Outplayed, Outlasted
The first half of Sunday’s disappointing 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace proceeded much as envisioned, with an energetic Everton jumping off to a quick start against what could have been imagined as unmotivated opposition. With three games to go in the Premier League campaign, the Eagles were mired firmly in the lower reaches of midtable, with little to play for — domestically, that is. The South Londoners do have a rather more important fixture than this, namely a UEFA Conference League final against La
Liga outfit Rayo Vallecano awaiting them on May 27th, which offers a golden opportunity for manager Oliver Glasner to add to the FA Cup he won with the club last season, the first major silverware in their 121 years as a professional outfit.
So the Blues pounced with the early goal, via James Tarkowski’s tidy finish, and looked the more likely to add to their tally, with Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall spurning a great chance on the break being the most obvious opportunity. The visitors generally were lively, breaking after forcing turnovers in possession several times, but poor passing and decision-making meant that they failed to capitalize. Palace slowly warmed to the task during the half, and panicky defending from Everton led to Ismaïla Sarr’s equalizer in the 34th minute. The teams went in at the break level, but Beto’s bulldozing run and adept finish, off of a nothing Tarkowski long clearance, put the Toffees back in the driving seat, with a great chance to play on the counter for the rest of the match.
Unfortunately, whether due to choice, or Palace’s adjustments, Everton backed up too much, inviting the hosts to control the game: they improved from a 50% share of possession in the opener, to 67% after the restart. Adam Wharton and Daichi Kamada were increasingly able to find space and to get on the ball, dictating play; I fully expected the Japanese in particular to open Everton up at some point, to such a degree was he left unchallenged in ample space, with James Garner and Tim Iroegbunam having to track the host’s more advanced midfielders – Sarr and Brennan Johnson – who operated fluidly as half-wingers. Alarmingly, the Toffees flagged badly as the game proceeded, with the Eagles dominating and carving out big scoring chances, the visitors only able to offer a couple of promising, but spurned counterattacks in response.
Palace’s eventual breakthrough, in what had become an open game, came courtesy of more poor defending, Jean-Philippe Mateta left unmarked as Tarkowski and Michael Keane sat far too deep — almost on top of Jordan Pickford. Before that strike, in the 77th, and after, only Pickford’s efforts and the visitors’ woodwork kept the Eagles out. From the 66th to the end of the match, the hosts accumulated an xG of 1.65 from eight efforts, as Everton risked squandering more points late on. Only Iliman Ndiaye’s sporadic breaks offered any real response, but sadly his shooting was wayward (more on this below). How could the Blues, who had all week to recover for this match, against a side who only finished playing a European match at ten PM on Thursday, flag so badly? The only possible answer is in the massive gap which has emerged, separating the players that David Moyes trusts, who are never rotated and rarely substituted, and those he does not, who are given sparing minutes. The result is what we saw at the weekend: tired bodies and minds, going to the well too many times.
No Case for the Defence
Everton’s defence, which has provided the foundations for this season’s relative successes, is looking increasingly not fit for purpose. In the last five outings, since the Chelsea victory, the team has conceded eleven goals — a rate which obviously makes securing wins more difficult. Particularly galling is the number of late goals being shipped, something which was repeated again on Sunday, and indeed could have ended up even worse had Palace taken full advantage of a flagging, disorganized visiting side. Why this is happening is more complex than simply pointing out the deficiencies of the individual defensive members, but let’s start with that. The degree that Jarrad Branthwaite has been unavailable this season has been a major issue and can’t have been anticipated, but the star centre half missed almost all of preseason with ongoing hamstring problems, so contingencies could, and should have been arranged.
Extending Keane as the club’s fourth-choice centre back was prudent, but he’s ended up starting 27 league games to date, which just can’t be the case in 2025/26, given the player lost his starting berth four years ago. That he’s alongside Tarkowski, who mirrors a lot of Keane’s deficiencies, compounds the problem, resulting in a Blues central pairing that is too slow, flatfooted and immobile to be effective in any situation but a low-block, with the play kept in front of them. Their vulnerability in open space, and tendency to drop right back to the six-yard line under pressure has been exposed frequently. Jake O’Brien has offered a solution to this problem, but has been marooned as a makeshift right back all season; this was a choice made during the summer, when the club’s global search for a player more suitable for the position than O’Brien came up empty, which is hard to believe, but did indeed happen, and unfortunately not in some parallel universe.
This has hampered the team all through the campaign – and certainly in an attacking sense, given Vitaliy Mykolenko’s offensive limitations – but it can now be seen for the serious issue it presents at the heart of the defence. Keane has been awarded a new one-year deal, which again is fine, assuming he actually is a backup next season, but more concerning is the odd decision to hand Tarkowski, who appeared to be entering a terminal decline last term, a new deal stretching all the way to 2028, back in early October. At the time, I found this to be an absurdly early call to make, but Moyes identified him as a key member of the team’s spine, as his captain, so it has to be assumed that this was his decision. Regardless, Everton must transition away from the 33-year-old as a starter next season. And sign an actual right back. A crazy idea, I’m aware.
The Wrong Targets
Dewsbury-Hall and Ndiaye are currently taking significant blame from some quarters for Everton’s dropped points over the past couple of games. I find this as astonishing as it is disappointing. Yes, KDH missed a glaring opportunity to put the Blues 2-0 up at Selhurst Park, with a weak attempt which was easily saved, and later on hit the woodwork when put through, only for his blushes to be spared by an offside flag on Thierno Barry. He did not have a good game on Sunday, despite putting in his usual maximum effort, but has been a standout signing for the club — arguably the only permanent addition of note to genuinely impress in what was billed as a daunting summer rebuild. However, he is seen by Moyes as indispensable, starting the last 13 and only leaving the pitch before the 89th minute once, and is wearing down. He’s scored four and provided 3 assists during that spell, so it’s easy to see why he’s left on, but this inability to substitute off fatigued or underperforming key players has been a problem with Moyes all season.
Likewise, Ndiaye has been heavily criticized by elements of the fanbase for his shooting and decision-making — specifically in this game, and against Manchester City. Whilst it is true that he should have done better in both, it should be noted by his detractors that he creates almost all of these chances by his own efforts, rather than through the creativity of his teammates, for there’s not a lot of that in evidence. Quite why his end product is off could just be a simple dip in form, but more probably is due to him being played into the ground every week. Since returning from AFCON, Ndiaye has started 14 straight games, and been subbed off twice, both times after the 89th minute. Regardless, Ndiaye is the only player in the squad who is capable of terrorizing the opposition, as was in evidence against City and to a lesser extent on Sunday. He’s a unique talent and one of the few truly exceptional players at Everton, and we need to surround the likes of him, KDH and James Garner with more, not call their quality into question when they hit a roadblock.
Statistics provided courtesy of transfermarkt.com and sofascore.com
