DCL goal drought worry for Everton

The fallout from last night’s frustrating draw with Crystal Palace is continuing and with reports of tensions around who should have taken a free-kick, but other issues are of more concern to Everton supporters.

The most obvious problem was the lack of goals from the Everton front two of Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Richarlison. Both missed a number of good chances last night as Everton blew a great opportunity to claim three important points in the race for Europe.

The number of chances both forwards missed was considerable to say the least and had they taken even some of them the Blues would surely have been two or three up at halftime with the game basically won.

There are two ways to look at this. The positive spin is to see how many chances the Toffees created in the first place, particularly through the returning James Rodriguez.

Everton had seven shots on target and a total of fifteen shots in total, their second highest of the season so far.

All that is good stuff and shows this team can play some excellent attacking football and create plenty of goal-scoring opportunities, when they get it right.

On the other hand those chances were all spurned and it took a Rodriguez strike in the second half to finally give the Blues a lead their play certainly deserved.

But all those earlier misses came back to haunt the Toffees as is so often the case, with that late equaliser from Palace substitute Michy Batshuayi.

While last night’s dreadful series of misses were hopefully the exception, Calvert-Lewin in particular has been goal-shy for a while now and the last time they scored in the Premier League was when Richarlison netted the winner against West Brom just over a month ago while for Calvert-Lewin its been a lot longer.

While that’s not a total disaster, given the lack of goals from other players in the team it’s really important these two are finding the net consistently.

Calvert-Lewin started the season in fantastic form and was scoring goals left, right and centre over the first month or so of the season. He seemed to have made a decisive step forward in his development into a top quality striker.

Then following the first international break his goals started drying up particularly with Rodriguez out regularly and later on in the season he also got injured only returning to fitness recently.

As for Richarlison the Brazilian hasn’t been the same player that we saw in the previous two campaigns when he netted thirteen goals in each of those seasons.

He struggled to find his sharpest form and wasn’t scoring goals before getting himself sent off in the October derby game at Goodison Park.

These problems seemed to me partly a result of the new 4-3-3 formation Everton were playing, which meant him operating wider on the left rather then more centrally as he had done.

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This was confirmed when it was revealed that he and Ancelotti had spoken about the situation and then the manager tweaked his tactics after which Richarlison went on a long overdue goal-scoring streak.

Longer-term despite their obvious talent, there are still questions about whether the two Everton forwards can deliver the sort of consistent goal tally that the Toffees need to become competitive with the best teams in the Premier League.

Calvert-Lewin doesn’t have the best conversion rate for a striker and while he is a fine target man and possesses pace and power aplenty, is he a truly natural predator? I’m not sure.

As for his Brazilian team-mate it’s still isn’t clear where he his best position is. He seems to have committed himself to Everton but how exactly can the club get the best out of him.

Does he need to play off a front-man, is he actually better suited to playing in a position maybe in a forward three, or can he operate on his own as the centre-forward?

I think Everton need another forward who can offer a genuine goal threat and give the manager more options and push these two who sometimes seem a little too comfortable knowing they are guarateed to start if they are fit.

These are all quesitons that Ancelotti and the two players needs to find the answer to if this Blues team is to make any really substantial progress and even perhaps start getting in the position to win trophies again.