VIEW FROM THE BLUE

A Tactical Crossroads?

By Lyndon Lloyd :  21/09/2007 :  Comments (56) :

First and foremost, this one ain't over yet.

Yes, the Blues were poor yesterday evening and fell several levels short of the kind of display that is required to progress in European competition.

Yes, it's going to be extremely difficult because Metalist Kharkiv showed that they can certainly move the ball about efficiently when they want to ? and even more worryingly, looked better the more flair they added to their ranks with second half substitutions ? but if Everton can't overcome the likes of the third-placed team in Ukraine over two legs then they don't belong in the group stages of the Uefa Cup.

It's that last bit that worries me, though. I'm not sure we do deserve to be gracing Europe on our current form and if things don't change radically ? and quickly! ? I fear that this is going to be a long and frustrating season.

It always promised to be a tough campaign. We simply don't have the depth of squad, particularly in midfield, to wage battle on what could be four fronts come January... if we haven't been unceremoniously dumped out of two cup competitions by then, that is. Sure, we probably have the numbers but not the reserve of quality we need to absorb the loss of the likes of Cahill, Arteta and, perhaps to a lesser extent ? although we won't really know until he's played a few games ? Gravesen.

If you take off the blue-tinted spectacles and look, firstly, at some key personnel in the Everton squad and, secondly, the tactics with which they go about their task, with a ruthless and impartial eye, the reasons for the Blues' current lack of bite and penetration are blindingly obvious.

Phil Neville may be versatile but a full-time, first choice central midfielder he is not. He wasn't at Manchester United, has never been for England and shouldn't be for Everton. The fact that he has regularly been employed there by David Moyes ? despite having proven time and again, at least to these eyes, that right back is his best position ?has mainly been down to a lack of alternatives.

He is an acceptable, temporary, choice as the holding man alongside a more dynamic and attacking central midfielder but when partnered with Lee Carsley and expected to act as playmaker he really has been found wanting on more occasions than just the games this season that have prompted a growing clamour for him to be removed from the engine room of the team.

The truth is that his distribution can be very poor, he lacks vision and is prone to errors in what is a very risky area of the field. [The exception was at Tottenham where he put in a level of performance unseen either before or since.] It may sound harsh but there comes a time when reality bites ? Neville is just not cut out for the role he is being asked to play this season. His best position is right full back where Tony Hibbert is battling through a prolonged crisis of form that is, unfortunately, turning him into a liabiity in the back four.

Carsley is arguably a better choice for a consistent defensive midfield berth if he has a more creative force alongside him. While age may be starting to catch up with him and there's less from him these days in the final third in terms of goals and assists, he still tends to be noticeable in his absence from the point of view of a need for someone to break up the opposition's flow.

If it wasn't already established at the Madejski Stadium earlier in the campaign, it certainly was last night: the end has surely come for the Neville-Carsley axis in central midfield. And with Carsley unlikely to be a permanent fixture in the team, his successor should really be groomed now rather than waiting until next summer.

Phil Jagielka may not have set the world on fire since he arrived from Sheffield United but, honestly, he was never really expected to. Another important utility man, he was signed because can play in a number of positions and has, on balance, done enough to suggest that he is more capable as a creative or attacking force in midfield than Neville. He has perhaps been unfortunate to have been thrown in when the Blues have been chasing the game (or, in the case of the Kharkiv game, desperately chasing the lead) and hasn't had the chance to settle.

All of which serves to underline the fact that Everton are now a team playing in Europe with aspirations of breaking into the top four but have at their heart a central midfield several shades short of that level.

Of course, that was never supposed to be the plan. Tim Cahill was expected to be fit to provide some attacking threat from midfield and Manuel Fernandes was supposed to sign for a club record £12m to provide the much-needed flair. And when that fell through, Gravesen was supposed to be the stop-gap between now and... well, I was going to say January but Everton have been notoriously impotent or just plain reluctant in previous winter transfer windows so forgive me if I don't hold out hope for the answer to our prayers waltzing into Goodison in four months' time. Injury has thus far limited the Dane to just a 20-minute cameo but he has, probably a little unexpectedly, become the fans' hero-in-waiting.

What the Fernandes fiasco crystallized, however, was yet more faIlings in the summer transfer market and, this time at least, it seems that the fault lies more at boardroom level than with the manager. Moyes has made it clear that he prefers to make his close-season signings early so that his new players have the maximum time to gel with the rest of the squad. CEO Keith Wyness, however ? to be fair, it's a tactic that predates his tenure as well ? prefers to delay signing players as long as possible to avoid, as one Goodison official is reputed to have said, "paying players to sit on a beach."

Such frugality is what led to Fernandes spending the summer with Benfica and then Everton trying to shoe-horn complex negotiations with the Portguguese international's third-party owners and the Football Assocation (over that very same third-party owenership) into the final two to three weeks of the transfer window. When Benfica received a bigger cash offer from Valencia and Fernandes left for Spain, Everton had no time in which to secure the services of a player of comparable quality. The result was a loan move for Gravesen which, given the recent injuries to Mikel Arteta and Steven Pienaar, would probably have been a good move either way.

What is most frustrating now that the so-called "prophets of doom" are seeing some of their fears being realised is that this incremental team-building is happening at such a slow pace. The Blues always seem to be a couple steps from having a squad that has enough quality from back to front to have a crack at emulating that amazing fourth-placed finish of 2005.

Up until the beginning of August when £20m+ suddenly materialised out of nowhere, and Everton were on the verge of being catapulted from the team to have spent the least on transfers than any other Premiership club this past summer to being the one of the biggest spenders, it was always a question of money. Now that the funds seemed to have been in place to finally compete with our peer clubs, an massive opportunity to complete the puzzle was missed.

Many fans point out the obvious progress made under Moyes and, quite correctly, highlight the fact that we have arguably the best group of players on our books since the 1987 Championship-winning side. But at some point, the gains made earlier in the manager's tenure ? the Cahills, the Yobos, the Artetas, and the Johnsons, for example ? are going to be wiped out if Moyes doesn't reach a stage in that squad construction where his team are not only qualifying for Europe year in, year out but also progressing in Continental competition and playing a sufficiently high standard of football to keep the fans engaged and those star players happy.

How long, for example, will those highly-prized players wait around for a good run in Europe, for a domestic trophy, for qualification to the Champions League proper? Every season that slips by under the apparent policy of "making do" is another year added to those players' contracts.

Perhaps most annoying of all is the fact that this current team has shown on more than one occasion that when everything comes together they can be a devastatingly effective attacking side that can move the ball quickly and brilliantly. That win at Spurs ? and, indeed, the one the year before that ? was a case in point. But whether it was because Martin Jol's team just opened up and allowed themselves to be mauled by what was, on paper, an inferior midfield or whether Everton are just by their very nature maddeningly inconsistent, that display was an exception to an increasingly worrying pattern.

Because when the Blues do come up against a well-disciplined side with a well-organised and physical back line, they simply don't seem to know how to break the opposition down. As has been pointed out many times by neutral observers, Moyes's side lacks natural width and that has been a feature of his tenure at Goodison.

And yet the times when they have made full use of the flanks and operated over-lapping fullbacks getting to the byline have been when they have looked so dangerous. Neville's raids down the touchline and service to Johnson last season readily comes to mind, as do the glimpses at what Leighton Baines is capable of on the opposite flank so far this season.

But against Kharkiv last night, neither fullback advanced much beyond half-way into the opposition half and when the chips were down and they had a two-man advantage, the Blues still insisted on belting balls straight down the middle rather than pulling the Ukrainians across the pitch with intelligent wing play and getting balls in from behind the defence for the forwards, makeshift and recognised alike, to attack. Unfortunately, it's a tactic that has been plagueing Everton for too long now and it needs addressing.

Time may prove those slating Andy Johnson and Yakubu right but to be fair to both, they're spending most of their time trapping hoofed balls near the touchline in midfield. Against Kharkiv, by the time theyd? laid it off and tried scrambling into a more forward position, one of Neville, Hibbert or McFadden had invariably passed it backwards or lost it.

Count the number of clear-cut chances either forward had to put the ball in the net last night and you'd be hard-pressed to come up with more than the four for Johnson ? three spot kicks and a tap in after the whistle had gone at the end.

I?m conflicted by the fact that Victor Anichebe, despite sharing Yakubu?s physique, somehow looks more effective than the Nigerian with his back to goal or with defenders at close quarters but, fundamentally, strikers need service to score goals. AJ screwed up royally under pressure from 12 yards yesterday but I?m willing to bet you?d need less than 10 fingers to count the number of clear chances he?s had to score so far this season.

The return leg is in a fortnight's time and both Arteta and Gravesen could be fit for that. The introduction of those two, together with an available Pienaar on the bench, should make a big difference ? indeed, our Uefa Cup hopes likely rest on their flair and their experience. Perhaps for that reason alone, the Blues can go to Kharkov in optimistic mood that they can grab an early goal and transform the nature of the tie.

But it's going to take more than the introduction of a couple of talented players to fundamentally alter Everton's wider destiny. If this season is going to be more than a struggle against our own deficiencies then it's going to take some soul-searching on the part of the management over tactics. And if it's going to be more than a battle with injuries and fixture pile-ups, Moyes may have to break his own mould and undertake some wise investment in the transfer market in January.

The long-suffering fans who supported the boys into the Europe last season and have now endured two Uefa Cup fiascos deserve it.

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