Everton game postponed and Ancelotti’s tactical dilemma
Just as Everton were gearing up for tonight’s match against Manchester City it’s been announced that the fixture has been postponed due to an outbreak of Covid 19 cases at the visitors.
This is a shame of course and it has denied Everton the potential chance to join Liverpool at the top of the Premier League table.
On the other hand it does give the Blues players a bit of a rest, which is perhaps not a bad idea given that they’ve played five matches in fourteen days.
So the Toffees next Premier League game is now on New Years day when they take on West Ham United again at Goodison Park.
In other news today Carlo Ancelotti revealed in his pre-match briefing that left-back Lucas Digne is making excellent progress in his rehabilitation and is on course for a return by the end of next month.
This is some good news on the injury front where Everton have had only bad luck recently with the problems of Digne, Seamus Coleman, James Rodriguez and Allan.
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However, his return to fitness will actually give Ancelotti a dilemma. That is does he bring Digne straight back into the team at left-back and break up his outstanding current defence?
As we’ve mentioned before the general view would be yes. But perhaps he could be tempted to stick with his current back-four and find another way to integrate Digne into the team.
There is one way he could manage this and that’s to stick to the formation he’s been using recently, especially against Sheffield United in the last match.
That formation is a loose 4-5-1, which is of course the variant of the 4-3-3 that Ancelotti has deployed since the start of the season.
He could play Digne in more advanced role on the left hand side of the midfield in front of the excellent Ben Godfrey at left-back.
In this way Ancelotti could preserve the solid backline that has served the Toffees so well this past few weeks, while also giving Everton the huge creative ability of the French international, which they’ve lacked since his injury.
In addition, when Rodriguez also returns, hopefully even sooner, then he too could play on the right of the midfield in front of Mason Holgate thereby combining his terrific flair with the additional defensive cover needed on that side of the team.
These are all possibilities and no doubt Ancelotti has been pondering his options. At least because of how well the new-look side has performed, it’s good for the manager to have these sorts of decisions to make.