Newcastle defeat highlights immediate Everton issues
After a demoralising 2-1 defeat at Newcastle United yesterday, there are several problems this loss exposed that Everton need to address.
Obviously, the first issue and one that is apparent to all Everton supporters is that the Toffees lack quality within their squad as the last two Premier League matches have perfectly underlined. That’s a long-term problem, not one that can be addressed straight away.
But there are a few other more immediate issues that must be dealt with. The most significant are the defensive weaknesses that have been really exposed recently.
Earlier in the season, the Blues were scoring plenty of goals and winning games and so the team’s defensive fallibility, though apparent, wasn’t a problem.
Now though the goals have dried up with the absence of Richarlison and James Rodriguez as well as the two full-backs Seamus Coleman and Lucas Digne, who are crucial to how the Toffees play.
But those defensive frailties have continued and have seen Everton concede six goals in the last three games and eleven in the Premier League in total so far. That’s become a major problem for the team at the moment as they cannot simply outscore the opposition.
Newcastle didn’t offer much of an attacking threat and had few chances yesterday but scored two goals. True one was a dodgy penalty, but the other resulted from poor defending again.
I’ve said before on many occasions that Micheal Keane and Yerry Mina, while individually good centre-backs, are too alike to ideally play alongside each other.
They both suit operating deeper with everything in front of them and their strengths are also similar as they each do the basics well like clearing the ball and winning aerial challenges. This makes them ideal when defending a lead and dealing with sustained late pressure.
They are though often caught out when up against quick, skillful attacking players and when they have to play a higher line. That’s exactly what happened yesterday when Mina got beaten too easily by Ryan Fraser who then set up Callum Wilson for his and the Magpies second goal.
I think one or other needs to have a quicker defender alongside him and one more naturally comfortable bringing the ball out of defence.
Jarrard Branthwaite is fit again and hopefully Mason Holgate will be ready for a return to action soon. In the meantime though why not give Ben Godfrey a chance alongside either Keane or Mina when Manchester United visit Goodison Park.
Yes it would be a risk, but the player signed from Norwich has played most of his career at centre-half and he has plenty of pace and confidence on the ball.
Another issue that came out of yesterday’s game was the way in which the tactics employed and the team picked by manager Carlo Ancelotti, stifled what little attacking threat might still have been available from his side.
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By playing in a very defensive pattern with five midfielders, this denied Everton width, left Dominic Calvert-Lewin isolated up front and prevented his two young full-backs Jonjo Kenny and Niels Nkounkou getting forward and overlapping, which is their strength.
Without Richarlison, Rodriguez and Digne and given how little productivity we saw from Gylfi Sigurdsson and Andre Gomes, the only real creative outlet was likely to be those two full-backs.
But they were unable to have any real impact offensively and were bottled up too deep. Then, bizarrely when making his changes later in the match, Ancelotti took both of them off rather than a couple of his surplus midfielders!
The Blues boss hasn’t made too many tactical and team selection errors in his eleven months in charge, but I think he did yesterday.
Next. Everton slump to second straight defeat. dark
I trust he won’t make the same sort of mistakes again anytime soon. Otherwise it will undermine whatever slim creativity Everton have in those games when they are dealing with the absence of key players like Richarlison and Rodriguez, from suspension or injuries.