After two league draws, a win was much needed when the in-form Hammers came to town. Martinez’ men obliged with a well fought out victory, Osman and Lukaku grabbing the goals.
Tim Howard – 6
Reasonable performance from Howard, West Ham managed 3 shots on target. Howard didn’t have that much to do but he dealt with crosses and free kicks pretty effectively. There was not much he could have done for the goal as it took a nasty deflection off Jagielka, looping over him into the net.
Tony Hibbert – 6
Thought Hibbo did well in this one, filling in for the best left-back on the planet is never going to be easy. But Tony had a fairly productive day with 4 tackles, 7 effective clearances and a cool 91.7% pass accuracy. After the entire Gwladys street jeered him on to hit it, Hibbert managed 1 shot in this game, unfortunately it was way off the mark.
Sylvain Distin – 4
Looked okay, but not entirely convincing in this one. He allowed Andy Carroll to win pretty much everything in the air (15 aerial duels won for Carroll), luckily the former Liverpool striker has next to nothing else about his game. Distin had a wasteful 79% pass accuracy, one blocked shot, 0 tackles and 2 interceptions.
Phil Jagielka – 6
Unfortunate for the goal that it came off his boot before looping into his own net, other than that he looked the better of the two centre backs. Jags won 4 of his 8 aerial duels and managed 17 clearances, yet he too had a wasteful 79% pass accuracy.
Seamus Coleman – 5
Dangerous once more with 1 shot, 2 chances created and a successful dribble. With Baines out, the majority of Everton’s attack went down that right hand side. He will also be happy to see Mirallas back in front of him, those two can be extremely dangerous when they’re on the same page.
James McCarthy – 7
Thought JMac had a good game, 89.3% pass accuracy, 1 tackle, 2 interceptions and 7 clearances. Covered a lot of ground again and showed some real composure in possession.
Leon Osman – 8 (Man of the Match)
There were a few moans when the team was announced at 2pm that Osman would be playing as a holding midfielder in cover for Gareth Barry. What all those nay-sayers didn’t expect was a blistering performance from the little man, playing in his 400th game for the blues. He had the most touches on the pitch (86) and the most successful passes on the pitch (72). These weren’t all lateral passes either as he created 3 chances (most on the pitch), his link up play was electric. All this is enough to get you a Man of the Match performance in most games but Leon sealed it with a coolly taken finish to win the game for Everton. Let’s have more of these type of games Ozzie lad.
Ross Barkley – 4
Played some part in the first goal with his blocked shot falling to Lukaku, he managed 1 other shot against West Ham, unfortunately Ross gave the ball away 3 times and he didn’t really get that involved in the game. We need him to step up.
Steven Naismith – 5
Naismith had a season low 70% pass accuracy and was dispossessed 4 times in this one, however he did create 4 chances for his teammates and managed one shot.
Kevin Mirallas – 4
Great to see Kev back in the team, however he had a fairly quiet game only dribbling past one player, if you’ve seen Kevin’s stats in most games he normally beats at least 3 men. We can put this down to lack of match fitness but let’s hope he finds his feet quickly.
Romelu Lukaku – 6
Lukaku has been taking a lot of criticism of late for his lack of goals, but Rom opened the scoring, even though he may have been slightly offside. I thought he had some nice touches in this game as well, creating 2 chances and an 81% pass accuracy. 4 shots, 2 on target. We must not forget he had something to do with the final goal as well, where he was disgustingly taken down by James Collins in which he surely would have been in on goal.
Subs:
Samuel Eto’o – 7
I don’t know if he agrees with being used as a super sub, but he’s reminiscent of Big Dunc coming on for the last half an hour and simply changing the game. For an old man, his feet are ridiculously fast and he can contribute to all parts of the game when he’s on. He had 2 shots, 1 on target and should of probably scored at the end to seal the game. However he did set up the winning goal with a delightful cross to put it on a plate for Osman. One of the best substitute performances I’ve seen since I’ve been rating Everton games.
Muhamed Besic – 5
Fairly ineffective in the last 10 minutes but he was brought on to just clean up play and sit in front of the defensive, i feel like he can do be effective in that role.
Christian Atsu – 5
Not a whole lot to say about this kid as of yet, he only had 4 touches with 100% pass accuracy. Start him in Wolfsburg?
Overall Team Rating – 5.55
This momentum needs to continue into Everton’s trip to Germany mid week. I’ve got the time off work to travel out there with you lot in search for steins of lager, great sausages and 3 points that would see us finish top of the group of death.
Interesting Facts:
7 – Everton are now unbeaten in their last 7 games (all competitions) with a cool looking sequence (W-D-W-D-W-D-W).
5 – That’s 5 wins in a row now against the Hammers, it seems we love playing them under Martinez.
½ – Roberto Martinez record of 25 wins in his first 50 league matches as #efc manager only bettered by Harry Catterick’s 27 victories.