The shape of things to come
Deploying a 4-4-2 formation was Sean Dyche’s bread and butter for almost a decade in charge of Burnley but if ever there was a reminder that what works for the Clarets does not necessarily work for the Blues then the last couple of matches have provided it in the most sobering of fashion.
Everton went to Old Trafford unbeaten in four games but without Abdoulaye Doucoure who had proven so effective as an extra man in the middle since Dyche took charge, they abandoned the 4-5-1 tactic that up until that point, they’d started every fixture with throughout his tenure. Although given something of a chasing by a fleet-footed Manchester United, with the need to be on the front foot against Fulham, Dyche, whose coaching methods are understood to be heavily based around shape, continued with the experiment of playing two up top here but it became quickly apparent that things weren’t working again.
It’s obvious that the diminutive Neal Maupay and Demarai Gray have a rather different skill set than the likes of Chris Wood and Ashley Barnes who Dyche used to have at Turf Moor and the sight of the Blues going direct for this pair did not make for pleasant viewing with Fulham going ahead. An abandonment of the formation stemmed the tide for a time and Everton briefly regained moment after Dwight McNeil’s equaliser but it was only a temporary reprieve.
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Although it is unfair to arbitrarily label 4-4-2, for so long a staple of the game, particularly in the UK where it was used by the Blues’ most-recent trophy-winning sides as now being totally antiquated – Carlo Ancelotti among others often likes to play that way – it is painfully clear that this Everton team find themselves outnumbered and overrun when they only have two men in central midfield. It was a conundrum that Dyche’s predecessor Frank Lampard grappled with and given that Doucoure still has a further one game of his suspension to serve and Amadou Onana missed this match through injury, the issue remains for their next outing at Crystal Palace at least.
On the beach
Given that he was sacked as Everton manager just a few weeks before the coronavirus pandemic struck, the world has changed a lot in the three-and-a-half years since Marco Silva was last at Goodison Park but the man who wore a furrowed brow for much of his time at Merseyside – especially the last few months – will have enjoyed his first return.
The Portuguese coach also carries something of a professional, level-headed demeanour during his media appearances yet you could tell by the intensity of his speech accentuating of points in the accent of his native tongue here that this victory must have brought him a significant degree of satisfaction. In public, Silva insisted that proving a point to anyone such as former employers is achieved in much more than one game but while he surely won’t take any added satisfaction in Everton’s perilous predicament, he’ll be quietly delighted with Fulham’s 42-point haul this term, now some 15 points more than the Blues.
What was damning for Dyche’s men though was that the Cottagers’ relative success had by getting positive results on the board early. They went into this fixture on the back of five consecutive defeats, without suspended striker Aleksandr Mitrovic and Silva himself banished to the stands through suspension but rather than being your ideal run-in opponents whose minds were ‘already on the beach’, Silva’s side left Evertonians agonising over whether the sands of time have finally caught up with this once ‘Grand Old Team.’
Great expectations
After having to go away to the likes of Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea – where Everton haven’t won in front of fans this century – plus Manchester United where they have a solitary success within that period, here was a game that was for a long time the Blues’ biggest home banker.
From 1961-2018, Everton won every single top flight home fixture against Fulham – some 21 victories in a run – and finally surrendering that record last time out behind closed door might have been discounted as something of a statistical anomaly like their triumphs at both Anfield and the Emirates during the surreal 2020/21 campaign. Ahead of their trip to Stamford Bridge, the scene of the Blues’ longest Premier League winless streak (now extended to a 28th game in spite of Ellis Simms’ morale-boosting late equaliser), Dyche insisted: “Stats come back your way but you’ve got to make those stats come back your way.”
Unfortunately there aren’t many within the group making things go Everton’s way right now despite going head-to-head with a team of Fulham’s ilk, who for those aforementioned reasons should have less to play for at this juncture of the season. With so many of their relegation rivals going head-to-head in the campaign’s latter stages, the Blues need to get points on the board at certain choke points and this was one of them.
A big criticism of Everton’s patchwork quilt of a squad assembled by a variety of managers with greatly varied philosophies on the game has been their supposed lack of character – an attribute we ‘thought’ was improving under their latest boss. Look at Bournemouth who have now moved six points clear of the Blues courtesy of back-to-back away successes.
What the Cherries might lack in quality they make up for in spirit. The first of these successes on the road was at struggling Leicester City but their latest victory – achieved in the last few seconds after their own former player and Everton January target Arnaut Danjuma of all people had briefly put the Londoners level – was the kind of result that this Blues side has just not been capable of achieving.
The last time Everton visited Crystal Palace – duly getting spanked 4-0 in an FA Cup quarter-final – Lampard questioned whether they had the b****** for the fight. Now heading back to Selhurst Park, the Blues must show they do.
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