Has the game passed by Everton manager
After the debacle of Sunday night’s 1-0 defeat to Sheffield United, Everton boss Carlo Ancelotti has been speaking frankly in his post match comments.
The Everton manager said he was embarrassed about his team’s home form and performances. He’s right and both he and the players should be. But for me one of the wider questions is, has the modern game maybe passed him by?
I’ve raised some queries about Ancelotti’s team selections, approach and tactics from time-to-time but it’s also true he has been hampered by so many injuries and the need to constantly chop and change as a result.
But with Sunday’s loss to the Blades the Toffees have now lost eight times in the Premier League at Goodison Park this term, their worst home record since the 1993-94 season. Something seems fundamentally wrong with this team.
That 93-94 season of course ended up with a final day match at Goodison Park, which I attended and the Blues had to win to have any chance of avoiding relegation. They did beating Wimbledon 3-2 and that was ultimately enough to keep Everton up.
On the evidence of last night again I doubt this group of players would be able to do anything similar. And if it wasn’t for the team’s away record the Toffees would have been fighting a desperate relegation battle this season as well.
Anyway, Ancelotti has admitted that his side needs to find more attacking urgency and he admitted that his players were struggling to pass the ball well, which is quite an admission about a group of Premier League footballers!
As we’ve mentioned many times the Italian has proved he can set up his team to sit deep, defend well and counter-attack effectively away from home and he has achieved some notable results by doing so. It was a very pragmatic, you might say a very Italian approach.
But as he admits it’s proved an unresolvable puzzle to find a way to transition into a more offensive approach when the side plays at Goodison. It’s positive that he sees the problem obviously, but also a little concerning that he sees it’s so difficult to resolve and talks about ‘maybe’ making improvements next season?!
In some respects the team seems to have gone backwards over the last few years with the ability of the side to create and score goals falling away over the past few seasons.
In fact Everton scored 54 goals in 2018-19 season under Marco Silva then 44 last term and so far this campaign 46 and that was distorted by the high number scored early in the season. And all this with basically the same attacking players.
Is it just basically a question of the quality of players, a lack of effort and commitment or is the manager partly at fault?
Well this is a complex problem to answer with certainty but the return of fans next season might make some difference, we’ll see.