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Everton's Attack Stifled By Swansea's Gameplan

Two points dropped, and, with Tottenham also drawing and Arsenal losing, another opportunity missed in the chase for Europe

Everton 0 - 0 Swansea City

Everton's hopes of recording a third successive win in 2013, one that would have pressed their case for Champions League qualification, met the stubborn wall of Swansea City's defensive resistance at Goodison Park today as the Blues were held to their first 0-0 draw since May last year.

Despite sitting in the top five of the Premier League, frustration has been a key theme for much of the season for David Moyes's side — be it with injury, ill-timed suspension, refereeing injustice, or a failure to put clearly inferior sides away and claim the points their performances have deserved.

Today, Everton just couldn't find that elusive bit of quality to pick the lock of Michael Laudrup's well-drilled and tenacious back line, though with more composure in front of goal, their aerial prowess might have dispensed entirely with the need to thread their way through an entrenched Swansea rearguard.

Moyes will no doubt look at some decent chances missed and he will certainly rue a shallow bench and the absence of Darron Gibson and Kevin Mirallas — had both players been on the field, you got the feeling the Blues were almost have certainly won —but credit must go also to the visitors from South Wales who came with a solid gameplan to soak up pressure and try and hit their hosts on the break. It was a strategy that almost worked to perfection, although save for one outstanding fingertip save to deny Michu in the first half, Tim Howard was barely troubled in the Everton goal.

In truth, while he was a lot busier, mostly putting on a superb example of aerial aptitude in his six-yard box, his opposite number Michel Vorm wasn't really called upon as much as Moyes would have liked either — although when he was beaten, twice there was an extra man on the goalline to hook the ball awya and preserve the clean sheet for Laudrup's men.

Despite Swansea's resilience, Everton certainly had enough of the ball and created enough openings to have deserved a victory and they set their stall out in the first half with some lovely passing football and another fast-paced start that yielded early opportunities for Marouane Fellaini and Nikica Jelavic.

The Belgian found himself with space to test Vorm from the edge of the area off Steven Pienaar's sweet backheel but his right-footed shot was tame and Jelavic came very close to catching the goalkeeper in no-man's land but he made a double save to deny the Croatian. And Jelavic, who looked spritely and hungry in the first half before his afternoon descended into another frustrating exercise in chasing shadows, came agonisingly close to turning Pienaar's lofted cross home after brilliantly evading his marker but as the ball dropped over his shoulder he could only steer it inches wide of the far post.

The Blues then came as close to scoring as they would all afternoon, first, when Tiendali hacked Jelavic's glancing header from a corner away right in front of the far post and then when Fellaini knocked Phil Jagielka's header down perfectly for Victor Anichebe about six yards out but Vorm got a crucial touch on it and Ashley Williams belted it clear from under his own crossbar.

Swansea, for their part, didn't get their first sight of goal until the game was almost 20 minutes old, a shot by Pablo Hernandez that sliced high and wide of goal, but they could easily have pinched an unlikely lead but for Howard's denial of Michu nine minutes before the break.

Otherwise, it was all Everton but when the lively and effective Coleman eventually cut the ball back for Fellaini, he again shot low and tamely straight at the goalkeeper and when Pienaar was hauled down by Tiendali just outside the box, Osman missed the chance to mark his 10th anniversary as an Everton first-teamer when he steered a free header wide from Baines' pin-point delivery.

Though annoyed to be going into the interval with nothing on the scoresheet to show for theor dominance in the first 45 minutes, the Blues no doubt felt that more of the same in the second half would surely yield a goal. And they came out of the break as smartly as they had started the game, with Neville unfortunately stepping into the path of a terrific Coleman run and seeing a weaker shot than was required turned behind by Vorm.

Back-to-back corners a couple of minutes later ended with Distin powering a header over the crossbar when he might have hit the target before things really started to go off the boil and Moyes's men started to run out of ideas and impetus a little.

Indeed, after a couple of half-chances failed to materialise into anything more substantial, it would be fully 25 minutes before another clear-cut opportunity would come their way and Jagielka spurned it by despatching an unchallenged header inches over the bar with the upper left side of the goal at his mercy.

In between, the lack of depth in the squad, the even more glaring shortage of match-turning alternatives on the bench, the over-reliance on the Baines-Pienaar partnership that the Swans had, by this stage, almost completely smothered with tenacious marking and closing down, and the deficiencies in Neville's game became ever more apparent.

Moyes reacted with what was, on paper, a positive switch with 21 minutes to go when he withdrew his captain and threw on the more attack-minded Steven Naismith but the Scot has often been ineffective wide on the right and he would prove to be again today. In hindsight, moving Pienaar to the right and deploying Bryan Oviedo on the left in front of Baines might have yielded more chances but the increasingly restless home crowd would not find out if that would have been a better option.

An 84th-minute change that saw Apostolos Vellios replace Anichebe probably came too late to really affect the pattern of things up front where Jelavic will no doubt be blamed for being out of form when, once again, he barely got a sniff of a goal all afternoon and all too often moves fell apart on the edge of the visitors' area in the face of a wall of defenders.

Two points dropped, and, with Tottenham also drawing and Arsenal losing, another opportunity missed in the chase for Europe but, with their growing reputation and after how they tore Swansea apart in the reverse fixture in August, it's not surprising that Laudrup's men came with a defensive plan that they were able to see out.

No option, then, but to regroup in nine days' time for the trip to Southampton, a team far less defensively resilient than Swansea City.

Man of the Match: Seamus Coleman

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