Goodison Tactics: How Everton lost and why Benitez could be concerned

Mon 18 October 2021 7:42, UK

Sunday afternoon saw Everton lose 1-0 to West Ham in the Premier League to deal Rafael Benitez his first home defeat of the season.

The Toffees looked pretty laboured, and perhaps it was a game too far for them without Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Richarlison.

Benitez’s side managed 15 shots with only two on target, while the Hammers managed 16 shots with four on target and eventually found their goal through Angelo Ogbonna [BBC].

The goal came from a set-piece, which should concern the Spaniard, but there were plenty of other problems that would also worry Benitez.

It just wasn’t a good performance from a side that have had a strong start to the season, and the Toffees will need to be better going forward.

Said Benrahma easily gets past Allan and Alex Iwobi. Tomas Soucek has left Abdoulaye Doucoure behind.

The ball is played into Soucek, who flicks it to Jarrod Bowen. Doucoure is out of the game in his current position.

Bowen hits his shot, which Jordan Pickford saves and Soucek slams in the rebound. Luckily, he is offside. Both Seamus Coleman and Ben Godfrey don’t do enough to stop the shot initially.

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It was lucky for Everton that Soucek was offside because this was poor defending from several players.

First, Allan can’t be beaten that easily by Benrahma, then Doucoure stops chasing Soucek before Bowen is allowed time and space in the box to let fly.

Therefore, we can imagine that Benitez would have been concerned with this defending, but the goal would have disappointed him more.

It should be said that the Spaniard didn’t believe that it was a corner, but the Toffees still should have defended a lot better than they did.

As the corner comes in Ogbonna is free from any Everton player. Godfrey is the closest to him but isn’t close enough.

As we can see here Ogbonna gets to the ball ahead of both Declan Rice and Godfrey to flick the ball into the net.

This was such an easy goal to avoid, and had Godfrey been closer to Ogbonna, it is unlikely that he would have been able to find the net.

Overall, this was a poor display from the Toffees, and though they didn’t do too much wrong, there were certainly some concerning moments for Benitez to worry about.

In other Everton news, an ESPN pundit tore into one Toffees player after the West Ham game.

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