High speed sprinting, data monitoring and Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s own opinions were all key to his rehabilitation from a hamstring injury that ruined two months of his season.
Medical staff were tasked with taking a longer term view when helping the 26-year-old recover from his latest injury with Sean Dyche calling for more patience. That came despite the importance of the striker to Everton, a reality Dyche has chafed at in the media but which has remained clear amid his side's search for goals.
Hopes Calvert-Lewin would return sooner were dashed when he suffered a setback weeks into his recovery but he made his comeback at Crystal Palace on Saturday and his presence is a significant boost as Everton approach six games that will decide the club’s Premier League fate.
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Calvert-Lewin started Dyche’s first game in charge, the 1-0 win over Arsenal, and his influence was pivotal as he occupied the centre-backs of the league leaders. He was withdrawn around the hour mark as a precaution over a hamstring issue that went on to keep him out for the next 11 matches.
Throughout that period, questions over his condition have persisted - often to Dyche’s frustration. The Blues boss has fought to take the headlines away from Calvert-Lewin, arguing the team’s survival is dependent on far more than the targetman. But such is their reliance on the England international, enhanced by a January transfer window in which no forwards were signed despite that being the clear intention throughout the month, questions were inevitable - even more so as his status was kept vague, leading to weekly speculation over his availability.
Throughout this period, Dyche has described a reset in the approach to a player who has had to deal with persistent injury problems over recent seasons. The intention was to help him recover in a sustainable manner, and the process included examining potential factors that could be influencing his struggles.
Ahead of Everton’s match with Leeds United in mid-February, Dyche explained the work going into Calvert-Lewin’s fitness: “I’m speaking to Dominic, speaking to the medics, the sports science team, getting the stats and facts, training programmes, distance covered, high speed running, how many kilometres in a week, what’s his diet like, what’s his lifestyle like, what car does he drive, what mattress does he use, how many hours does he sleep at night.”
The focus on Calvert-Lewin relented while the Blues enjoyed a surge in form in the weeks after Dyche’s appointment even without one of their most important players. Wins over Leeds and Brentford alongside draws against Nottingham Forest and Chelsea suggested a new-found resilience could inspire an escape from trouble.
That focus then picked up after the international break, which allowed a further fortnight for recovery and then intensified when it emerged Calvert-Lewin had suffered a setback and would be unavailable for the game with Tottenham Hotspur. With dismal defeats to Manchester United and Fulham following, the need for goals was stark. After social media releases from Everton showed him in training an expectation that he would be in the squad to face Fulham grew - only for the release of the team news an hour before kick-off to almost wind the Goodison Park crowd as neither he nor Amadou Onana, a surprise omission on the day, featured.
As results worsened it remained clear Dyche wanted to oversee Calvert-Lewin’s recovery on his own terms. This included a detailed assessment of data, with staff examining the physical statistics Calvert-Lewin produced when he had been at his best and working toward those as a benchmark to judge his recovery against. Dyche’s terms also included an input from the player himself though - with Dyche suggesting that building Calvert-Lewin’s own confidence in his body was a crucial part of the process. While the main issue since early February has always been his hamstring, the assessment of his recovery has been informed by Calvert-Lewin’s own judgement alongside analysis of scans and data.
Dyche said earlier this year: “The biggest thing is what’s in here (points to his head), that’s the hard part… It’s hard to explain but when you’re a player you know the difference when something is not right or something when you go, ‘no, I can shake that’. It takes a number of years to learn about your own body, younger players don’t often have it but older players do and Dominic is in that middle bracket of course, you’re usually 25ish-plus when you learn that. There’s also scientific feedback, medical feedback, my feedback and his feedback, everything goes in the pot. You can’t just leave it forever and have a one-month injury that takes three months just to be sure but there has to be a balance where you go, ‘where are we at when you are really, really fit and clear’ and that’s what we’re searching for.”
The final touches in a near-three month process came last week. The Finch Farm training game against National League North side Chester was set up primarily to test Calvert-Lewin, one of the reasons Dyche played down the 1-0 defeat. Speaking ahead of the Crystal Palace game he argued the loss was not relevant. After weeks of insisting Calvert-Lewin was not ‘the story’ Dyche essentially led an effort for him to become the main talking point.
It was Dyche who volunteered Calvert-Lewin was in contention for Palace in the post-match press conference that followed the Fulham defeat. In his pre-Palace conference he then insisted Calvert-Lewin’s progress was the obvious takeaway from the Chester game, adding: “The story behind that [result] is actually the truth, that’s: ‘can we get Dominic Calvert-Lewin minutes on a pitch in a more competitive manner?’ Which we did. That has to be the focus because you can’t start changing the focus. My focus is that, I don’t start changing the focus. Did he look sharp? Yes. Did he play well? Yes. Could he have scored? Yes, numerous times. But was he in there to score? Yes. Did he come through it unscathed? Yes.”
The 65 minutes Calvert-Lewin played in that training game on Tuesday gave Dyche the confidence to include him against Palace, though his berth in the starting line-up was a surprise given the demand for match sharpness that has typically seen other players introduced slowly when returning from injury or a run outside the first team.
The result was a 90 minute run-out at Selhurst Park. While Calvert-Lewin had few chances he clearly improved Everton’s attack and had one golden chance that, though missed, offered a glimpse of the threat that could be the X-factor the team needs to stay up. His presence is desperately required - the Blues have now scored the fewest goals not just in the Premier League this season, but in the entire Football League, though those outside the top flight have played around a dozen more fixtures. After the Palace game, Dyche said he was pleased with Calvert-Lewin’s return - and acknowledged the persistent questions over his recovery had been understandable over recent months.
Dyche accepted there was an inevitable risk attached to his return but added that true match fitness can only come with minutes on the pitch. Asked if he had concerns about whether Calvert-Lewin could maintain his fitness to the end of the season, he said: “You can only control the controllables, that is what I look to do... The process that he has seen previously has been, ‘get him fit, put him back in the team’. I said: ‘We can’t keep doing that, because that hasn’t worked, so therefore give the lad a chance’. My idea was to get him ‘fit fit’. You can’t replicate that, that is the end product. But you can sort of get stats and facts on how fit you are before you do that bit.
“He has put a lot of kilometres on the clock, a lot of sprint distance, a lot of high speed running, to reaffirm to him that he is strong and that he is fit, and I think that is important. There is risk and reward, because you still can’t guarantee it, it’s a human body. But I think you can push the margins your way and that is what we have looked to do with him and he has worked really hard.”
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