Saint Domingo
Player Valuation: £90m
It’s no surprise to me that almost every manager we have had since Martinez’s first season has us playing the same way. They nearly all fall into a 4231, a direct style of play not based on possession, sometimes reverting to 5 at the back, and very little flexibility of style.
The core reason is the same. The options available to the manager in the squad cannot support any other style of play. We don’t have centre backs who are comfortable on the ball or a right back who can look after it properly so building up from the back is a challenge. When you add in that Docuoure doesn’t have a particularly good first touch then we struggle to keep possession under pressure. The first ten minutes today were an absolute shambles. It spreads to everything though, we’ve struggled to take throw ins properly for ages because ultimately the players don’t trust each other’s touch and aren’t confident taking the ball.
Then consider that we can’t play 442 effectively because we never have the pace in the midfield or out wide to cover ground effectively when we don’t have the ball. So every manager ends up going with a 3 in the middle to compensate.
We don’t ever have enough creativity in the midfield so every manager consistently turns to trying to play Digne in high up the pitch to try and put crosses in. This exposes the lack of pace if Keane or Mina are playing as they get stretched covering for Digne and massively exposed. So one by one each manager then looks to move to a back 5 so that we’re not caught out by the transition.
They then all come across the problem that to play a back 5 effectively you need good footballers along the back 5 and the midfield which we don’t have. So we end up back at the one style we can play to an ok standard, sitting deep playing directly on the counter. It’s worked a bit better this season as we actually have some pace out wide whereas we normally don’t.
Every manager we’ve had since Martinez just goes round and round this never ending loop until they all arrive at the same ineffective solution which eventually also fails when we get a load of injuries and then they get fired.
The only answer is giving the managers decent player in the first 11 and in the squad which means managers can choose ideal formations for different games but then also change the game from the bench if they need to. The flexibility the likes of Guardiola and Tuchel have is unbelievable compared to what Everton managers have.
I can’t put it any more bluntly than this. We don’t have players in the squad to allow an Everton manager to even play 442, the most basic football formation possible.
It’s just a complete failure in football operation from top to bottom.
