John Terry – We have to kill Everton off early and go on a run!

The Chelsea captain John Terry is unhappy with the way his team played in the 2-2 draw with Apoel Nocosia in midweek, and says that they need to regain the killer instinct against Everton and try to kill the game off early.

“Speaking honestly, the second half performance on Tuesday wasn’t good enough for any Chelsea player,” Terry said. “We had chances to kill that game. For me games like that, we want to bring young players through and had them on the bench, it was a chance to go 3-1, 4-1 up, we had the chances, and then to bring the young lads on.

“Danny Philliskirk who’s done well, Jeffrey Bruma, they deserve their chance and didn’t get it because the first-team lads let them down, and the fans and themselves. Now we need to bounce back at the weekend and go again.”

“We need to be extra careful,” he continued. “We went to Man City who weren’t playing well or winning games, and now Everton are coming here on the back of not playing too well with injuries and suspensions at the minute.

“This is a period over the last couple of years where we haven’t done too well, whereas in earlier years we always had good Christmases and we need to set ourselves up and have a few wins here and go on a run.

“Everyone is dropping points, so we need to make sure we win and if we put a run of five or six games together, there are difficult games there for everyone, we’ll get the chance to pull away and develop more of the cushion we need, because the league is showing everyone can beat everyone this year.”

“At home teams sit back and we need to make sure we have plenty of options, player-wise and tactically, and ensure that when we do get chances we take them early, like we have in previous years, to kill the game off,”

“We’ve drawn too many at home in the past and now we seem to have reversed, home form is very good, away form not so good, but you need a good balance over the course of the year because you go to some really tough places where you have it hard and just need to grind out a result.”

Everton have drawn their last three League meetings with Chelsea, with both last season’s games ending 0-0. They will come to the Bridge with the aim of parking the bus again, so Chelsea will have to be at their best to break them down this time around.