Everton don’t get the attention they deserve.
A number of clubs have made a push for the top four in this chaotic and unpredictable Premier League campaign, but while the likes of West Ham, Leicester City, and Aston Villa have enjoyed moments in the limelight, Carlo Ancelotti’s side don’t seem to get quite the same love from the media.
That is partly because Everton have consistently had games in hand on their rivals, giving them a falsely low league position.
Now that three consecutive victories have given the Toffees the chance to beat Chelsea on Monday night and leapfrog them into the top four, this might be about to change. It is finally time to give Everton the column inches their campaign has earned.
But perhaps not, because the other explanation for the quiet is that Everton under Ancelotti are hard to grasp; they slip through your fingers as you seek to describe them. Back in September when they went top of the league with four wins from four, there was a strong narrative to hold: James Rodriguez the creator, Dominic Calvert-Lewin the goalscorer, and a possession team built on crosses into the box.
Everton cannot be described in these simple terms any more, and unlike West Ham with their solid block and their Rice-Soucek fulcrum, or Leicester City with their explosive Barnes-Maddison-Vardy image, it is difficult to pin Everton down. They have no archetypal goal. You can’t visualise a passage of play that represents their playing style.
In fact, Everton deployed different formations in each of their three consecutive wins going into this game. More than any other team in the division, Everton keep you guessing. It is Carlo Ancelotti’s biggest strength, and the reason why Thomas Tuchel – a reactive tactician who pours over opposition data - will be worried about Monday’s game.
Everton's formation flexibility is a strength
Ancelotti is a tactician of broad strokes, a hands-off manager who is perceived as either trustful of his players or lacking control, depending on how well his team are doing. Both arguments have already played out at Everton this season.
At times they have been flat, lifeless, badly in need of someone who will grab the reins. At others, they have played with the fluidity and self-assurance that owes much to the manager’s deft touch.
Tactically, he has an eye for the right formation and the right line-up, his main strength being careful plate-spinning: as soon as a system begins to falter he changes it, and more often than not he gets it right.
Everton have gone through a 4-3-3, a 4-2-3-1, a 4-4-2, a 3-5-2, and a diamond 4-4-2 formation this season, and almost every time the switch came after a defeat. Some managers, like Tuchel, are great sculptures who chisel a precise work of art. Ancelotti is more of a potter, his delicate touches gradually forming the piece as the wheel spins.
While Ancelotti’s tactics aren’t so easily defined, we can nevertheless see some interesting patterns in their play recently, and the signs point to a positive result at Stamford Bridge.
How Everton can frustrate Chelsea
The Toffees generally don’t like holding too much possession, regularly losing when they dominate the ball and looking at their sharpest when on the break.
This instinctively makes sense considering the amount of pace in their front line, and follows a career-long pattern for Ancelotti, who prefers a safer midblock to high pressing. It is a particularly effective strategy for an exhausting pandemic-hit season, and a pattern that will no doubt play out against a possession-dominant Chelsea.
Everton will sit back and let Chelsea move the ball in front of them, in many ways mimicking the models deployed by Wolves and Southampton in their pretty tedious draws against Tuchel’s side.
Chelsea’s 3-4-2-1 is too narrow, piling creative pressure on to Mason Mount and lacking bodies in wide areas, which means a compressed defensive blockade can hold out relatively easily. Everton are particularly well set up for this, especially if Ancelotti reverts to the diamond 4-4-2 (used in the win against Everton) or the 3-5-2 (used in the win against Liverpool).
Both systems pack the midfield with bodies, squeezing the pitch and slowing down their more dominant opponent. The only reason Ancelotti switched to a wider 4-4-2 against West Brom was because he knew he had to expect 60% of the ball. Everton should move back to a congested and conservative approach on Monday.
How they can successfully counter through Richarlison and Calvert-Lewin is another matter, given Chelsea have looked very comfortable in their back three since Tuchel’s arrival.
Perhaps Everton’s best chance is from dead ball situations, which have become a very useful attacking tool; they top the Premier League charts with 12 non-penalty set-piece goals this season. That is hardly a surprise with Gylfi Sigurdsson, Lucas Digne, and James Rodriguez delivering for the likes of Calvert-Lewin and Michael Keane.
Then again, we cannot say for sure how Everton will seek to exploit Chelsea’s weaknesses, or how the players will improvise to find the space. That is the beauty of this excellent, but elusive, Everton team.
Odds correct at 2030 GMT (05/03/21)
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