Everton’s players know they simply have to win on Sunday and their Premier League status will be secure but it’s imperative that they ensure the importance of the game to the club works in their favour.
Along with Leeds United and Leicester City, Sean Dyche’s men know just one of the trio will survive in the top flight after the final round of matches. But with the Blues’ fate in their own hands, victory over Bournemouth ensures they would avoid a first relegation in 72 years regardless of what goes on elsewhere with Sam Allardyce’s team hosting Tottenham Hotspur and Dean Smith’s side entertaining West Ham United.
Out of the 27 potential win/lose/draw scenarios over the three fixtures, 17 of the permutations keep Everton up but they don’t have to be concerned with how far the odds are in their favour if they take care of business themselves. For ex-Blues defender Michael Ball, who survived a similar last day escape at Goodison Park some 25 years ago when he and his team-mates stayed up on goal difference ahead of Bolton Wanderers after a nervous 1-1 draw with Coventry City, the motivation to go and get the three points should have been some six months in the making.
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Speaking in his ECHO column this week, he said: “We owe Bournemouth one massively, back in November they embarrassed us twice in one week, 7-1 on aggregate over the two games. At the end of the day, Bournemouth shouldn’t be embarrassing Everton Football Club and if you’re one of those Everton players who was involved in those games, it’s payback time in front of your own fans.”
On the one hand, those relatively-recent head-to-heads against the Cherries are part of a statistical ‘elephant in the room’ that the Blues need to overcome here given that they have now gone 10 consecutive matches without beating a newly-promoted side (they’ve drawn four and lost six – and that’s not even counting the Carabao Cup reversal). However, that double defeat across the space of just four days in the autumn was of course under a previous regime, with Dyche having at least got them up into the position in which they are masters of their own destiny having been joint bottom of the table when he was appointed.
Only a few weeks ago, there seemed to be a realistic prospect of this final day head-to-head being a straight shoot-out between the sides to stay up and that’s something even opposition manager Gary O’Neil acknowledged ahead of their trip to Merseyside this weekend. The Beckenham-born boss, who was hired on a permanent basis following that brace of victories over Everton, said: “I think everyone felt that the Everton game would probably be pivotal for both of us. Definitely us, maybe not Everton, so the fact that it isn't for us shows what a good achievement it was from the players.
“One thing to stay up, another thing to stay up with four games to spare. So very impressive, from a group without quite a lot of people, and you saw again, they’ll run, they’ll work, that they do whatever’s asked of them.
“(An) incredible group. It’s obviously nice that we get to come in, enjoy training, start to switch focus a little bit, discussions around next season and sort of things taking place with the recruitment team, now we know what league we're going to be in.
“So, being successful as early as we did and getting the job done means that we can start to plan.”
O’Neil, who celebrated his 40th birthday last week, believed Bournemouth were safe after their 4-1 thrashing of Leeds United on April 30 put them on 39 points with four matches to spare. Their status has since been mathematically confirmed but after getting the job done relatively early, it seems only inevitable that the Cherries’ performance levels have suffered something of a drop off since and it’s imperative Everton capitalise on this.
When contrasting Bournemouth’s statistics in their three matches since they inflicted the result that prompted Javi Gracia to be sacked and Sam Allardyce to be brought in to the five games that came before – a sequence that produced four wins out of five – the difference is palpable. Using figures collated by Comparisonator, all of their offensive parameters have lowered with shots per 90 minutes down from 14 to 8.33; shots on target down 6.4 to 3.67; attacking actions down 52.6 to 38.33; successful attacking actions down 25.2 to 18.33 and expected goals down 1.84 to 1.07.
Defensively they’re a mixed bag with a slight increase in interceptions 54.33 to 53.2 and defensive actions, 160 to 159.6 and only a small drop in successful defensive actions, 110 to 108.67, but their distribution has also generally dropped with their number of passes down 460 to 414.67; successful passes 390.2 to 349.67; successful passes in the final third down 106.6 to 73 and successful crosses down from 3.6 to 2 although their successful key passes have risen from 2.6 to 4.
While claiming a team is already ‘on the beach’ is always a dangerous proposition – even one like Bournemouth who are physically in close proximity to the sandy shores of Dorset’s Jurassic Coast – perhaps the biggest indicator to an easing off has come through decreasing numbers across the board for one-on-one battles. Defensive duels won are down 40.8 to 37; offensive duels won are down 34.8 to 25.33 and aerial duels won are down 18 to 13.67 so if Everton do go down for the first time since 1951 from this position then realistically they’ve only got themselves to blame.
Comparisonator is a football data comparison tool from 271 professional leagues around the world which compares players and clubs by utilising over 100 different parameters. Click here for more details.
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