I want Everton to play with fear but let me explain. I mean play with the fear that you’re going to lose the jersey next week.
The manager has challenged the players to get their numbers up whether it’s assists, shots on target or to sniff an opportunity out and they haven’t done it. Demarai Gray’s numbers aren’t good enough and neither are Anthony Gordon’s, we can all have an off-day but there are too many players having too many off-days, too often.
Players have got to look at their own performances and ask themselves questions. If you only put in two crosses in the game why was that?
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Was the defender good, was I not in the right positions? Is there anything I could have done to get four crosses in?
Dominic Calvert-Lewin is our danger man. Manchester City’s is Erling Haaland, you don’t see them messing about with the ball when they’re out wide, it’s going in the box straight away. Calvert-Lewin has got a huge leap, probably the best of anyone in the Premier League and it’s a huge threat.
However, how many threats did we produce against either Leicester or Fulham? That’s the worry, it’s like our players don’t even know what our strengths are.
We’ve brought wingers to the football club and they’re not doing their job. They’re trying to beat somebody rather than get the ball into the box and trying to get half a yard in the Premier League is difficult.
Calvert-Lewin is probably not going to be available again now until after the World Cup. I said at the start of the season, did we really expect him to be able to play 40 games this year after the injuries he’s had?
We didn’t replace Richarlison and went five games into the season with no striker and now with Calvert-Lewin not available again, there’s going to be a lot of pressure on Neal Maupay to start turning his form around. He got an early goal in his Everton career but I don’t know what he’s good at.
He needs to start showing why he’s been brought to Everton Football Club. He looks strong, can he run in behind defenders?
You watch Match of the Day and you see how goals are scored. It’s midfield runners breaking a line, it’s strikers spinning on the half turn.
Our strikers seem to be very square on with the defender, right up their backside. I don’t get how that’s going to hurt a defender, as a centre-half I’m made-up because if you’re going to have to turn and beat me and get a shot on goal which is very difficult to do.
You need to ask the question. If you don’t shoot, you won’t score.
That’s what Frank Lampard was all about himself as a player. You might get a corner-kick, the keeper might make a mistake and go under it or it might drop for a tap-in for your striker.
When the likes of Frank and Paul Scholes are interviewed now they’re retired about the goals they scored, they’ll tell you the majority of them weren’t even meant. They just wanted to hit the target and if the ball goes into the top corner then great.
They were putting the ball into the danger area but we’re not doing that and we need to be doing that.
Alex Iwobi should be a model to everybody else after the way he turned things around for himself at Everton. He had to look himself in the mirror and while it took a while, things have clicked for him now and can others do that.
Idrissa Gueye has come back in and shown quality at times but I feel he needs to stick to what he’s good at. What he’s brilliant at and the reason he got his move to Paris Saint-Germain was his ability to put fires out.
He can chase the ball down, win it back and give it to someone else. It seems like he’s trying to do it all himself but possession is not his strong point and never has been.
Too often he’s getting caught on the ball because he’s trying to be that dictator, the midfield general and it’s not his game. He needs to get back to basics, be that guard dog that runs around and pops it off to his team-mates fast.
Everton aren't playing to their strengths
Everton's display against Leicester City was probably our worst performance of the season. Expectations going into the game were high given that it was our last game at Goodison Park for the best part of seven weeks and we were hoping the team might be able to emulate the form shown in the previous home match against Crystal Palace when we showed a bit of ruthlessness and quality at the right moments.
It just wasn’t happening for us from the first whistle and straight from the kick-off, Leicester broke through us and had an opportunity. You thought that hopefully it would wake us up and it sort of did when we had a bit of a reaction and Alex Iwobi had a huge opportunity where he’s got to at least hit the target.
What we’re guilty of as a squad is that when do something like that, we don’t seem to go again. We know no opponent likes to come to Goodison Park, especially if the crowd is up and Everton are playing with that intensity to close people down but Leicester all over the park were head and shoulders above us for the majority of that game.
While that can happen with the quality that other teams have in the Premier League, what I can’t accept is getting outrun and outfought by opponents, being bullied off the ball and not trying to close down. We do it in moments of games but we don’t stick to it.
I’ve gone on about football intelligence a lot in this column but it’s down to passages of play like that both on and off the ball where you’ve got to pick your moments when to press as a team and try and win the ball back and play to your strengths but I don’t think we are playing to our strengths. We’ve got wingers out there to try and get the ball into Calvert-Lewin as his touch on the ball doesn’t seem to be at the level you’d expect and that’s going to take a while to get back but what he’s still good at is leaping and you can exploit that by whipping the ball into the box.
For the second game in a run, Calvert-Lewin had a huge opportunity and if he’s fully fit and confident, that’s in the back of the net. Unfortunately he was very unsure over what to do and he took the most-difficult option and his shot was saved.
It baffles me that our wingers, week in, week out, feel they have to take a man on. As a full-back, I’m absolutely made up if a winger starts running at me because I’ve got him where I want him and I’m backing myself.
He’s got to do something really special to get past me and also deliver a top quality ball. There was a moment during the Leicester City game that the ball came to Gray who was free and in a fantastic position but he decided to run at the full-back and there were actually two defenders he had to beat and because he’s dominant on one foot, it’s obvious to the opponents where he’s going to go. His final delivery was rushed rather than the composed balls that the likes of Harvey Barnes were doing for Leicester, picking a pass or a cross at the right moment.
It’s not just about finding your team-mate, it’s putting it on a tee for them and making it easy for them to control whereas we seem to just kick it at our team-mates and hope for the best. There was a time in the second half when Iwobi kicked the ball at Maupay and it hit him in the stomach, what do you expect him to do with that?
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