Luck still in short supply at Goodison

Everton 0 - 1 Chelsea

In line with the cliché, sometimes it feels like if it weren’t for bad luck, Everton would have no luck at all. The club, under Farhad Moshiri’s stewardship, has rightly been criticised for poor recruitment decisions and profligacy in the transfer market but it has also been inordinately struck by a succession of serious injuries that have robbed the Blues of key — or potentially key — players for long stretches.

James McCarthy and Seamus Coleman’s double leg breaks, Yannick Bolasie’s torn ACL and meniscus, André Gomes’s sickening ankle fracture dislocation,  Jean-Philippe Gbamin’s thigh and Achilles woes, successive knee injuries to Cenk Tosun (not a key asset, of course, but a saleable one)  and, more recently, Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s quad tear form the bulk of a sorry list of serious injuries to have befallen Everton players over the past few years.

Yerry Mina has been available for less than half of the games for which he has been eligible since arriving from Barcelona in 2018 and the frequency of his injuries has become almost tragically comical over the past 12 months. A £27m signing and arguably Everton’s best centre-half could, through no fault of the club’s, play in just 11 of 38 Premier League games last season and, having crocked himself again this afternoon, he’ll be lucky to better that this term.

Then there is Ben Godfrey, who battled Covid and a torn hamstring last season, worked his way back to full fitness and a starting role in the back three to start 2022-23, only to break his leg inside 10 minutes of the opening game. Ye footballing gods, this isn’t funny.

At least in Godfrey’s position, Frank Lampard has replacements on whom to call and today he was able to draft in Mason Holgate who continued the run of good form he has had since the new manager took charge at the end of January.

Up front, of course, Lampard is pitifully short on options with Calvert-Lewin missing and with Ellis Simms out on loan, he didn’t even have Salomon Rondon as an alternative. That left him trying to fashion a forward line geared for pace on the counter-attack against a superior opposition and, rather than deploy Dele Alli as a false nine, he plumped for Demarai Gray and Anthony Gordon as the two most advanced forwards, with Dwight McNeil making his debut in support.

Predictably enough, the Toffees struggled going forward without a genuine focal point and, with neither Gray nor Gordon renowned for their consistency of end product in the final third, they were able to carve out few clear-cut scoring opportunities. And as if to painfully remind Goodison of the large DCL-shaped hole in attack, some tempting deliveries into the box would go begging, particularly in the first half, where you felt that, had the No 9 been there, Everton might not just have scored but stood a decent chance of conquering this regular winning fixture for a fifth successive season.

Ultimately, though, the contest was settled by one moment of clumsiness by the otherwise impressive Abdoulaye Doucouré and the kind of penalty award that would very probably not have been awarded had the sides and venues been reversed. 

It was another debutant, James Tarkowski’s over-zealous challenge that yielded the first dangerous set-piece of the afternoon when he jumped in on Raheem Sterling and Jordan Pickford saved Kai Havertz’s header but the game was a mere 10 minutes old when Godfrey’s afternoon was ended.

His own poor back-pass forced Pickford to scramble along the byline to clear but, even though the ball had visibly crossed the line, play was allowed to continue and Godfrey put in a typically robust covering tackle on Havertz before he could threaten the Everton goal.

He immediately signalled to the bench that he had sustained a significant injury and, after some eight minutes, was carried off to hospital while Mason Holgate came on to replace him.

Holgate was pressed into immediate action to defend a barrage of Chelsea corners and he was there again to head away a set-piece after Mina’s superb block had diverted the ball behind in the 33rd minute. 

Tarkowski. meanwhile, forced Edouard Mendy into tipping his header over from a corner and, though Chelsea were tidy in possession, they lacked their characteristic attacking danger and intensity and were made to look pretty ordinary for long stretches.

The hosts were doing a decent job of keeping the visitors at bay and restricting them to half chances and dead-ball opportunities until Sterling had the ball in the net after Pickford had spilled Ngolo Kante’s shot into his path but the former Man City forward was flagged for offside.

A couple of minutes earlier, Everton had had their best look-in on the break as Gray and Gordon raced away in a two-on-two situation but the former’s attempt to find the latter in space was cut out by Thiago Silva who anticipated the pass and stuck out a timely foot.

Unfortunately, the good work done by the Toffees and that of Doucouré was undone deep into the time added on for Godfrey’s injury, when Sterling jinked into the box and was clumsily barged over by the Mali international, leading Craig Pawson to point to the spot.

Though Mina and Pickford did their best to put him off — the Colombian was booked for not retreating out of the 18-yard box in time — Jorginho made no mistake with the penalty, sending the keeper the wrong way.

The second half began brightly enough for Lampard’s men as Gray was sent away down the channel where he beat Silva for pace but the Brazilian eventually got back and lunged to deflect the shot behind.

Three minutes later, after McNeil’s attempted centre for Doucouré was knocked behind, Mendy failed to deal with the resulting corner, Iwobi squared it back to Doucouré around 10 yards out but the goalkeeper did well to stop his shot.

But the Blues struggled in general to create chances and they would have to wait until the 73rd minute for their next genuine chance that fell to substitute Dele, on for McNeil, but he couldn’t sort his feet out in time and Chelsea smothered him.

Thomas Tuchel’s men, meanwhile, had resorted to delaying tactics and time-wasting and they barely threatened Pickford’s goal until seven minutes from the end of the regulation 90 when Vitalii Mykolenko made a goal-saving intervention to prevent Sterling from putting the game to bed off Marc Cucurella’s cross.

It’s easy to dwell on the disappointment of a rare opening-defeat — this was Everton’s first loss in their first game of a new season for 11 years — and miss the elements of this performance that were genuine cause for optimism that not only is there a plan and emerging style under Lampard but his methods are working on the players.

The Blues’ passing was crisper and more accurate than was the case last season and they played their way through the lines with a confidence and efficiency that was almost entirely absent by the time Rafael Benitez was sacked in January.

Tarkowski has slotted right in and cuts an assured, leader-like figure at the back; Nathan Patterson made a hugely promising Premier League bow, displaying some exciting attacking instincts while betraying some rawness against the trickery of Sterling; the defence faced a dizzying succession of corners but held firm where last season they would surely have conceded; and Alex Iwobi continued his unforeseen but massively welcome rebirth as a midfield play-maker under the new boss.

Even if the club manage to sign a striker to replace Calvert-Lewin and then vie with him for a starting role, question marks will remain over where the goal-creation is going to come from but Iwobi’s vision, footwork and creativity could provide a big part of the solution if he keeps blossoming in the way he is and the imminent signings of Idrissa Gueye and Amadou Onana can free him up to look forward and play more in the opposition half.

The bottom line: at first blush and contrary to some neutral observers’ dire prognostications, the 2022-23 edition of Everton doesn’t look doomed to another battle against relegation but the rest of August will provide further indication.

Follow @EFCLyndon

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