Tough test at Leeds for Rafa Benitez's new look Everton

After a fine opening day win over Southampton at the Grand Old Lady last weekend, Everton now face a difficult game away at Leeds United on Saturday.

The 3-1 victory over the Saints was hard fought but in the end well deserved and Everton unveiled a more direct and fast-paced game under their new manager.

This approach generally worked well until that solid start was undermined by Micheal Keane’s awful lapse and Southampton had scored a well-taken goal. But the Toffees recovered in the second half to go on and win comfortably in the end.

It was good to see the Blues play with much more intensity, urgency, width and pace than we had seen last season or indeed for too long in previous campaigns as well.

I wrote that it reminded me a bit of the heyday of the mid-eighties (including Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s diving header) and other past successful eras and there are plenty of hints that Benitez intends to get his teams playing in a much more recognised traditional ‘Everton’ way.

By that I mean of course playing how most successful Toffees teams have done with combativeness and determination across the pitch, feeding wide attacking players and seeing them getting plenty of good quality balls into the box for the number nine to get on the end of.

It’s obviously very early days and we will see how this back-to-basics type approach works out as the season progresses but the initial signs are promising.

I don’t want to overplay this analogy, after all putting crosses into the box for pacey strikers to score from is hardly a novel way of playing football!

But the speed and directness of these tactics is perhaps a little bit unusual and in a way it might just prove to be even more effective these days as defenders are not as used to dealing with a barrage of high balls from out wide as they were twenty or thirty yeards ago.

English football today is in many ways almost unrecognisable from the sort of thing I grew up watching in the eighties.

Back then it was a hard, physical game with some truly shocking tackles and challenges sometimes going completely unpunished. And the football was often played on those classic mudbaths of pitches where threading neat one-two’s between players and making nice passing triangles in midfield was almost impossible!

So the emphasis was on getting the ball out wide as quickly as possible to wingers who often hugged the touchline – often the only place on the pitch that was still dry and grass-covered – and relied on pace and a shimy or a shuffle to get past the opposing full-back and put a cross into the penalty area.

Defenders were used to dealing with a lot of high balls in the air and could much more easily employ the dark arts of defending when handling centre-forwards.

All this has changed in the last twenty odd years and while I miss that football (especially because Everton were winning things then!) in some ways the game has changed for the better.

But, while the technical quality of football has certainly improved and the facilities both on and off the pitch are light years ahead of where they were, many teams now play without recognised wide attacking players and defenders are less used to constantly coping with that bombardment.

Anyway, getting back to Saturday’s match and one of the reasons for mentioning all this is because the Toffees opponents were once renowed practioners of this traditional English football.

Leeds in the sixties and early seventies were hated and begrudgingly admired in almost equal amounts as Don Revie’s superb side went on to compete for trophy after trophy at home and abroad. They didn’t win as many of those prizes as they perhaps should have done but it’s still without doubt the greaterst era in the Yorkshire club’s history.

Today’s Leeds teams are like many English sides full of overseas talent and managed by a foreign coach as well in Argentine Marcelo Bielsa. He and Benitez will be able to converse in their native tongue on the touchline.

Bielsa’s side played with breathtaking intensity last season both home and away, surprising opponents and they scored and at times conceded a lot of goals.

This approach won him and his players plenty of plaudits and despite a few shaky spells, Leeds finished comfortably mid-table. And their midfield lynchpin Kalvin Philipps got into the England squad for the Euros and was one of the most consistent performers in the run to the final.

The interesting question was would they get found out at all this season? Well if Mancehster United ruthless five goal thumping was anything to go by the answer might be yes.

Like most promoted teams Leeds have to be mindful of ‘second season syndrome’ that dreaded decline in form and intensity that affects many sides who have perhaps overacheived in their first campaign in the top flight.

They are now no longer a relative unknown and opposing clubs have had a summer to work out how to deal with them.

In many ways though this season might be different because of the absence of fans last time round so in a way making this feel like effectively the first season back for teams like Leeds.

And on Saturday they will be itching to get out in front of their supporters, who are just as passionate and important to Leeds as the Blues fans are to Everton, for the first time since that promotion a year ago.

They’ll also be desperate to put last weekend’s dreadful defeat at Old Trafford behind them so you would expect a very intense and fast start from the home team.

So it will be important assuming Leeds begin well that the Toffees can ride this out spell out for half an hour or so and avoid losing an early goal or two.

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And that brings us to Benitez’s team selection on Saturday. Last weekend of course Keane’s blunder cost Everton a goal and for a time looked as though it might have turned the game in the Saints favour. The Blues can’t afford lapses like this against Leeds.

Based on training this week it looks as though Benitez might decide to start with Yerry Mina at centre-back rather than Keane. Let’s hope Ben Godfrey is back too although he has been absent again from training so it doesn’t look like he will feature.

Whoever he picks to play centre-back, I suspect the Everton boss might deceide on a more defensive posture early on, defending deeply and in numbers looking to absorb Leeds attacks, after all this is often how the Spaniard has played away from home in the past.

I may be wrong but it would be suprising if he goes toe-to-toe in an all-out attacking mode from the beginning of Saturday’s game. I think he will want to be more circumspect and a little cautious at the start.

As well as Godfrey’s continued absence Everton are also still probably without James Rodriguez and Moise Kean although as neither, particularly of course Kean, have played much recently for the team it’s not as if they are crucial individuals to Benitez’s plans.

So assuming Mina comes in for Micheal Keane I would expect the same side that started against Southampton – unless he picks another defensive midfielder in Jean-Philippe Gbamin now back in the squad – because while he may want to play more conservatively Benitez will still want to counter-attack whenever possible.

It’s a hard match to call but I think while another win would be great, a point is still a solid gain to bring back to Merseyside.

Tough test at Leeds for Rafa’s new look Everton

By Matt Townsend | Aug 19, 2021

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