This unpredictable and lower -quality Premier League season is offering Everton an unexpected opportunity to accelerate advancement and maybe condense two or three seasons of progress into one bite-sized leap.
From serial relegation candidates to European football would change the landscape of the club immeasurably. Never will a better chance to jump ahead be presented. It, of course, would be classic ‘Everton that’ to mess it all up at the most damaging moment.
The 2-0 defeat at league leaders Arsenal was symbolic and representative of contemporary Everton. Did well. Could have done better. Didn’t do better.
Taking no points at Arsenal is not a major crime; very few predicted much success. A nil-nil draw was a pregame possibility if Everton played well and Arsenal had an off day. As it turned out, Everton were good value for the goalless draw that they never got.
While odd and unexpected team selections may have tempered optimism at kick-off, the pattern of the first half restored complete faith. Arsenal didn’t threaten at all. Everton held them capably at arm’s length and offered sporadic moments of counter-attacking potency. The Arsenal goal is far more endangered than Everton’s, and David Raya is much busier than Jordan Pickford.
The gameplan working, the game model unfolding as scripted, up until the missing ingredient of the David Moyes puzzle. Game preparation, check. Team selection, check. Game planning, check. Game management, not so much.
At the hour mark, Beto was awful and empty. Dwight McNeil had performed his task, but it was done. He was lying on the ground making a turf angel after a feeble attempt at an interception, a symbol of ‘too late’ with his replacement.
Iliman Ndiaye, who has been a 65-minute player his entire Everton career, is now an influence of diminishing returns. Others are nearing the warning light, and yet the bench is filled with starters who never get to start and now finishers who never get to finish.
Beto had offered little beyond the baseline effort, never a potential danger, and certainly not a link to help progress the team. Thierno Barry was sadly worse.
Game management and substitution patterns are Moyes’ Achilles heel, Everton’s Moyes heel. It cannot be that an 86-minute-deep McNeil is a better option than Tyler Dibbling, Tyrique George, or even Nathan Patterson, doubled up with James Garner. It cannot be, it mustn’t be, and it isn’t.
Ndiaye, operating ahead of Mykolenko, had held down the left flank threat all day. 60-minutes of the task had been completed, up to that point. The fresh legs and fresh minds are now required to close out the game and the points. The substitutions never came; the well-earned point never came.
Any combination of five changes could have been made to secure what we had or even push on for better, see through the game-long performance that was excellent. Two-thirds outstanding, one-third undermining. The game is often won and lost by the players. This game was blemished by the coach.
When subs come on, there is a buoyancy of new incentive that has a dual reward. Everton refresh the defensive endeavors, performing destructive tasks more quickly, better, and more efficiently. Substitute players asked to take a 90-minute effort and run it through in half the time or less against opponents' fading forces.
With a greater attacking threat going forward, the opposition have to respect that with their own defensive responsibility. You must be a menace going the other way to occupy them. Okay, you might never score, but you need to present the danger.
Everton did none of this. Everton do none of this. When it comes time to make a game-influencing decision, David Moyes chooses not to. Delay, and wait, and let’s see how it plays out. How it plays out is that Everton could be winning more points and more games than they do.
Merlin Röhl & Harrison Armstrong come twenty minutes too late and with the wrong options anyway. Armstrong again played out of position on the right to help double-up and secure the game. His channel was played through on his first action, highlighting that bunkering in and inciting pressure against better teams has its risks.
Perhaps a more progressive decision would have been to play a dynamic, forward-thinking attacker to ask more questions of them. However, that’s not the David Moyes style.
By offering a threat and attempting to win a game versus trying not to lose some points might get sacrificed along the way, it won’t always work out well.
But that is happening anyway. Points dropped or lost in this game, Leeds Utd, Burnley, West Ham United, Sunderland, Man United, etc. There have been many.
The overall net success from a more positive outlook could be worth it. European qualification worth it. And the journey to get there is far more recognizable as Everton FC.