An All-Too-Familiar Tale

Everton 1 - 2 Luton Town

Prior to last weekend’s win at Brentford, Sean Dyche had challenged his players to “change the story” that has dogged Everton for the past couple of years. They may have temporarily tried to alter a paragraph or two by beating the Bees and emerging victorious from their revenge mission at Villa Park in midweek, but the wider narrative persists, particularly at Goodison Park where the Blues have lost all four of their home games so far this season.

They’ve lost seven of their last eight at home which, in the cold light of defeat, defies belief for a club of Everton’s stature and the calibre of players in its current squad. It's also a damning indictment of the manager. For all the Dyche’s talk of changing the story — he trafficked in the same phrase after the match today — it’s a tale so depressingly familiar to Everton fans that it’s been practically chiseled into the brickwork at Goodison Park in recent years.

Luton were coming off the back of a Carabao Cup defeat to lowly Exeter (albeit with an under-strength side) and were still searching for their first-ever Premier League win. Despite all the optimism engendered by back-to-back away wins in the space of four days, every Evertonian must have had a gnawing feeling about what was coming. They’ve seen it over and over again.

Searching for a first win in the big league? Come to Goodison. On a long, barren, winless run of results? Come to Goodison. A striker who’s not scored a goal in a couple of years? Come to Goodison. Far from the Grand Old Lady being a desired and required fortress, she has become a charity for the beleaguered in recent seasons — including, at times, her own team thanks to the support of its fans when the chips have been down and, perhaps, a long-lived ghost-like defiance of its heroes from the past that has hung around the place determined not to allow this grand old club sink into the obscurity of the EFL.

Maddeningly, for the first 20 minutes or so and at times later in the first half, Everton were actually pretty decent, with some neat interchanges, effective approach play and probing passes. Once again, though — and here’s that well-worn narrative again — they couldn’t convert that early dominance into goals and that was ultimately their undoing when they proved incapable of completing the comeback that Dominic Calvert-Lewin began when he plundered a goal late in the first half to make it 2-1.

Having failed to score in their opening three home games and not managed to score more than one at home at all under Dyche's stewardship so far, hauling themselves back from a two-goal deficit was always going to be a tall order, even against the side that was widely expected to end up with the worst record in the Premier League season. But Everton’s ineptitude was staggering at times as was the increasing lack of guile in their approach in the second half as Dyche threw on more and more attacking players, a strategy that proved singularly ineffective.

Just as he did after the games against Fulham and Wolves, the manager will point, with some justification, to the chances his charges created and subsequently missed. He fell back on the xG crutch in his post-match comments and while it is one of the most annoying statistics in football given that the only one that matters is the final score, it does illustrate a certain attacking momentum, however sporadic, and proves that decent openings were created but not finished off. More importantly, though, attacking metrics mean nothing in terms of results and points if you can’t defend set-pieces in your own box.

Had Dwight McNeil’s stunning fourth-minute volley flashed a couple of feet further to the left, Calvert-Lewin’s rising header in the fifth been aimed either side of the goalkeeper, or James Garner’s left-foot shot five minutes after that curled inside the far post by the same margin, this could have been a very different game. Likewise, had the inviting 11th-minute opportunity that fell to Idrissa Gueye fallen to practically anyone else in the team, Everton might have taken an early lead.

As it was, the Senegalese miserably failed to hit the target and his midfield partner Amadou Onana will feel he could have done better with his own chance at the end of a lovely passage of play in which McNeil found Vitalii Mykolenko who back-heeled the ball smartly to the Belgian on the edge of the box but he swept the ball narrowly wide.

While plenty of ire has been aimed at Everton and their manager, credit should also go to Luton Town. Teams feel they can come to Goodison now, soak up the early pressure, grab a goal or two, see the home fans turn and then dig in and that is precisely what Rob Edwards’s men did.

Their determination to come and make a game of it had been evident in the early going with some powerful runs forward and Marvelous Nakamba tried an ambitious half-volley that failed to trouble Jordan Pickford. It was from set-pieces, however, where it was quickly evident they might find some joy, with Dyche’s defence struggling to deal with the dead-ball situations.

Tom Lockyer powered an uncontested header over in the 23rd minute and then bounced another off the top of Mykolenko’s head and over a minute later. Third time was a charm for the Hatters from the resulting corner, though, when Carlton Morris was left free to meet Alfie Doughty’s ball in and crash it off the underside of the crossbar.

Ashley Young took one touch and attempted to belt it off the goal line but Lockyer had thrown himself at it and the veteran’s clearance crashed off the Luton defender’s leg and in to make it 1-0 to the visitors.

Worse was to follow seven minutes later when Everton played themselves into needless trouble deep in their own half and James Tarkowski was penalised for chopping Morris down in a dangerous area. Doughty stepped up to take the resulting free-kick and picked Morris out behind the painfully unaware Mykolenko to steer an impressive first-time shot across Pickford and into the far corner.

Despite being somewhat shell-shocked, Everton responded and were at least able to get one back from the break but Dyche will be disappointed the game wasn’t level going into half-time.

Perhaps chastened by his earlier miss, Gueye passed up a decent chance to test Thomas Kaminski and instead screwed an aimless square ball to no one across the box. McNeil then whipped in an excellent cross that was met by Garner but the midfielder’s header thumped off the bar and back into play.

The hosts did score, albeit only after a lengthy review by Video Assistant Referee Paul Tierney as he forensically analysed two separate calls for potential offside. Garner’s measured chip into the six-yard box found Onana tussling with his marker to meet it, the ball broke to Abdoulaye Doucouré’s touch around the keeper’s out-stretched was too heavy but Calvert-Lewin did well to readjust his back leg enough to drag it over the line.

Needing his side to get back to parity quickly, Dyche made an uncharacteristically early substitution at the start of the second half that saw Gueye withdrawn and Jack Harrison thrown on for his Premier League debut. The loanee from Leeds was one of the brighter spots in a frustrating second period but even he wasn’t able to create a decisive opening for the Toffees.

Calvert-Lewin would see a decent effort deflected into Kaminski’s grateful grasp in the 51st minute, Tarkowski had to make a last-ditch block a minute later at the other end to prevent Chiedozie Ogbene from making it 3-1, Morris had a goal chalked off just past the hour mark for an offside decision against Jacob Brown and Garner got away with what looked handball in his own area shortly after that.

In between, Tarkowski’s sumptuous flighted ball had found Calvert-Lewin in the Hatters’ box but the striker’s volley flew across goal and the wrong side of the post and Harrison’s delivery for Beto, who had come on for Doucouré, left too tight an angle for the Portuguese at the back post and he could only find the side-netting.

Clear-cut openings were few and far between for the Blues as Luton frustrated them with the low block but Beto really should have equalised with 15 minutes to go when Harrison got above his man to meet a deep cross from the left and nodded it across for the striker but he headed it disappointingly over from a glorious position in front of goal.

Beto then stretched to try and convert Garner’s neat pass but couldn’t get his foot around it before Dyche made two further changes, taking Young off in favour of Nathan Patterson and then McNeil off for Arnaut Danjuma and it was the Dutchman who was found by another raking Tarkowski ball over the defence but his cushioned volleyed pass couldn’t find a Blue jersey in the centre.

Beto missed again with a header but was, in any case, clearly offside and the final chance to grab a point fell to Calvert-Lewin when Tarkowski clipped a ball down the right channel and the striker snatched at it, firing into the side-netting from the angle.

The final whistle blew to a chorus of boos that would have given plenty of food for thought for the three representatives from 777 Partners who had taken up the empty seats in the Directors Box to get their first look in person at what they hope will soon be their challenge.

They will have got a keen sense of the deep frustration of Everton fans who no doubt felt embarrassed for the optimism with which many of them had approached this game and the clash with another relegation rival in the form of Bournemouth at Goodison next weekend.

All of that goodwill towards the manager and players from the previous two away games will have evaporated on the back of what was another unforgivable home defeat, yet more criminal defending and an ongoing lack of cutting edge up front at home. Everton may have started well, as they so often do, but football is played over 90-plus minutes and, as a manager, you need to be able to adapt effectively when things don't go according to plan.

Dyche will need to very quickly show he can find the answers in both areas of the pitch and the boldness to ditch the safe midfield duo of Gueye and Onana at times, like against supposedly inferior opposition. Certainly, simply throwing balls up to two big strikers had little or no effect and Everton looked better in the early stages when they at least tried to play football, as they did at Brentford and Villa.

The consensus appears to be that there is little appetite to get rid of Dyche and neither anyone with sufficient authority nor the money to do it. The knives are out for him now, though and he simply has to get a result against the Cherries next weekend because things only get more challenging with trips to Anfield, the London Stadium and home games against Brighton and Manchester United in the weeks to come.

Follow @efclyndon

---

Reader Comments (33)

Note: the following content is not moderated or vetted by the site owners at the time of submission. Comments are the responsibility of the poster. Disclaimer ()

---

How to get rid of these ads and support TW