Goodison Stats: Everton capable of exploting Leicester set-piece weakness
Everton will take their momentum from the win against Chelsea to the King Power Stadium on Wednesday when they take on Brendan Rodgers’ Leicester City.
Leicester have impressed – as usual – again this season with the Foxes currently sitting third in the Premier League table with eight wins in 12 matches.
Everton have also had a good start of their own and showed signs of getting over their blip by beating Chelsea 1-0 at Goodison at the weekend.
Leicester are a tough side for the Toffees to face next but we believe Carlo Ancelotti’s squad is ready-made to expose the East Midlands club’s main weakness.
According to start by WhoScored, the Foxes have conceded six goals from set-pieces this season – one more than they have conceded from open play. 40 per cent of Premier League goals conceded by Rodgers’ side this season have come from either free-kicks or corners.
And thankfully for Everton, they have shown themselves to be very dangerous in those situations.
WhoScored shows the Blues have scored six times from set-pieces this term, which is 28 per cent of all their league goals. Only Southampton, Chelsea and West Ham have netted more times from corners and set-pieces than Ancelotti’s side.
It’s easy to see why the Merseyside club has been so strong at set-pieces.
Stats by Wyscout show Everton cross the ball into the box 15.03 times per 90 minutes of Premier League football this term. Although Lucas Digne is injured, no players has averaged more crosses than him this season [6.4].
Dominic Calvert-Lewin ranks third in the top-flight for aerial duels [130] while Michael Keane is fifth for his aerial duel success rate [67.8%].
It seems that if you can play an aerial game against Leicester this week, you stand a good chance of getting goals.
Let’s just hope the Toffees get the corners and free-kicks to be able to use their strength and play against Leicester’s weakness.
In other Everton news, Ancelotti cannot afford to rest Calvert-Lewin.