Match Preview
Everton are on the road again for a trip to the northeast as Sean Dyche looks to engineer what would be an unlikely victory given his side’s worsening form and avoid setting an unwanted record for successive games without a victory in the Premier League.
The Blues’ boss equalled Mike Walker’s 12-game winless run, that began the 1994-95 season and which ultimately saw him sacked in favour of Joe Royle, when his side lost in tragi-comic fashion at Bournemouth on Saturday and he enters a new calendar month looking no closer to having the answers.
This test at St James’s Park looks daunting in that context, particularly given the Magpies’ stirring comeback from 3-1 down against West Ham on Saturday.
Eddie Howe has a lengthening catalogue of injuries that was compounded by Anthony Gordon’s sending-off for two bookable offences that means he woin’t face his former club this time around but Newcastle still have plenty of quality, particularly in the likes of Alexander Isak and Harvey Barnes.
Howe had Jamal Lascelles added to a long-term absentee list that featured the suspended Sandro Tonali and Sven Botmam at the weekend when the defender suffered a suspected ACL tear.
Lewis Miley, Callum Wilson and Joelinton aren’t expected back until May, Nick Pope’s shoulder injury looks likely to sideline him until the end of this month and all three of Valentino Livramento, Miguel Almiron and Matt Targett are significant doubts for the visit of the Toffees.
Ordinarily, an injury crisis of that degree would be a boon to Everton but Dyche and his players travel at a low ebb, with the club in an existential crisis off the pitch and, on it, the team reach new levels of attacking ineptitude in their 2-1 loss at Vitality Stadium.
Beto came off the bench to score a rare Blues goal that levelled the game against the Cherries but it was quickly wiped out by Seamus Coleman’s own goal. The Portuguese may well have earned himself another start, however, with his somewhat fortuitous strike and Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s ongoing goal drought.
Vitalii Mykolenko is expected to have recovered from a bout of flu that kept him out of the Bournemouth trip and would come in to replace the increasingly weak link of Ben Godfrey but the side is ripe for changes in a number of areas.
Dyche’s limited imagination and dogged insistence on fielding the same personnel make it difficult to foresee any alterations to the line-up but there is, as ever, scope to try an alternative to the unproductive Jack Harrison wide on the right – the manager’s answer is likely to be falling back on experience in the form of Ashley Young – and experiment with another combination in central midfield, perhaps bringing Idrissa Gueye or André Gomes in and resting James Garner.
Kick-off: 7:30pm, Tuesday 2 April 2024
Referee: Tony Harrington
VAR: Michael Salisbury
Last Time: Newcastle United 1 – 0 Everton
Predicted Line-up: Pickford, Coleman, Tarkowski, Branthwaite, Mykolenko, Garner, Onana, Young, McNeil, Doucouré, Beto