Why Sean Dyche Must Take a Chance on Beto to Improve Everton’s Attacking Output

by Gary McCarty  |   30/08/2024  0 Comments  [Jump to last]

A home win in the cup over a team three divisions below you should be treated as a formality, rather than something to celebrate.

But this is Everton. And the manner in which they’ve started the 2024/25 campaign is such that the 3-0 victory over Doncaster in the League Cup has to be treated as a positive.

A stodgy first-half performance gave way to a better showing in the second period, with just 0.16 xG conceded from open play and Beto, amongst others, giving Sean Dyche a headache with his display.

Could the mercurial Portuguese forward be the answer to Everton’s goalscoring problem in the Premier League, too?

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Taking a Chance

Those betting on football online have already had their say about the Toffees’ sluggish start, with Everton trimmed into 15/8 to suffer relegation this term.

Backing either Leicester City or Southampton to suffer the same fate remains a popular Premier League bet – they’re 2/5 and 7/10 respectively, but Ipswich Town have been eased out to 4/5 after their spiky early season showings.

The Tractor Boys have something that Everton don’t; a certain fearlessness in attack, which is based on a desire to win the ball back as high up the pitch as possible when possession is lost.

They get plenty of bodies into the final third too, which in turn gives them a better chance of fashioning genuine goalscoring opportunities – if you don’t score, you don’t win games of football, after all.

Whether you're pro or anti-Dyche, you have to applaud the man’s ability to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear: keeping Everton up last season, despite the challenges of points deductions and operating on a shoestring transfer budget, is testament to his ability to make his teams hard to beat.

But there is a feeling that the Toffees’ luck will run out if their attacking play doesn’t improve…

Leading from the Front

It’s fortunate that football games aren’t judged by artistic merit, because Everton under Dyche would not be winning any rosettes.

The Toffees played more passes longer than 30 yards than any other Premier League side last term; yet only five teams had a worse completion rate of said long balls.

Dyche’s philosophy of lumping the ball wide and crossing it into the box – Everton ranked third for crosses attempted in 2023/24 – is fine if you have a powerful target man attacking the ball and other players racing into the penalty area to get on the end of knockdowns. But the Toffees, you’d have to say, have neither.

Dominic Calvert-Lewin is in that group of ‘forever young’ footballers, like Jack Grealish and Marcus Rashford, that are expected to, one day, fulfil the potential they had shown in younger years. But that trio is aged 26-28 now, so you wonder how much of an improvement there is to come from them.

You wonder if Beto’s goalscoring turn against Doncaster will have caught Dyche’s eye. The Portuguese striker is a handful; big and physical, which given the manager’s brand of football is surely a huge plus.

He drew more fouls, per minutes played, than Calvert-Lewin last season – essential when ploughing a lonely furrow up front to relieve pressure on defensive colleagues, won more tackles and recovered more loose balls.

Beto also had more shots per 90 minutes played than DCL, recorded a higher xG count (per 90 minutes) and completed more passes.

He’s not a fashionable frontman by any means, but if Dyche is determined to continue playing his one-dimensional brand of attacking football, Beto is – statistically – the better fit to lead the line than Calvert-Lewin.

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