neonleon
Player Valuation: £35m
So with two consecutive clean sheets under our belt its looking like, as we all know, the major problems lie at Everton with scoring. For me scoring is fairly inevitable providing we attack successfully and create chances. I don't believe we've been doing that despite overwhelming possession in the majority of matches we played.
Part of this seems to be a lack of urgency going forward. If you look at Blackpool today against Liverpool, they counter attacked with great speed, from breaking up a play, in three passes they had players running into space behind the defenders. We seem to play a languid keep ball this year, stroking it around horizontally, giving the defences time to regroup and put ten men behind the ball.
We also in finding a space for tim cahill and yakubu, have no-one playing killer balls through the centre. All our attacking intent comes from the wings and most of that in the form of crosses. Lets have a look at the centre first:
Arteta has an unearthly ability for a successful pass. He's the gravy the stew is served in. And yet apart from the corners (passes and crosses are one and the same on these things), he didn't muster a single successful forward ball into the box. We look at Arteta as our creative midfielder. He is not doing this either through loss of form or managerial orders. WE NEED BALLS ON THE DECK INTO SPACE FOR YAK AND CAHILL TO RUN ONTO.
Fellaini is less successful at keeping the ball and accurately distributing although in his defence, many balls are played to his head rather than his feet. Note how many attempts he made to slip balls through to players in the box. Only one.
Cahill's game is more about running, shooting, getting into scoring positions but this graphic shows how isolated he was. He also gave the ball away to an alarming degree.
So between the three central midfielders (including cahill) we managed just one ball into the box and that was mopped up.
So we are utterly lacking penetration from the centre. Nobody is playing balls into space for yakubu/cahill. We are playing keep ball.
Its a different story on the wings. On the left, Ossie and Baines combined effectively
Baines put eight balls into the box (either passes or crosses, 3 found their target and one was the tim cahill goal)
Osman put six balls into the box (3 found their target). Altogether the left side of midfield put in 14 balls, 6 found their man and one was a goal - not including the o.g which also came from the left)
The contrast between the right side is stark.
Coleman managed only three balls into the box. None of which were successful. Neville managed four balls into the box. Again, none of them found their man or they were defended. Neville also managed to misplace 10 passes out of 40. A staggering quarter, 25% of all his passes.
The chalkboards back up my belief that Osman wasn't at fault for losing possession a majority of times. The right side were far worse. The chalkboards don't show it but Coleman spent a great deal of time attempting to dribble down the right side. This gives us another dimension there, but inevitably we gave the ball up numerous times. Neville is a great captain and a natural leader on the field but he has easily become our worst player. Thats even including Distin. We need a better player to go with Coleman - either that's Landon in January (with Coleman reverting to right back) or playing Hibbert or Heitinga at RB instead of Neville.
In short, we need
1 to get Arteta playing balls into space behind defenders - something for yak to run at.
2 Moving the ball forward quickly so teams cant regroup.
3 Getting some penetration through the centre. Especially balls played on the deck rather than high balls.
4 We need our right side to match the productivity of our left side.
Yakubu and Cahill had 5 shots all game. This can mostly be put down to the one dimensional state of the attacking. Stroking the ball around laterally in midfield like a continental team guarding a 2 - 0 scoreline is not a recipe for scoring.
Part of this seems to be a lack of urgency going forward. If you look at Blackpool today against Liverpool, they counter attacked with great speed, from breaking up a play, in three passes they had players running into space behind the defenders. We seem to play a languid keep ball this year, stroking it around horizontally, giving the defences time to regroup and put ten men behind the ball.
We also in finding a space for tim cahill and yakubu, have no-one playing killer balls through the centre. All our attacking intent comes from the wings and most of that in the form of crosses. Lets have a look at the centre first:
Arteta has an unearthly ability for a successful pass. He's the gravy the stew is served in. And yet apart from the corners (passes and crosses are one and the same on these things), he didn't muster a single successful forward ball into the box. We look at Arteta as our creative midfielder. He is not doing this either through loss of form or managerial orders. WE NEED BALLS ON THE DECK INTO SPACE FOR YAK AND CAHILL TO RUN ONTO.
Fellaini is less successful at keeping the ball and accurately distributing although in his defence, many balls are played to his head rather than his feet. Note how many attempts he made to slip balls through to players in the box. Only one.
Cahill's game is more about running, shooting, getting into scoring positions but this graphic shows how isolated he was. He also gave the ball away to an alarming degree.
So between the three central midfielders (including cahill) we managed just one ball into the box and that was mopped up.
So we are utterly lacking penetration from the centre. Nobody is playing balls into space for yakubu/cahill. We are playing keep ball.
Its a different story on the wings. On the left, Ossie and Baines combined effectively
Baines put eight balls into the box (either passes or crosses, 3 found their target and one was the tim cahill goal)
Osman put six balls into the box (3 found their target). Altogether the left side of midfield put in 14 balls, 6 found their man and one was a goal - not including the o.g which also came from the left)
The contrast between the right side is stark.
Coleman managed only three balls into the box. None of which were successful. Neville managed four balls into the box. Again, none of them found their man or they were defended. Neville also managed to misplace 10 passes out of 40. A staggering quarter, 25% of all his passes.
The chalkboards back up my belief that Osman wasn't at fault for losing possession a majority of times. The right side were far worse. The chalkboards don't show it but Coleman spent a great deal of time attempting to dribble down the right side. This gives us another dimension there, but inevitably we gave the ball up numerous times. Neville is a great captain and a natural leader on the field but he has easily become our worst player. Thats even including Distin. We need a better player to go with Coleman - either that's Landon in January (with Coleman reverting to right back) or playing Hibbert or Heitinga at RB instead of Neville.
In short, we need
1 to get Arteta playing balls into space behind defenders - something for yak to run at.
2 Moving the ball forward quickly so teams cant regroup.
3 Getting some penetration through the centre. Especially balls played on the deck rather than high balls.
4 We need our right side to match the productivity of our left side.
Yakubu and Cahill had 5 shots all game. This can mostly be put down to the one dimensional state of the attacking. Stroking the ball around laterally in midfield like a continental team guarding a 2 - 0 scoreline is not a recipe for scoring.
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