Everton can take next step
After a two week break Everton play Arsenal on Sunday as the Premier League returns in full. So can the Blues take the next step in their development under Carlo Ancelotti and win at the Emirates?
This match is an important gauge I think of where Everton are in terms of their recent improvement and how much work still needs to be done before the team are truly competitive.
It’s an interesting game at this point too as it’s the return fixture between the two sides since that day back in December at Goodison Park when both clubs unveiled their respective new managers; Ancelotti of course joining Everton and Mikel Arteta taking the Arsenal job.
This match isn’t a fixture which should now provoke the kind of trepidation that used to accompany these games when Arsenal were at their peak under Arsene Wenger.
In those days the Gunners were a real pain in the arse so to speak, as they always seemed to beat the Toffees and often very comprehensively!
The current side representing them is not a vintage Arsenal team by any means. But it’s still a challenge to go and win there because Everton have such a terrible record away from home against the so-called ‘big teams’, and especially in London.
This is therefore an important physiological barrier that the Toffees have to overcome if they are to be taken seriously as a team that can compete at the top end of the Premier League.
So Sunday’s game represents a great chance to overcome that miserable run of failures and try to record a first win at Arsenal since goodness knows when.
Since taking over Ancelotti has won several away games, at Newcastle United and Watford, which represents a significant improvement on the record under his predecessor. This though is a new test of the emerging resolve the Toffees have shown in those wins,
Of course Everton can look forward to welcoming back the talisman Andre Gomes who is set to start the match at the Emirates.
As to Ancelotti’s other selections, he has something close to a full squad of players to pick from at last, with the notable exception of Jean-Philippe Gbamin of course.
I except though he will stick with the same sort of team he has tended to pick since taking over playing in a 4-4-2 system.
The main areas of uncertainty will be whether he will start with Djibril Sidibe or the more experienced Seamus Coleman at right-back, and who will play in the centre of midfield alongside Gomes; will it be Morgan Schniederlin or Gylfi Sigurdsson. I would expect Schniederlin to play.
On the left hand side of the midfield, Ancelotti has tended to favour Bernard but I’d be tempted to give Alex Iwobi a start there. He is raring to go after his injury absence and will obviously also feel he has something to prove to his former team mates and the Arsenal fans,
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The Blues opponents have had an inconsistent season and despite Arteta taking over that has generally continued.
The Gunners have drawn a lot of recent matches although they’ve won three of the last four including a 4-0 demolition of Newcastle United last weekend.
They are then showing signs of sustained improvement under the tutelage of the former Everton wide man and in players like Pepe have real threats to be wary of.
So looking at this match I don’t want to say the usual ‘a point will be a decent result’ type of thing, although I suspect we’d still take it! Let’s hope that Everton can overcome their all too common history of inglorious failure in the capital and come back with all three points at last.