Everton vs Manchester City: 5 things to watch against Manchester City
By Rob Fisher
Like Spurs last week, Everton must find the chinks in the City armour
4. Everton counter attacks must be clinical
Manchester City do not have many weaknesses, in fact they are the team in the whole of Europe with the least, but last week Spurs showed how you can attack and succeed in open play against the champions.
It’s not the first time Spurs have been successful against City, they have done the double over them this season and beat them in that Champions League classic over two legs back in 2019. The key to this has been to drop 10 players behind the ball when City have possession, but explode up front when they gain it back and can get it into Kane’s feet.
Could Dominic Calvert-Lewin provide Everton with the same type of performance? Probably not as Calvert-Lewin doesn’t like to drop as deep as Kane consistently. Therefore Lampard will need to tweak how Everton could possibly exploit the same weakness.
Teams who succeed against City drop balls in behind and then assess the best situation from there. The question is who can Everton trust to make those decisions on Saturday?
Certainly, it would be harsh to drop Anthony Gordon after his displays this season, but this perhaps is not the game to play the Everton youngster. With Demarai Gray back after missing the last two games and Richarlison starting to get back into form, these two offer Lampard the best options to expose City’s weakness.
The pace of these two can exploit City’s lack of pace at the centre back positions while Calvert-Lewin occupies one of them. The only player who definitely can keep up is Kyle Walker and if you can keep him up the other end of the pitch then Everton will have chances to create space in behind the City defence.
As explained on the previous page Van De Beek will be a key player to play these passes in behind if he is supported by Allan and Doucoure in the middle of the park. While it might not be good to play City after a defeat, it certainly will have helped Lampard spot the weakness and work on this with the players at Finch Farm this week.
We have remarked a couple of times how important it is to get Calvert-Lewin firing again and while this game is tough to do so if Gray and Richarlison can get in behind it will provide him with opportunities to get into the box.
The final ball last week at Southampton was poor, especially in the first twenty minutes when Everton were the better side, you cannot pass up any final third opportunities against City or the game will get beyond you very quickly.
Continued on the next page…