Is it time for Benitez to go with Everton in freefall
Rafa Benitez’s tactics as Everton manager were again exposed in last night’s horrendous 4-1 home defeat to Liverpool.
Going into this match it was a tough ask for anyone to believe that Everton had any real chance of overcoming their neighbours in this game.
Benitez had all the usual injury problems to deal with, something that has obviously seriously compromised the season.
However, the job of the manager was to try and do everything possible to maximise the ability of the team he picked to compete.
I don’t think he did that last night and his tactics undermined those admittedly slender chances the Toffees’ had of making a game of it.
It might not have been enough of course even if he had packed the midfield. And to be honest even a fully fit Everton team would have had to play very well to have any real hope of beating this Liverpool side.
I wrote before the game though that Benitez must consider a 4-3-3 formation and particularly a three-man midfield with Fabian Delph joining Allan and Abdoulaye Doucoure in the centre of midfield to sit and support the usual two.
He failed to do that and instead stuck to just the two players he generally deploys, both of whom of course, had just returned from injury problems.
Doucoure has been arguably the side’s best performer at the start of the campaign and Benitez rightly has urged him to get forward much more and be a real influence in the final third.
Against average or weak teams that worked well and the Frenchman was in fine fettle before the Everton injury curse struck him too.
But, when playing a side of Liverpool’s calibre especially with injuries to other key players hampering the team’s effectiveness and with his own fitness still not quite 100%, he needed help if he was to able to provide that kind of support to a strikeforce likely to be isolated.
The Reds play with basically five attacking players as their full-backs are so far forward and their whole system depends on a midfield that can swarm and press breaking up opposition attacks before they can get momentum and supplying that dangerous attack.
And, predictably the Blues’ were swamped in the centre of the pitch and outplayed by a very powerful and top quality opposition midfield.
The first goal underlined this point competely with Jordan Henderson free to move forward into space and slot home the opener.
Throughout the match Liverpool were in control apart from a short period after the Blues’ had scored when they briefly threatened to make a match of it.
It turned out to be, as we probably all expected, to be a mirage and after Seamus Coleman’s horrendous error had set Mohamed Salah free to score the third, that was it.
I’ve been prepared to give Benitez the benefit of the doubt since he took over and his first games were promising with some fine attacking football and a renewed dynamism about some of the team’s play.
This was giving Everton supporters that cruel hope again that maybe things weren’t going to be as bad as most had expected this season.
That hope has now completely evaporated and so has my patience with the manager. His tactical failings and team selection intransegence – as shown at Brentford – is simply not good enough.
Farhad Moshiri has said publically that Benitez must be given time when he communicated with the media today.
That’s all fine and good, but has he watched any of the team’s last month of games? I doubt it. We have a nightmare run of fixtures coming up in December and it’s hard to see this side picking up more than maybe three or four points at best.
How can things continue like this though if in their next three games Everton have lost against Arsenal, Crystal Palace and Chelsea, on top of a present run of six defeats in their last seven after last night?
Other clubs act even if it might seem premature; Watford, Norwich City and Aston Villa. And with time ticking on and no end in sight to this terrible run of poor form, what else can be done in the short-term to try and arrest what looks increasingly like relegation form.