Season 2014-15 
Opinion Talking Points
Everton players' percent of league minutes played in 2014-15
The following is a breakdown of the number of minutes played by each Everton player in the Premier League in 2014-15, and the percent of the season's minutes that represents. The data comes from
Observations:
(1) Notice how few minutes were played by natural wingers: Mirallas' 42% and Lennon's 31% were the most. In effect we typically had only one true winger on the pitch at any given time.
(2) Distin played 32% of our minutes and Alcaraz 15%, so we played nearly half the season with one of these two weak defenders at centre back.
(3) Clearly it hurt us that Barry played 83% of our minutes while McCarthy could only play 70%. We would have done much better if those two numbers could have been reversed.
Howard 2835 (83%)
Robles 585 (17%)
Jagielka 3285 (96%)
Stones 2043 (60%)
Distin 1080 (32%)
Alcaraz 527 (15%)
Coleman 3066 (90%)
Baines 2773 (81%)
Hibbert 329 (10%)
Oviedo 320 (9%)
Garbutt 287 (8%)
Galloway 173 (5%)
Browning 31 (1%)
Barry 2823 (83%)
McCarthy 2400 (70%)
Besic 1284 (38%)
Naismith 2058 (60%)
Barkley 1960 (57%)
Osman 1279 (37%)
Gibson 416 (12%)
Lukaku 2870 (84%)
Eto'o 787 (23%)
Kone 601 (18%)
Mirallas 1420 (42%)
Lennon 1071 (31%)
McGeady 884 (26%)
Pienaar 317 (9%)
Atsu 113 (3%)
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Reader Comments (6)
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3 Posted 19/06/2015 at 09:51:38
You could throw in Pienaar as well but he was also missing through injury. So not surprising that we did not get more than one natural winger on the pitch at a time on average. Hopefully if we sign Deulofeu and Lennon, then this will change next season.
4 Posted 19/06/2015 at 19:00:39
I think the shortage of time chalked up by attacking midfielders was more an adherence to a rotation policy than unavailability of players. There were often times when a win was followed by a shuffle round of all but the defence. ItÂ’s RobertoÂ’s way!
5 Posted 20/06/2015 at 09:08:32
Go three up and stop playing? I always thought the best way to build form and confidence, was by scoring goals. Not shutting up shop after a hour just because the game seems won.
LetÂ’s face it, if they would've carried on playing against QPR, we possibly could have scored six or seven that night. The crowd would've gone home happy, and the team might've carried this form into the next game.
I hope it was Europe that got in the way, and we can get back to a winning team picking itself. Now wouldnÂ’t that be nice?
6 Posted 25/06/2015 at 18:49:53
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2 Posted 17/06/2015 at 18:37:01
The back 7 and Lukaku basically picked themselves and the 3 AM spots had no consistency at all being constantly chopped and changed – with rarely any combination providing any balance.