Interesting write up by an american stats guy for ESPN:
www.espnfc.com/barclays-premier-league/23/blog/post/2751121/everton-fun-to-watch-in-premier-league-with-roberto-martinez
For those who cba clicking:
Everton thrill in attack, but defence, aging Tim Howard are big concerns
It's hard not to enjoy watching Everton play. They've got a bright young attacking nucleus with players like Romelu Lukaku, Ross Barkley, and Gerard Deulofeu who all seem to be blossoming at once.
Manager Roberto Martinez not only talks the talk, but walks the walk when it comes to demanding his team plays an attacking and ambitious style. The fullbacks maraud forward, the midfielders get into the box, heck even the central defenders get to spend time making plays on the ball.
And yeah, maybe they're stuck in a disappointing ninth right now, but with the table so bunched up, that still leaves them only a point from sixth and seven from the top four. They're right in the thick of the chase for the Europa League, even if the Champions League remains, at most, an unlikely longshot.
Plus, they're in the semifinals of the League Cup. On the surface Everton look like a team hitting their stride, set for a strong second half. Sure, they might be a little shaky at the back, but plug those holes, maybe upgrade the goalkeeper position, and this team's got a bright future.
Look a little deeper, though, and the red flags start showing up at alarming levels. The attack, rather than the beginning of something truly excellent seems more like an average unit operating at peak efficiency, a situation which can only last for so long. The defense, rather than a fundamentally sound group being undermined by an underperforming keeper, suspiciously resembles a jumbled mess from top to bottom.
The truth is, despite their easy to watch style of play, Everton isn't a top team waiting to happen, they're a midtable team that just happens to be fun to watch.
It seems counterintuitive to suspect Everton's attack as weakness. Their 28 goals is third in the league. Strip out penalties, and they've got 27, tied with everybody's darling Leicester City, and only two behind Manchester City. They've scored a lot. They've actually scored too many. Everton are a team that takes an average amount of shots, 191 tenth most in the league. The good news is that those shots seem to be better than the ones most people take. Their 70 shots on target is fifth most in the league, and they shoot from relatively close distances, 18.8 yards away, the sixth closest average shot distance. But, even taking all of that into account, ESPN Stats and Info's expected goal model would only predict a return of about 20 goals. They've scored 27.
There are reasons to be skeptical here. Lukaku sure seems like an elite striker, and he's made up the lion's share of Everton's scoring punch. His 11 non-penalty goals are tied with Jamie Vardy for the league lead. Eventually most players come back in line, and even the best strikers have droughts of a few games, but still Lukaku's performance isn't wildly outlandish.
The same can't be said for the rest of Everton's attack. Ross Barkley, whose development this season has seen him recover the talented youngster label that fell by the wayside during a rough 2014/15 season, has scored six goals. Expected goals slots him in at 2.5.
Though on the bright side for Barkley, this season marks the third in a row where his passing has improved. He's increased the chances he's creating per game from 0.92 to 1.41 to 1.76 during the first 15 games of this year. He's done that while playing more aggressive passes, too. So, even though his five assists may be a gaudy headline number buttressed by some spectacular finishing by his peers, the underlying passing numbers are improving. That's a very good sign for a midfielder whose strength and ball striking ability has often seemed well ahead of his ability to read the game, move the ball, and pick out the right passes quickly enough to prevent an attack from bogging down.
Take all that into account, combine it with the emergence of Gerard Deulofeu's electric ability to create for others from the right wing, and then combine it with the fact that Everton scored six against Sunderland and four against Aston Villa while smashing those teams at their weakest moments, another scenario that expected goals can struggle to fully account for, and it's tempting to explain away Everton's performance against that metric.
The problem is that seven goals worth of over performance is simply a massive number. Over the course of the five full Premier League seasons before the current one, only three teams managed to outpace their underlying numbers by that much over the course of an entire season, let alone the 15 games Everton have done it in. Manchester United during their 2010/11 title winning season, Manchester City during their 2013/14 title winning season, and Liverpool as runners-up during that same 2013/14 season. If Everton keep up their current pace they'd beat their expected goal tally by almost 19 goals. There are three teams across soccer since 2010 that have managed to do that over a single season. They are Barcelona, Real Madrid (twice), and Bayern Munich. Either Everton's attack suddenly morphed into that of a top three super club, or they're bound to come back to earth, at least a little bit.
That's one of the elephants in the Everton room. The other one is the defending. In terms of the goals they've conceded Everton are right on par with where you'd expect. They've conceded 20 non-penalty goals and that's where expected goals would have them given the amount and type of shots conceded. That expected goal tally is dead average for the Premier League.
And yet despite that, much of the criticism of Everton's defensive record has fallen on goalkeeper Tim Howard's shoulders. Some of that criticism is simply a response to the volume of shots Howard has faced. Only Costel Pantilimon at Sunderland has faced more attempts on his goal than Howard has at Everton, 86 to Howard's 79. And only Pantilimon has made more saves, 61 to Howard's 59. All keepers make mistakes, and the more shots they face the more opportunities they have to make errors. It's a lot easier to remember all the times that a keeper "should have done better" than the many more times that he did, in fact, do better. That's not to entirely absolve Howard of blame. Judging keepers is tricky business.
Everton's biggest weakness is how they are conceding shots. There's no way to sugar coat it. They are simply terrible at defending their own penalty box. Everton are the worst team in the Premier League at winning aerial duels in their own third of the field, winning only 48.2 percent, and second worse in their own penalty area at 45 percent. Teams have completed 77 crosses against them, the fifth most in the league, at 23.8 percent, also the fifth highest. Those crosses have resulted in 49 shots, that's the most shots conceded from crosses in the league, and those shots have ended up in the back of the net 8 times, the second most of any time.
The problem has been particularly acute on set plays. Half of the goals from crosses they've conceded have been from set plays, either corners or free kicks. Opponents are completing their pass 40.5 percent of the time in those situations, the worst performance by a defense in the league. The result is that again, the shooting numbers don't make Howard look bad, because since Everton are poor at defending the original pass, Howard has faced 40 shots assisted by a pass from these dead ball situations, the worst in the league.
There's more than enough blame to go around. There's Phil Jagielka's injury to start. With the England stalwart injured Everton have to rely on a partnership of John Stones and Ramiro Funes Mori. Both Stones and Mori's primary attributes as defenders involve their feet. Both are notable for having the attacking attributes that Roberto Martinez wants in a centre-back, the ability to play with the ball at their feet, and dribble and pass their way out of the back to convert defending opportunities into attack ones. Both have the range to step forward and defend closer to the halfway line, trying to snuff out attacks before they start, though Stones is much more adept at the skill than his new partner. Both of them are at their weakest when forced to play as a more traditional central defender in their own penalty area.
Dealing with crosses is also where Howard has struggled mightily in goal. He's made four errors on crosses this year already, while he's claimed or punched 22, which is both a really poor ratio, 84.6 percent the worst in the league, and a tiny sample. Those kinds of errors can and do often even themselves out. In the five years before this Howard only averaged five errors on crosses per season, and he never had a season where he was below 92 percent. But, he's also only coming for eight percent of the total crosses he's facing. That's down from the last five years where he's vacillated between 10 and 12 percent.
So, maybe it's nothing, a quirk of 15 games. But, the combination of a keeper both coming for less crosses and making more mistakes when he does, especially when that keeper is 35-years-old, suggests father time is creeping up on Tim Howard.
Everton are young, they're exciting, they score goals, they concede goals. With all that excitement it's tempting to seize on the good moments and expect the bad ones to eventually take care of themselves, to expect the scoring to continue apace while the defense resolves itself.
In fact, the opposite is true. Eventually the scoring will slow, but the defense will remain the same. That's good enough to contend for the Europa League places but not much more. But at least they'll be fun while they do it.
Mike L. Goodman is a Washington DC based soccer writer and analyst covering primarily European soccer
Interesting points but the attack we have is capable of beating the so-called "norm" for Everton. They are not ordinary players. They are the best attacking trio in the league (I believe).
As for the defence, there is no defence for their inability to defend crosses. it is a basic skill for a top class defender or a defender at any level.
Those stats are disturbing and unless the manager addresses them then all his efforts producing a team that can dominate all other areas of the pitch are neutered.
Of course this is only year 3 of a 5 year plan (if he can keep all the talented players that long) and you can only make changes gradually but it's time we had a new keeper and it's a pity we didn't get Scott Dann as we need a grock to go along our ball playing genius wearing the no.5 shirt. Perhaps he can learn the grocky side of the game as somebody has to take command of the area.
Anyway, I'm still hopeful we can buck the stats and end the season on a high note. COYB!!
