It’s been a good year for Everton fans, even with the disappointing 12th place finish at the end of the 19/20 season. There’s been ups and downs, but this year has been very promising for Evertonians, especially with the recent form. It’s hard to say the three best things that have happened to the club, and certain things are easy enough to figure out, but I think there’s been a lot of good this year and with the way, this year has gone it’s the best choice to look at the best things to happen to the Toffees this year.
Also, before we go into the list I thought I’d put in the honourable mentions that almost made it into the list:
1. Everton’s league position at the end of 2020
2. The player improvement under Ancelotti (e.g, Mina, Iwobi, Sigurdsson, etc.)
3. The Defensive Improvement
Here are, in my opinion, the three best things to happen to Everton in 2020:
1. The Evolution of Dominic Calvert-Lewin
One problem Everton had under Marco Silva was the lack of an out and out goalscorer. It seemed like the goals were split between Richarlison and Calvert-Lewin, but the Englishman never had the consistency to have a good scoring run and he never used his physical gifts, mainly his aerial ability, to his advantage to score goals.
When Duncan Ferguson took over as interim manager, we saw the start of Calvert-Lewin’s evolution, he became more aggressive and used his physicality more, his brace against Chelsea being a perfect example of this.
Then Carlo Ancelotti joined Everton and instantly he knew Calvert-Lewin was the striker he wanted, and even though we save improvement from him, we didn’t see the full scale of what Calvert-Lewin was capable of.
Then the 20/21 season started, with Calvert-Lewin scoring the winning goal which gave Everton a huge win over Spurs at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and as we all know, he has continued scoring to the point where teams have to stick two players on him just to stop him from scoring.
Calvert-Lewin still has some consistency issues, the recent game against Sheffield United being the easiest example, but he’s turned into the goal threat Everton have needed ever since Romelu Lukaku departed for Manchester United.
The English forward has scored 11 goals in 15 Premier League appearances, with Ancelotti getting the best out of Calvert-Lewin’s physical abilities, this either allows Calvert-Lewin to score if multiple defenders don’t mark him out of the game, or defenders sticking on him allows other players to get involved to get us the point. It’s been a winning formula for Everton, with Calvert-Lewin being one of the main reasons Everton are currently sitting in the Champions League positions.