Match Preview
Everton go into the latest of a series of huge games at Goodison Park as rivals to avoid relegation, Nottingham Forest, come to town and the outcome could have a huge bearing on whether the Toffees remain in the Premier League for next season.
The Grand Old Lady has borne witness to some hugely significant occasions over the past two years as the respective seasons have entered their crucial stages but this will be the first genuine “six-pointer” staged here since the 1-0 win over Leeds United 14 months ago.
Everton and Forest will come into the fixture separated by a single point, the result of the former’s harsher treatment by their first Independent Commission, which opted to deduct 10 points from the Club (later reduced to six, of course) and the fact that the Blues were hit with an unprecedented second sanction in the same season with two more points taken away.
Depending on what happens between Luton and Brentford 24 hours earlier, the East Midlanders might be kicking off in the relegation zone – either a potential motivator or source of fear – but for Sean Dyche, the task is a simple one: pick his players up after that horrific 6-0 defeat at Chelsea on Monday and get them back to playing the kind of football that beat Forest in the return fixture in December in the middle of a run of five wins in six.
“We can’t just park it, that’s for sure,” said Dyche during his press conference at Finch Farm of his team’s humiliation at Stamford Bridge. “I certainly haven’t. The players were affected by it, and they were very disappointed – as was I, in my part as manager. I take responsibility, inevitably.
“We spoke to the players about it, and they fed back their disappointment, as well as mine. Equally, by now we’ve made sense of it, of course, but, the day after, we certainly [hadn’t]. It was a challenge, but now you do have to park it.
“So, we’ve had a chat about it this morning to finish it off and go, ‘Right, that’s gone. We move forwards’.”
Everton attracted widespread criticism for their abysmal defending during a first half that yielded four goals for Chelsea and a hat-trick for Cole Palmer. Central midfielders Amadou Onana and James Garner paid the price by being taken off at half-time but neither James Tarkowski nor Jarrad Branthwaite covered themselves in glory on the night.
“You’ve got to do the basics,” Dyche explained. “You’ve got to work, you’ve got to harry, you’ve got to press, you’ve got to fight, you’ve got to tackle and you’ve got to play, of course. And we were nowhere near either.
“There were a lot of home truths [aired] – me included, by the way – about what I expect from myself, from the staff, and from the players, and realigning, saying: ‘Right, you can only do it as a group. You can’t do it as individuals,’ and pull it all back together.
“The players have been disappointed. I must make that clear. It’s a funny thing about football nowadays… ‘Oh, do they care?’ They care. Trust me, they care. I care deeply about what we’re trying to achieve here, but they care as well.”
Those afore-mentioned midfield performances, combined with the anticipated availability of Idrissa Gueye after two games out, will probably make Dyche’s selection task easier for this one, with Onana expected to start on the bench and André Gomes preferred to Garner.
There is a strong argument for deploying Garner either at right-midfield or right-back in the absence of injured duo Seamus Coleman and Nathan Patterson but the sensible money would go on either Ben Godfrey or Ashley Young starting at full-back and, perhaps Jack Harrison, taking the more attacking role on the right.
Arnaut Danjuma’s return to fitness provides another option off the bench while, up front, the hope is that Dominic Calvert-Lewin will come through one last training session tomorrow with no reaction in his hamstring so that he can lead the line.
Forest boss Nuno Espirito Santo will still be wtihout striker Taiwo Awoniyi and defender Willy Boly while Anthony Elanga will undergo a late fitness test but he will be looking for midfield dynamo, Morgan Gibbs-White, and tall forward Chris Wood to provide his main threat against an Everton side that has forgotten how to defend in recent weeks.
The Blues’ back line was hardly troubled by Burnley in their last home match, an ugly 1-0 win, but you had to go back to January for their previous clean sheet.
The more promising statistic for Dyche’s goal-shy outfit, however, is that the Trees have only kept one clean sheet of their own since the first week of November and they’ve been particularly vulnerable at set-pieces which have, for much of the campaign, been Everton’s bread and butter.
Victory for the Toffees coupled with defeat for Luton would clearly provide a massive boost to Everton’s survival hopes as it would put four points between them and Forest and move them five ahead of Luton with those two rival teams only having four games left to play. Fingers crossed Dyche’s charges rise to the challenge and seize the day.
Kick-off: 1:30pm, Sunday 21 April 2024
Referee: Anthony Taylor
VAR: Stuart Attwell
Last Time: Everton 1 – 1 Nottingham Forest
Predicted Line-up: Pickford, Godfrey, Tarkowski, Branthwaite, Mykolenko, Gueye, Gomes, Harrison, McNeil, Doucouré, Calvert-Lewin