Thought this was an interesting article, putting forward a case that the Lennon/Naisse swap was (at least on paper) a like for like swap and wasn't directly the cause of our collapse.
http://royalbluemersey.sbnation.com...t=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
This is where my understanding of what went wrong Saturday afternoon differs from popular opinion. To me, it seemed that as soon as Lukaku missed the penalty, the entire team started to freeze up and think "Oh boy, here we go again." The proof is in both the possession totals and West Ham's crossing totals.
In the five or so minutes between Lukaku's missed penalty and the Lennon/Niasse substitution, possession looked something like the following.
West Ham had 85 percent of the possession in the five minutes after Lukaku's missed penalty and before Lennon was subbed off. 53.2 percent of that period was spent in Everton's defensive third. This led to an increased number of crosses from West Ham.
In those five minutes, West Ham had almost as many crosses as during the balance of the second half up to that point. Jagielka and Funes Mori were continuing to handle the crosses effectively, but this still shows Everton's slipping grip on the match.
Whether this was due to fatigue, lack of confidence, the inevitable push from West Ham, or any combination of these and other factors is difficult to say. But the proof is clear that directly after the missed penalty and before the Lennon/Niasse substitution, Everton's hold on the match was already loosening significantly.
When the substitution in question finally came in the 76th minute, Lennon departed with a second-half defensive map that looked like the following.
That's right, Lennon's defensive contribution in the second half boils down to a single failed tackle. This is no criticism of Lennon, mind you (regular readers of this space will know that I am Lennon's biggest fan). Rather, defending simply wasn't his duty given his role as a second striker in the second half.
I am totally open to arguments that he shouldn't have been playing that role in the second half, but the influence and defense maps make it pretty clear that he was. When Niasse came on for Lennon, the move boiled down to basically an attacker for an attacker.
I have no intentions of defending or praising Niasse's play, which was mediocre at best, but to criticize Martinez for destroying the team's shape by bringing on a player who is very accustomed to playing the role he was brought on to is simply ridiculous. And given that Lennon was clearly doing little defending in that role as well, there's little to tactically criticize in this change.
In fact, Everton conceded seven crosses in Niasse's 15+ minutes on the pitch, compared to 15 in the 30 minutes of the half before he was introduced. That is essentially a linear progression; Niasse's inclusion had no impact on the number of crosses conceded by his team.
However, the effectiveness of the crosses and long balls played by West Ham in the final 15 minutes obviously improved.
The locations from which these passes were played are essentially unchanged from the first 30 minutes of the second half. What does change is Everton's efficiency in dealing with them, as Funes Mori in particular fell asleep in marking a few times, which led directly to West Ham goals.
To recap, Martinez took off Lennon, a player with little defensive responsibility in the setup the Spaniard was utilizing, to bring on Niasse into the same role, a role Niasse has more experience in. In the time that followed, possession became more even and West Ham played a similar number of long balls and crosses as the rest of the match, but finally beat Everton's center-backs
