Bob Williams

Sun 3 January 2021 19:39, UK

Everton were unable to break down West Ham when the two sides met on New Year’s Day and the Toffees’ woeful defending cost them dearly. 

The Hammers won 1-0 as a late Tomas Soucek goal proved to be the difference with Everton struggling in front of goal again.

When your strikers aren’t scoring, you have to rely on your defence to make sure that at least a point is secured.

The Toffees’ defence has never been exceptional this season but it was all over the place against West Ham which will have come as a shock to many Everton fans.

Carlo Ancelotti’s side had kept three clean sheets in their last four league games before the home defeat to the Irons.

However, the defence was a shadow of the backline that had kept Chelsea and Leicester at bay.

This was most evident in the second half as an Everton side that had considerably more rest than the Hammers fell asleep time and time again.

The first example of this is a quick free-kick taken by the Hammers as Mark Noble picks out Declan Rice who is in acres of space.

Luckily, Rice’s resulting cross avoided anyone in claret and blue in the Toffees box and this should’ve been a major wake up call for Ancelotti’s men.

This warning was not heeded however as later in the half, Pablo Fornals had the chance to open the scoring.

A cross is floated in towards Fornals and there is simply no one near him.

Yerry Mina slips while trying to get out towards the winger but even if he had stayed on his feet it is doubtful that the Colombian would’ve been able to challenge Fornals for the ball.

Luckily, again, Everton get away with it as Fornals somehow guides his header wide of Jordan Pickford’s goal.

The defending is amateurish at best and this drop off in quality is extremely concerning.

Now comes the big one, the West Ham pressure and Everton mistakes was a combination that was only ever going to produce one outcome.

With four minutes to play, Soucek has a shot blocked and it falls to Aaron Cresswell on the edge of the Everton box.

As Cresswell fires the ball into the box, you can see that Soucek is being marked by Michael Keane so even if the ball does drop to the West Ham midfielder Keane will be there to put a challenge in.

It would be unthinkable that in this situation Keane would allow the prolific Soucek to wander free and tap home a loose ball to give the Hammers a late lead.

Unthinkable to all except Keane as this is exactly what the defender does, allowing Soucek to tap home and secure all three points for the Irons.

It isn’t like Keane doesn’t know that Soucek is there, he simply lets him walk past him and this fatal error cost the Toffees dearly.

In truth, the score should’ve been about three or four-nil at this point and David Moyes’ side were well worth the win.

It may be easy to claim that Everton’s poor defending was at fault for losing a game that they were favourites for before kick-off.

But the magnitude of the errors Everton were making against West Ham is extremely worrying.

Mistakes like these simply cannot go on and Ancelotti needs to make sure performances like the one we saw against West Ham don’t become a regular occurrence.

In other Everton news, Kevin Campbell has hailed Ben Godfrey’s recent form.