Richard Jolly: What has happened to Everton?
Rafa Benitez has famously managed two Merseyside clubs. When Everton sacked him on Sunday, there were two league tables that told a tale of his time at Goodison Park.
The first, up until the October international break, showed Everton with 14 points from seven games, behind only Chelsea and Liverpool.
The second, showing games thereafter, put Everton bottom with just five points from 12 games.
As Everton begin life after Benitez, it is with plenty of numbers that serve as the case for the prosecution.
The Spaniard could argue they were not quite that bad – they only had the fourth lowest expected goals for (xGF) and fifth highest expected goals against (xGA) in the last three months – but their expected points total was the third worst.
So the task for Benitez’s successors, both temporary and permanent, is to get better without him.
Slow starts cost Rafa dear
There are fundamental failings to address. Everton need to start better.
They have one first-half goal in their last 10 games, and even that came in the 38th minute.
Over the season as a whole, they have a solitary strike in the opening 15 minutes and just five in the first half, the fewest in the division, while conceding 16.
Last season, they were actually better in first halves (scoring 27, conceding 23).
Ancelotti laid the foundations
Even as Carlo Ancelotti’s only full campaign ended in anti-climax, there are other aspects of it they may want to emulate.
They have one point from their six most recent away games; they won two of their last four under Ancelotti.
Defensively, they have one clean sheet in 13.
In seven of their last eight defeats, they have conceded more than their xG (expected goals).
Jordan Pickford produced a remarkable performance in the 1-1 draw at Chelsea, but he is a statistical underachiever.
His post-shot expected goals minus goals allowed of -3.2 is one of the worst in the top flight.
Last season, he had the ninth-highest save percentage of any Premier League regular last season (71.1).
Now he has the third-lowest, at 63.9. Pickford has made as many saves as Edouard Mendy while conceding 15 more goals.
Meanwhile, they have conceded 11 goals from set-pieces, more than in the whole of last season.
Ancelotti concluded that Everton were not a possession team.
However, they got worse on the ball under Benitez, with the fourth lowest share (40.1 percent, down from 47.3) and pass completion rate (73.9, down from 81.4).
The little used Fabian Delph (84.4) is the only player with a pass completion rate over 82 percent.
Last season, eight players who featured regularly were over 82.
A manager with more of a passing ethos ought to help them retain possession better.
As it is, Allan is second in the division for successful pressures and third for tackles won, so the defensive midfielder can help regain the ball; the fact he is the only Everton player high in either chart, however, suggests his is too much of a one-man effort.
Benitez' gameplan was flawed
Benitez shifted the gameplan to involve wingers and more crossing.
Everton’s problem was that, for four months, they were without the player likeliest to head them in, in the injured Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
Now he is fit again, it could be a more productive policy.
Andros Townsend is joint eighth in the division for most crosses and joint third for most completed crosses into the box.
Demarai Gray is joint 18th for crosses.
Everton are fourth for crosses into the penalty area in open play whereas last season they were 14th.
But the gameplan was based around Calvert-Lewin. Last season, he scored the most headed goals in the division, with seven.
So far this season, when he has only played five league games, they have only scored four goals from set-pieces (excluding penalties).
Last season, they got 14, including 10 from corners.
Everton's expensive squad 'over-reliant' on individuals
Without Calvert-Lewin, Everton have lacked threat. Their early-season surge was partly based on wonder goals from long range. It was a formula that did not prove sustainable whereas feeding Calvert-Lewin offers the prospect of more lasting success.
Last season, the Englishman averaged the fourth most shots on target per 90 minutes, with 1.44, and Everton’s new loan signing Anwar El Ghazi was third, at 1.45.
This season, with Calvert-Lewin on 1.47, but having played too few minutes to chart, there is no Everton player in the Premier League’s top 49, with Gray 50th at 0.76.
It reflects the lack of menace of Everton’s other two main striking options, Salomon Rondon (0.63) and Richarlison (0.49, less than half last season’s figure of 1.01).
There are 50 players in double figures for shots on target in the Premier League. Only Gray (12) is from Everton. Richarlison’s total of five looks ludicrously low, putting him below Ethan Pinnock, Pierre-Lees Melou, Ben Chilwell and Juraj Kucka, among others.
But Everton’s expensive squad looked over-reliant on a select few last year, when only Calvert-Lewin, Richarlison, James Rodriguez and Gylfi Sigurdsson ended the season with 10 or more shots on target; two of them have not figured this year.
If one way of rejuvenating Everton now involves getting Calvert-Lewin service, another entails getting Richarlison back to his best.
But after losing to all three promoted clubs, and with four bottom-half sides in their next four matches, they could also do with winning some of the supposedly winnable games.