Predictably, outsiders have taken much longer to cotton on but Everton are a very different beast now than they were a year ago, but if one passage of play from the victory over West Ham United on Sunday summed that up it was James Tarkowski’s challenge on Michail Antonio that almost put the visiting striker into the front rows of the Lower Bullens.
It might not be a tackle that will ultimately resonate to quite the magnitude of Phil Neville’s brutal boneshaker on his former Manchester United team-mate Cristiano Ronaldo on a similar area of the Goodison Park turf back in 2008 but it demonstrated that the Blues are at long last, no longer a Premier League outfit to be trifled with.
With 90 seconds remaining of what had been a pretty turgid first half up until that point, Hammers’ right-back Vladimir Coufal, knocked a ball into the right wing channel for Antonio to run on to and while it initially looked like being a straight foot race between him and Everton left-back Vitalii Mykolenko, in came Tarkowski with a perfectly-timed firm but fair slide tackle that left Antonio rolling on the deck and the Blues man’s own Ukrainian international team-mate flinching to get out of the way. Back in September 2021, many Blues fans inside Goodison were complaining – with some justification – on another challenge on that side of the ground from Tarkowski, then playing for Burnley of course, on Richarlison which went unpunished but left the Brazilian injured.
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Analysing the incident later that night on Sky Sports, Phil's elder brother Gary Neville went as far as saying he didn’t think such challenges have a place in football, adding: “It’s reckless, he knows he’s going to do him, he knows his follow through is going to hurt him.” Therein lies the crucial difference, this isn’t mere partisanship because 12 months ago Tarkowski was wearing a claret shirt against Everton while now he sports the royal blue jersey, on this occasion the centre-back got it spot on without necessarily having to compromise any of his competitive streak.
Such controlled aggression has long been a quality admired by the Goodison Park faithful and a hallmark of the most-successful Everton sides. The Blues’ most-successful side of the 1980s could stroke the ball around with the best in the game but they also had battling qualities which famously came to the fore on the most-celebrated night in the long and illustrious history of ‘The Grand Old Lady’ when Bayern Munich were swatted aside to visiting manager Udo Lattek’s complaints of: “ Mr Kendall, this is not football!”
An identikit scoreline to the famous European Cup-Winners’ Cup semi-final second leg in 1985 of a 3-1 win for Everton in the aforementioned tussle against Sean Dyche’s side little more than a year ago moved the Blues up to fourth in the fledgling Premier League table but it would prove a false dawn. Rafael Benitez, the most-controversial managerial appointment in the history of the most-passionate football city in English football, was sacked just halfway through the season.
In the end, the Spaniard’s previous employment across Stanley Park became a mere, albeit acutely embarrassing, subplot as one win from his final 13 Premier League matches in charge, a sequence that included nine defeats, prompted his dismissal by Farhad Moshiri, the man who had hired him, with chairman Bill Kenwright admitting that the run of form had been “unacceptably disappointing.” Picking up the pieces, Frank Lampard has subsequently been attempting to put a fractured football club back together but after several years of profligate spending and what the owner himself this summer described as “mistakes”, some significant surgery has been required rather than a few sticking plasters on what in football terms have been worryingly deep wounds.
Stemming the flow of Everton’s previously soft rear-guard that leaked 66 goals in the Premier League last season despite some stellar displays from England number one Jordan Pickford has been one of the first priorities. Changes in personnel have been required and for all that the much-maligned Benitez remains a short and painful chapter in the story of the city’s senior club, he did at least leave Blues a couple of parting gifts from the January transfer window in the shape of full-back pair Mykolenko and Nathan Patterson, who after enduring a false start in the second half of 2021/22 when he was restricted to a 45-minute outing against non-League Boreham Wood in the FA Cup, is now making up for lost time.
Indeed, Everton’s back four is now completely changed from a year ago (it was all change in midfield too against West Ham with new signings Idrissa Gueye and Amadou Onana joined by Alex Iwobi who is now fulfilling a very different role while match-winner Neal Maupay up front is another summer recruit) with centre-back pair Tarkowski and Conor Coady having come in. In a dressing room that not too long ago was lamentably short of leaders beyond club captain Seamus Coleman who hasn’t played all season in the Premier League, Lampard was not short of candidates to take the armband against the Hammers in place of the injured Pickford.
The Blues boss had stated already that “I think if I put an armband or not on James Tarkowski, he’s going to be a leader on the pitch and every day on the training ground,” so ultimately it was Coady, skipper of Wolverhampton Wanderers for the past five years before joining Everton on loan, who led the side out and ever since his arrival, Lampard’s side have become a much tougher unit to break down. While there was a 2-1 loss at Aston Villa on Coady’s debut, seven weeks on that remains Everton’s last defeat and the most recent time they have conceded more than one goal in a game.
Patience has been required in what has been a difficult period both on and off the field and it’s true that the Blues are not yet firing on all cylinders up front either and are themselves yet to net more than once in a match this term but they’re now unbeaten in their last five Premier League encounters and their last six outings in all competitions. There have been welcome clean sheets against Liverpool and West Ham, both of which had to be earned with some resolute defending at times and slowly but surely the team is on an upward trajectory.
Everton have faced 64 corner-kicks in the Premier League so far this season (16 v Chelsea; five v Aston Villa; two v Nottingham Forest; eight v Brentford; 10 v Leeds United; 9 v Liverpool; 14 v West Ham) plus five at Fleetwood in the Carabao Cup but have only conceded once from one when Brentford substitute Vitaly Janelt poked Keane Lewis-Potter’s flick on past Pickford which represents a significant improvement on one of their biggest Achilles heels last season. Lampard himself admits that his side are still giving away more corners than he’d like but credits first-team coach Ashley Cole’s diligent work in this area with the players for the significant tightening up.
After enduring the hectoring from their neighbours over what their former manager would supposedly bring them, long-suffering Evertonians have heard more than enough from fans of rival clubs about what is best for them. Blues have long recognised the positive influences that Lampard and his staff have been having but they required a victory to provide tangible evidence of such progress and while the goals aren’t quite flowing yet, the first solid foundation of any football team is keeping them out at the other end.
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