‘Playing for a 1-0 defeat’

Everton 0 - 1 Arsenal

No goals. Three straight defeats. Just two wins in their last nine. Everton’s home form, naturally their best hope of survival again this season, continues to be as abysmal as it is worrying.

It was unlikely to improve much against Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal… but then you could have said the same in December 2021 coming off humiliation at the hands of Liverpool and again in February when the Blues hadn’t won in front of their home fans for four games, were sitting 19th in the Premier League and the Gunners appeared to be on course for the title.

In both of those prior instances, Everton found the passion, inspiration and grit to beat Arsenal and record results that, in the grand scheme of things, were one of their keys to staying up in the top flight.

None of that was in evidence today in a display that was, for the most part, long on defensive organisation but depressingly short on guile, invention, intensity and attacking purpose. Even Goodison itself, a cauldron in this fixture earlier this year to greet Sean Dyche as the latest incumbent of the “hot seat”, was subdued and uncertain, perhaps conveying the general mood of the club as Farhad Moshiri prepares to cut ties by selling to 777 Partners in the coming months.

Everton under Dyche, and often under Frank Lampard before him, have tended to at least start games with energy and dogged pressing but it was curious how much respect they paid Arsenal today and how meekly they seemed to accept their fate; as if defeat were obvious before a ball was kicked and they merely had to play along with the script. As one Evertonian posted to Twitter, it was like they were playing for a 1-0 defeat.

The high press seemed to have been abandoned in favour of a strategy of sitting off Arsenal and then getting into them when they got into Everton’s half, a tactic that relied on another excellent display from Jarrad Branthwaite and an improved outing from James Tarkowski, with Vitalii Mykolenko, restored at left-back with Ashley Young replaced Nathan Patterson on the other side, playing his part with a largely assured performance of his own.

But it was high-risk given Arsenal’s ability on the ball and it was undermined by Everton’s horrific inability to do anything meaningful when they had possession which was at odds with the number of chances they created against Fulham, Wolves and Sheffield United, matches from which most agree the Toffees should have gleaned more than just one point.

In that sense, Dyche had better hope that this was an aberration from an attacking standpoint; a consequence of the combination of a vastly superior opposition and the disruption of the international break, with precious little evidence that two-week hiatus for many of his charges had been an opportunity for fine-tuning and the formulation of an attacking strategy.

Because Everton were horrendous going forward, clueless in possession and just awful at times in terms of their ball retention. Beto made his home debut but cut an isolated and unsupported figure up front, Dwight McNeil returned to the fold but looked off the pace, Arnaut Danjuma seemed to suffer from switching flanks to accommodate McNeil, while the decision to sit Amadou Onana deep and push the wasteful Idrissa Gueye forward as one of the lead pressers was questionable from the outset.

In the end, Mikel Arteta’s side merely needed to bide their time before making the decisive breakthrough after Gabriel Martinelli’s 19th-minute strike had been ruled out of offside and Leandro Trossard provided the killer goal with 21 minutes of the 90 to go.

The tone of the game was established early, with Arsenal dominating possession — sometimes to an embarrassing degree — and the hosts seemingly content to sit and try and get deep into the contest without conceding.

Fabio Vieira was allowed the time and space to shoot but his effort sailed over in the 10th minute but nine minutes later, Everton’s defence stood still hoping for an offside flag against Eddie Nketiah as Gabriel’s pass deflected forward off Beto. A check by Video Assistant Referee Stuart Attwell confirmed that the Gunners’ striker was marginally offside before Martinelli converted and the Blues were let off the hook.

Arsenal continued to carry all the attacking threat, though, and when Ben White was allowed to power to the byline, Declan Rice’s shot was blocked while the former would test Jordan Pickford with a drive later in the half.

In between, Everton had a brief flurry of attacking intent but William Saliba had seen Beto’s purposeful run out of play, Abdoulaye Doucouré had had a plea for a penalty waved away when he went down in the box and both Gueye and McNeil had seen attempts at goal blocked.

If there was hope that Dyche might fire his charges up for a more effective second half, it was quickly extinguished as Arsenal resumed their control of the game after the interval and almost went ahead within two minutes when Martin Ødegaard stung Pickford’s palms before Tarkowski did superbly to divert Nketiah’s shot wide with a last-ditch lunge.

Two shots from Oleksandr Zinchenko were also deflected behind shortly afterwards before Dominic Calvert-Lewin replaced Beto and was involved in what turned out to be the Blues’ best opportunity when the ball ricocheted to Danjuma but his half-volley dropped narrowly over the bar from the edge of the area.

Two minutes later, Everton were carved open by another short-corner and passing routine from the visitors that ended with the substitute Trossard placing a shot wide of Pickford from a cut-back from near the byline to finally break the deadlock.

Everton’s response was tepid. Mykolenko did really well to sprint onto Pickford’s long ball forward and get a shot away that was blocked by Saliba but Young again wasted the set-piece opportunity and Gueye later lashed a poor shot into the Gwladys Street End.

Instead, it was Arsenal who came closer to adding to the scoreline when an unfortunate bounce fell kindly to Gabriel Jesus but Pickford parried Ødegaard’s goal-bound shot away and Mykolenko got in an excellent block to keep Vieira’s shot out off the rebound.

Dyche threw James Garner, Patterson, and Youssef Chermiti on in the closing stages and the Scot did well to create a half-chance for Calvert-Lewin but the striker looked rusty on his return and prodded the ball into no-man’s-land.

There are threats in this team, players capable of moving the ball, of making things happen but not all of them are playing at a high enough level and, as a collective, they appear to have had precious little belief they could get anything out of this game.

Onana was anonymous save for some good defensive work towards the end, Gueye at times made a mockery of the fact that he once played for Paris Saint-Germain with awful distribution, Danjuma was a peripheral figure in the context of such a one-dimensional display that was heavily reliant on long balls forward rather than coherent moves through midfield or even quick the transitions on which Dyche’s strategy seems to increasingly rely, and Beto struggled under the attention of two top-class centre-backs in Gabriel and Saliba.

Somehow, the manager needs to muster more fight from and instil more belief in this group of players for a sequence of three matches against Brentford, Luton and Bournemouth that have now taken on huge significance in the context of Everton’s desperate need for points.

The prospect of Dyche losing his job, despite an embarrassing points return in recent games, appears remote given the flux and financial constraints off the pitch, so you suspect he’s going to have to knuckle down and get it right. It just needs to happen quickly.

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