Only four games into his tenure as Everton manager, Sean Dyche is already acutely aware of the key problem that is dragging his team down. Goals, and specifically the lack of them being scored by Everton’s forward players, are undermining the side’s quest for Premier League survival.
Dyche may have overseen two wins and two defeats since his appointment last month but Everton have scored two goals in those games — and both came from defenders. James Tarkowski’s header saw off Arsenal in the new manager’s first match and Seamus Coleman’s shot-cum-cross that caught out Leeds United goalkeeper Ilan Meslier are the sum total of Everton’s attacking efforts.
Everton left Anfield without a goal as Liverpool won the Merseyside derby and, on Saturday at Goodison Park, Aston Villa put two past Dyche’s men without response. If it wasn’t clear already then the last four games have shown why the club’s top-flight status is in peril.
Calvert-Lewin cannot be relied upon
The sale of Richarlison last summer without a sufficient attempt to partly cover the absence of last season’s leading goalscorer has long been viewed as careless. As Dyche is quickly discovering — as did his predecessor Frank Lampard — he cannot rely on Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who is again out through injury, to lead Everton’s attack.
Dyche is already growing tired of questions on Calvert-Lewin’s fitness — bluntly responding to a question after the Villa defeat with: “I cannot mend people’s bodies”. The problem facing Dyche is that the players available to him are many rungs below the level of serial goal-getters.
Neal Maupay has scored 27 goals in 119 Premier League appearances, Alex Iwobi 16 in 207, Dwight McNeil nine in 156 and Demarai Gray 18 in 189. A combined output of 70 Premier League goals from 671 appearances shows the team’s shortcomings.
During his time at Burnley, Dyche always had a striker who he could rely on staying fit and being capable of reaching double figures each term. Sam Vokes, Ashley Barnes and Chris Wood all valiantly led the Burnley attack.
Everton’s leading scorers this season, with three apiece, are Gray and Anthony Gordon, who is now at Newcastle United. No wonder the emphasis in the first few weeks of Dyche’s time in charge has been on more crosses into the box and trying to make the best of set-pieces, but such tactics can only do so much when there is no predator around.
“We have got to take responsibility as a group for making and taking chances,” Dyche said. “That’s the challenge. The players know we have not been scoring freely but we have got to adapt and ask questions of the opposition.
“We have shown good signs through the way the team is trying to create and the energy, the desire and the numbers getting into the box. [However], it has to lead to something.”
Dyche can look at the teams around Everton in the bottom three and see equal bluntness. Everton’s 17 goals in their 24 league games is the lowest in the division but Southampton have just 19 and Bournemouth fare only marginally better with 22. Something must change if any of them are to prevent a drop down into the Championship.
Thin attacking options hardly bode well
Everton’s options include sticking with Maupay, who is still yet to register his second goal since joining the club in the summer, and hope that the former Brighton & Hove Albion striker finds form before it’s too late.
Alternatively, Ellis Simms, who was called back from a fruitful loan spell at Sunderland to bolster attacking numbers, could be given a run of starts but the 22-year-old’s only other start, in the 2-0 defeat to Liverpool, hardly inspired confidence that he could be the answer.
The other possibility is for Dyche to place more faith in Gray. The winger has played less than 50 minutes across the four games Dyche has overseen so far, with appearances off the bench in the Liverpool and Villa matches while he didn’t even make it onto the pitch against Arsenal and Leeds.
Gray is known as a scorer of great goals rather than a great goalscorer, with his bolt from the blue clinching an unlikely point away to Manchester City in December. But his flair could be something Dyche taps into in the coming weeks.
“The players are very diligent and I am a big believer that, as long as you are doing the right things, that will pay you back,” Dyche said. “We have to keep believing, continuing trying to do the right things and then have the quality and clinical finish on top of that.”
For as long as Everton lack potency, they continue to give their opponents the upper hand. Two goals from open play in 12 league outings and only managing to score more than one goal in a league game twice this season means opposition teams are never out of the game should Everton go ahead. And if they can claim the opening goal, then it is unlikely Everton will come back.
A trip to Arsenal, the league leaders, on Wednesday evening may be liberating for a team given little hope of emerging from north London with anything tangible — albeit they did triumph in the reverse fixture four weeks ago.
“People may think we won’t get anything but that doesn’t mean we think like that,” Dyche said. “They’re having a fine season but we are going there with the intention to get something out of the game.”