Everton pre-season form shows lots of improvement needed
Yesterday Everton slipped to another pre-season defeat as they went down 4-1 to French side Rennes.
This is the latest loss in a pre-season which has not gone well for Everton since the 22-0 win over Austrian team ATV Irdning in the Blues first game.
The only bright moment in the defeat to Rennes was a debut goal for £44 million signing Richarlison. His look on the highlights at the end of the game made me wonder if he thinks he’s made a mistake signing for the Blues!
After that massively one-sided victory in Austria, Everton have drawn one match and lost the last four, including a 3-0 loss to Championship side Blackburn Rovers.
Should Blues fans be concerned by the team’s less than impressive pre-season form with the Premier League season starting in just thirteen days?
It’s always hard to be sure what pre-season results say about an upcoming league campaign.
Players are coming back from holiday’s or injury and this year for some, the World Cup (although that’s only true for a few Everton players). There’s also the fact of whether some players give their best in such matches.
So these pre-season games can sometimes be a poor guide to how the season will turn out.
But it does seem as though key problems that Everton had last season are still very much in evidence and this indicates they are deep-seated issues. Too many senior players don’t look like they’re in decent form.
Last term Everton were one of the weakest teams in the Premier League defensively. Only four teams conceded more goals in the league last season.
This pre-season has seen the Blues letting in plenty of goals again. That’s a worrying trend that has to be addressed.
There are plenty of rumours that Everton manager Marco Silva and Director of Football Marcel Brands, are working to solve these problems.
The Blues are being consistently linked with signing two Barcelona defenders Yerry Mina and Lucas Digne. Both look like players who could improve Everton’s defensive solidity.
If the club can secure both their signatures, then together with the return of keeper Jordan Pickford and midfielder Idrissa Gueye, this will surely help improve the situation.
At the other end of the pitch the Blues have struggled, again just like last season, to find the back of the net, apart of course from that Irdning match.
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None of Everton’s forwards seem to be in particularly good form at the moment. Gylfi Sigurdsson, Cenk Tosun haven’t been looking that sharp and Theo Walcott hasn’t featured much allegedly due to injury.
And there are rumours floating around that Ademola Lookman might be leaving and even that Walcott has fallen out with Silva, although that seems unlikely to be true.
Everton’s attack also does look like it will need further reinforcement even if the Blues can persuade Lookman his future is at Goodison Park. I think the club will need to add at least one more forward and more midfield creativity before the window closes.
It seems as though the Toffees are constantly struggling to find the right team and formula for success and this pre-season looks no different. Perhaps Everton will hit the ground running at the start of next season but to be honest I’m not very optimistic at the moment.