Goodison Tactics: Perfect chance for DCL to rediscover goalscoring form v Leeds
Everton travel to Leeds on Wednesday night in a bid to bounce back after their woeful performance and defeat to Newcastle at the weekend.
Carlo Ancelotti’s men have won just one of their last four Premier League fixtures after winning their four games beforehand.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin has struggled in front of goal for several weeks now with the 23-year-old failing to find the back of the net since the 1-1 draw with Burnley on December 5.
Since then, the England international has gone seven matches without scoring so it’s about time he ends his barren run and makes the most of Leeds’ haphazard defending this week at Elland Road.
According to stats by WhoScored, no Premier League team has conceded more goals at set-pieces than Leeds have this season [10].
Ancelotti’s squad is blessed with technically-gifted players who can shine at set-piece situations like corners and free-kicks.
Gylfi Sigurdsson, James Rodriguez and Lucas Digne are all capable of whipping an inch-perfect cross into the penalty area and with Leeds struggling in those situations, Calvert-Lewin has to take advantage of them.
As per Wyscout, Calvert-Lewin has scored more headers [4] than any other player in the Premier League this season. The England forward, and Michael Keane, have both scored twice via corner kicks, ranking them joint-fourth in the league.
Digne ranks first in the Premier League for crosses per 90 minutes [6.69] and has a cross accuracy of 33.3 per cent.
With someone like Digne on corners and tall players like DCL and Kean attacking them, they should be able to tear Leeds’ defence to shreds.
Marcelo Bielsa’s received a lot of praise at Elland Road this season but the state of his team’s marking at corners is abysmal.
In the below image, you can see that Newcastle have just taken a corner and Jonjo Shelvey is closely marked by Luke Ayling.
However, by the time Shelvey has leapt up into the air, Ayling is still rooted to the deck and has lost touch with the player he’s marking.
On this occasion, Shelvey’s header was well saved by goalkeeper Illan Meslier.
Again, against Manchester United earlier in the season you can see Victor Lindelof being kept a handle on by Kalvin Phillips as the corner is about to be whipped in.
As Luke Shaw takes the corner, Lindelof ends up wrestling with Phillips.
Anthony Martial flicks the corner on at the near post and by then, Phillips has lost out to Lindelof and allowed the Sweden defender an easy march towards an almost-empty goal.
Everton can definitely take advantage of this on Wednesday night.
Calvert-Lewin has gone too long without scoring now and we really think he’ll be able to break his drought against Leeds.
Whether it comes from a corner or not, it will be brilliant to see DCL make the net ripple once more.
In other Everton news, Kevin Campbell has predicted the result of the clash with Leeds.