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Sam Parry
I was all prepared to write something along the lines of “no disgrace to lose to the reigning European Champions last weekend”. And of course, it was no disgrace. It was much more than that. What was it?
Well, I think first and foremost we did everything we could to give ourselves a fighting chance. That is to say, we defended bravely, and we restricted City to breaking down two solid banks. We didn’t overpress. We didn’t underpress. They were bound to get chances and they did. But if they squandered them, and City did that too, we left ourselves a wonderful opportunity to nick something.
It was truly gutting to see Bogle’s wonderful equaliser go to waste. It felt like such a special moment. A shot to nothing where something speical came off. Oh but for a Rodri thunderbastard it would have. But that’s alright. I came off the back of that defeat with a feeling: summat’s stirring inside these players—there’s fight!
Right, let’s forget Lincoln. Far from me to suggest Egan skied it on purpose to give us a bit more of a break later in the season…
Instead, to Saturday. To Everton. Or at least, Everton coming to us.
Don’t say the “S” word
I don’t like the phrase “six-pointer”. It’s a stupidly specific and numerically erroneous way to describe a match whose consequences feel more significant than the points. Let’s give it another name: a big game. That’ll do it. Feels right. This one feels big. It is big. If we lose it and are left with nil points heading into the international break, then the ground beneath our feet looks pretty temperamental. If we win, then the same soil is growing roses. If we draw, somewhere in between. Any result is neither as bad nor as good as we might think. But it feels like - say it with me - a big game, (not a six-pointer).
I picked Everton for the relegation spots in my pre-season predictions. I also picked Blades and Wolves. Of those three, none have sparkled, including us, although I expect Wolves to finish clear of relegation. But Everton…hmmm. Everton I think are at a tipping point. They should’ve been relegated last season where a year in the Championship, and probably a promotion, would’ve brought that winning feeling back. But (and I know this is a stupid thing to say from a financial POV) I think staying in the top flight might do them some harm, or at least see them relegated this time around. For our sake, I hope it does.
The mood feels low at Goodison. At the time of writing, “Roy’s View From Everton” hasn’t been published yet (if you don’t know what that is, read it tomorrow and you’ll never look back). And still, it’s easy to predict the kind of depressive mutterings of Toffees fans despite decent performance in at least two of their games. They sit bottom having faced no big-hitting team. And they come to Bramall Lane off the back of a League Cup win against a struggling League Two Doncaster Rovers, which was anything but convincing. (They’ll thank their new signing for turning that one around).
So, they’ll be seeing it as a big game. We’ll be seeing it as a big game. Psychologically, it’s got all the hallmarks of the “S” word. But let’s not go there. Instead, let’s look at our line-up which I expect will be as per the below, and then I’ll hand over to Riley Robert to pick up on the data.
Riley Roberts on Everton
Everton’s results so far this season may paint a picture of a very poor side lacking a lot of quality. I personally think this would be a very lazy way to look at Sean Dyche’s Toffees. Despite losing all 3 league games so far this season, 2 of them have been 1-0 losses. Both of them featured incredible displays from opposition goalkeepers. The game against Fulham was perhaps the most unlucky, as per FotMob they had 2.73 xG, and 3.31 post-shot xG (likelihood of a shot resulting in a goal based on whereabouts the ball is heading after the shot). This means that in goal for Fulham, Bernd Leno kept a clean sheet, denying shots which on average would’ve resulted in slightly more than 3 goals. Unfortunate.
Then against Wolves it was a similar story. This time having 1.53 post-shot xG and once again failing to score as was the brilliance of Jose Sa in net. For context, we have only had 1.94 post-shot xG in all 3 of our outings so far in the league.
On Saturday it’s highly likely that Everton’s new £30m man Beto will feature from the start. In the Carabao Cup in midweek, he was an inspired substitute, coming off the bench to score their equaliser and then hit the post. Standing at roughly 6’3 and a half, Beto is a real nuisance for defenders, he was in the top 15% of strikers for headed shots in Serie A last season. Combine this with the fact that 4 of our 5 goals conceded this season have come from crosses and it’s clear to see why he might be a problem. In fact, it would come as no surprise given Everton have attempted the third most crosses in the league this season with 71, and on top of that, no team has had more shots from set-pieces than Everton’s 17. This is because of the brilliant dead-ball ability of Ashley Young.
At 38 you may been forgiven for thinking Young wasn’t the player he once was. He probably isn’t. BUT, he has completed the fifth most crosses out of any player in the league this season. Generally, it’s quite simple, either improve rapidly at defending crosses or we will be in huge danger on Saturday afternoon. One thing that can provide us with some hope though is that they seem to be better at creating down their left-hand side. I’m sure we can all agree we are much more equipped to deal with left-hand threats with Baldock at RWB rather than the other side where LWB has been a real problem area (enter the fray: Luke Thomas).
All-in-all, this is bound to be a close affair and is just about as big as a game can be after only four matches of a season. It’s a good opportunity to get some points on the board, but having looked at some of the data I think it’s clear that Everton are nowhere near as bad as you may think at first glance. And I’d even suggest that in Nottingham Forest we have already played a worse side this season. Everton’s threats seem to come in the form of things which have caused us problems in the past which makes me feel like this might be a case of the wrong opponent for us at the wrong time.
On Everton: "I've seen all of Everton's games and I know Dychey won't have been happy with the Villa performance … he won't have been impressed with the other two results but performance-wise they should've won the games. We know we're playing against a team who've not won a league game yet but that's not for want of trying. It's going to be a tough game."
On Luke Thomas starting against Everton: "Luke's come in to play. He'll be involved at the weekend."
On McBurnie’s fitness: “It'd be a stretch for him doing ninety but he's in contention to start — not holding him back."
On the defeat to Lincoln: "Performance-wise I was bored. I never want to be bored when I watch us and I was bored last night. In terms of the game itself, it was an important game for us because we had Jayden and Oli Mac having not done any preseason, Cam having trained but not played, Issy in the same position. From that point of view, it was a really important game but it would've been nice to still be in the competition to give us those options again."
Sam Parry
Well, if my opening gambit threw some positivity on this game, then Riley’s gone and exposed us to the realism we all need to face up to: this is a bloody tough league. And when a team is perceived to be bad because of their results, it might be the case that their performances have merited more. That’s what Riley thinks. Clearly, that’s what Paul Heckingbottom thinks too. But still. Are Everton as good as City? Absolutely not.
We have to go into this game with the belief that we can win it. And, of course, we can. We almost nicked a point off the Champion. Now we have the players available to cause teams more problems, at least if McBurnie and Archer both start. Let’s go with:
SHEFFIELD UNITED 2-1 EVERTON
Thanks, Sam
“…summat’s stirring inside these players – there’s fight!” Exactly what I thought after the Manchester City game; I was really proud of their performance and it shows they’re not going to roll over and give in. (Although re Lincoln City - yes, let's forget it!).
It’s true, that this is a “bloody tough league” and we really never know what we’re going to get week by week. In the Championship, we’d played the other teams before and knew roughly what to expect, but now, well, anything could happen!
And of course, since you wrote this, we’ve re-loaned James McAtee, so hopefully he’ll give us an added fillip (although may not be eligible for tomorrow?).
I’m really enjoying these pre-match reports – and it’ll be interesting to read them again at the end of the season!
Sue.
We need the singing and chanting to lift us tomorrow. Lincoln supporters were amazing and deserved victory. Cracking goalie😁