THE BIG MATCH EVERTON V MAN CITY
SATURDAY, 5.30PM, BT SPORT
IF you had told an Everton fan at the start of the season they would be level in the Premier League with Liverpool just before Easter – with a game in hand – and the only Merseyside club in the last eight of the FA Cup, they would have bitten your hand off.
Even so, back-to-back defeats give tomorrow’s quarter-final something of a make-or-break feel from an Everton perspective if Carlo Ancelotti’s first full season in charge is to be seen as one in which they have made tangible progress.
To triumph they must end a run of seven straight defeats – six of them by a two-goal margin – to a Manchester City side who have already given notice their 2-0 home defeat to Manchester United a fortnight ago was just a blip.
The biggest problem for Everton has been their home form, with seven of their ten league defeats coming at Goodison Park after last weekend’s 2-1 home defeat to Burnley.
It means Ancelotti’s side have let in more home goals already this term than they ended up conceding in each of the last two and are now without goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, with a muscle injury, at a time when midfielder Abdoulaye Doucoure is being sorely missed.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s 21st goal of the season turned out to be a mere consolation against Burnley but being able to pair the England striker with Richarlison is a boost for Ancelotti, and should put pressure on whichever defence comes out of Pep Guardiola’s rotation roulette this weekend.
It is hardly surprising the City boss is spinning the wheel with the league leaders having taken another step towards an unprecedented Quadruple as a 2-0 win over Borussia Monchengladbach in the Champions League sent them through to the last eight.
In his fifth season since swapping Everton for City in a £47.5million deal, John Stones has finally turned his undoubted potential into a top-class defender England manager Gareth Southgate can no longer ignore.
The 26-year-old has forged a formidable partnership with Ruben Dias and was last on the losing side to a team other than Manchester United in November 2019.
WITH Real Madrid Spain’s sole representative in the last eight of the Champions League, some will conclude the quality in La Liga has severely deteriorated and decide it is on an irreversible downward spiral. Some pundits will never learn!
We heard all of that and much more back in 2013 when the ‘Tiki Taka’ style was written off and the Bundesliga’s power and athleticism, which led to an all-German final between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, was now the way forward for all.
But Spanish football adapted, improved, and La Liga clubs went on to win the next five Champions Leagues and five of the last seven Europa Leagues.
I believe it is a similar situation once again regarding style.
In La Liga there are predominantly two ways of playing adopted by all clubs. A traditional possession-based game which we associate with Spanish football and a direct approach based on a four-four-two formation with teams choosing to be direct from back to front, using long passing to two usually big strikers, and utilising percentage football.
It is the understandable way many on smaller budgets try to survive in the top flight. If you don’t watch La Liga regularly that might surprise you.
The entire bottom half of the current league table play the up-andat-’em’ old-fashioned style and the top half play the typical what I now call ‘dot-to-dot’ football – passing to feet incessantly while making very slow progress, albeit with higher quality, higher-cost technical players which more often than not leads to greater success. Simple really!
However, there lies the problem when it comes to European football where opposing elite teams have mastered the art of speedy counterattacking play.
If I had to pick the best team in La Liga for counter-attacking capability it would be Real Madrid and they are the only team with the propensity to do that, although they don’t often get an opportunity, as most teams allow them so much possession.
Chelsea may have outplayed an outof-form Atletico Madrid (above) at Stamford Bridge but look at the goals they scored. Both were the result of ultra-fast counter-attacks.
Witness the demolition of Real Sociedad by Manchester United in the first leg of their Europa League tie where all of the English side’s four goals were constructed with less than four passes.
Sevilla dominated possession against Dortmund but whenever the German side broke against them, Erling Haaland put them to the sword and Barcelona in their first leg against PSG had no answer to Kylian Mbappe in full flight.
That style is not used by a single team in La Liga which is something they are going to have to deal with in order to bounce back in Europe, either by getting better at what they traditionally do in terms of playing possession football but a lot faster and better, or adapting and guarding with a more pragmatic approach to ensure they are not as vulnerable to counterattacking play.
With still a very high level of players and coaches in La Liga I would be careful in writing off a complete league in the long term.
Lessons do need to be learned, although in this season’s competition 13-times winners Real Madrid are still decent representatives for a derided league and I would find it highly amusing if they won it once more!