After a promising summer in which over £100 million was spent on new players, trust was given to manager Marco Silva to improve on Everton’s 2018/19 Premier League finish of eighth and break into the European places. Instead, after 14 games, Everton are languishing in 16th and Silva’s job is under huge scrutiny as another season threatens to go to waste.
Saturday’s 2-0 loss at home to Norwich City, who were bottom of the Premier League before the match, was already Everton’s seventh defeat of the season, their third at home and fifth in their past six league games against newly-promoted teams – as many as in their previous 48 combined.
The Problems at Everton
Where to Start?
The match summed up Everton’s season so far: not clinical enough in attack and fragile in defence as the away side’s two goals came from mistakes at the back. The first came from Yerry Mina’s half-hearted challenge which allowed Teemu Pukki to find Todd Cantwell, who finished well after an unmarked surge into the box, while Gylfi Sigurdsson’s poor clearance fell straight to Dennis Srbeny, who sealed the game.
“We started to be afraid and that was the problem,” Silva said after. “You can never, ever, ever be afraid to play football. I think it is not the main thing to talk about the situation. It is not the moment to talk about individual positions. We have to look what is best for us as a club and for myself and the players as well – but always the club has to be at the top.
“If you are really disappointed with the afternoon I can imagine they [fans] are as well and they have the reaction to the manager and the players. When you lose a match, the first person they look to is the manager. Football is like that. The message is I respect what is their feeling, for sure. It is not the first time they felt the way they felt this afternoon.”
Silva knows he is a man under pressure. Heavy investment has been made into a squad that boasts plenty of talent but the results aren’t matching the promise. The irony is that stats-wise, Everton are performing well in a number of key areas. They rank sixth for average shots per game this season (13.8) and also sit in the top half when it comes to dribbles (17.8) and key passes (10.2) per match. Defensively, only Manchester City are conceding fewer shots per game than Everton (8.5) and the Toffees sit fifth for total completed tackles (239).
Leaky Defence
However, there are other areas of real concern. The departure of key defensive midfielder Idrissa Gueye to Paris Saint-Germain has meant that Everton are now more open in midfield and are lacking protection for their inconsistent back four. Silva’s side have only blocked 26 shots this season, the joint second-fewest with Manchester United, and they also rank 17th for total clearances (206). As a result, only the four teams below Everton have conceded more goals this season. Set-plays have also been a huge issue, with more goals from free-kicks or corners (23) being conceded since the start of last season. They have also made three errors leading to goals – only Sheffield United, Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton have more.
In attack, Everton rank fifth when it comes to big chances created (22) but are proving to be one of the least clinical sides in the league, with only 13 goals being scored. No player has reached four league goals this season, with Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Richarlison, and Cenk Tosun all proving ineffective as the club continues to search for a clinical striker since the departure of Romelu Lukaku in 2017. Summer signing Jean-Philipe Gbamin being ruled out for two months after just his second game did not help things, either.
The treatment of fellow summer addition Moise Kean, thought to be the replacement for Lukaku, has raised questions also. The 19-year-old was bought for £25 million from Juventus but is yet to score this season, with Silva often using him in wide areas instead of his favoured central position. “If you look at Moise Kean in the national team, he plays always as a right-winger, always as a right-winger, many, many times as a right-winger,” Silva told the Liverpool Echo at the start of November.
“You are talking about a player who played, maybe, seven games in the starting XI last season at Juventus, he played some games as a striker, some games as a winger, when he came into some games [from the bench] he played many moments as a winger as well. He can play both positions.”
It’s not just Kean that’s misfiring, the rest of the club’s summer signings, along with key players such as Gylfi Sigurdsson, Richarlison, Theo Walcott, Seamus Coleman, and Lucas Digne, are badly out of form. Throw in the blow of losing midfield lynchpin Andre Gomes to a horrific ankle injury and the problems at Goodison Park are worryingly evident.
Silva is set to remain in charge for this weekend’s trip to high-flying Leicester City but Everton now face a tough run of fixtures against Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Burnley thereafter. And with the club no closer to the top eight than the relegation zone, things could get worse before they get better.
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