Dyche’s dire defensive tactics are hurting Everton maybe terminally
Reflecting on yesterday’s dreadful defeat at Goodison Park to Luton Town, Everton mananger Sean Dyche is now becoming a serious liability to any hopes of survival this season.
After two consecutive away wins in which this previously goal-shy team had netted five times, the Toffees relapsed into their old ways and paid the price.
But the team will inevitably struggle when the Everton manager goes back to a failed tactical approach, which has well and truly had it’s time.
How can any manager having lost all four of his home games this season with a solitary goal scored still try and claim there were positives after watching that dross?
When he first took the job Dyche had very few attacking resources with the club having failed to bring in a single player in the January tranfer window. And, his best forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin was injured.
So, the new boss had to come up with a way of playing to cope with the chronic lack of options up front. The need for greater defensive solidity was also pressing.
But now, he does have more choices having brought in Beto as well as Arnaut Danjuma and Jack Harrison so there is the possibility of employing a more attacking approach.
However, Dyche went back to his favoured 4-5-1 formation once again starving his centre-forward who was Calvert-Lewin on Saturday, of the service and support he needs.
Why? What was the reason for doing so after he had almost stumbled onto a winning formation and approach in midweek, one which made the best use of his still limited resources.
The midfield was congested but dysfunctional again with Idrissa Gueye a defensive player whose age has well and truly caught up with him coming back in, despite how well James Garner and Amadou Onana had done together in the centre.
Abdoulaye Doucoure seemed to be playing out wide rather than pushed forward to directly support the striker as he had at Brentford and Dwight McNeil, who in truth was dreadful, appeared to be operating centrally at times. It was a totally confusing mess.
The manager also brought Ashley Young back in at right-back replacing Nathan Patterson for no obvious or good reason.
Patterson had done well enough at Villa and Young unlike the Scot, offers nothing going forward as well as being defensively shockingly bad yesterday.
Defensively as a whole it was a bad day at the office with the defending of set-pieces being very poor.
The normally solid and reliable James Tarkowski and Jarrad Branthwaite who has shone since coming into the team, struggled and were exposed at times with Tarkowski particularly having a real battle to contain the physically powerful and quick Carlton Morris.
But of course, had Everton taken control of the match, been positive and aggressive and done as they should have, which is score some goals, that would have taken the pressure off the defence.
The caveat has to be made again that the players are obviously also to blame for this debacle. Once more good chances were thrown away, especially in the first half, as we’ve seen all campaign.
Goodison Park was once a caldron of a ground that visting teams used to hate coming to. Even when the team was struggling and poor as under David Moyes early on, the Grand Old Lady was often the salvation.
No longer and teams that can’t win at home generally don’t stay up.
Seriously, where does this club and team go from here? I know I’ve said it more times than I can count but this dreadful, disgraceful fare at home is totally unacceptable. Relegation really looks inevitable if this continues.