main striker will be:

Kepa, Azpilicueta, Rudiger, Luiz, Emerson, Jorginho, Kante, Barkley, Hazard, Pedro and ?

You decide - Gonzalo Higuain or Olivier Giroud?

Whatever happens we must win to close the gap!

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COME ON CHELSEA!
UTC!

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