George Overhill

Thu 16 February 2023 13:50, UK

Dominic Calvert-Lewin is still going to be missing for Everton as the club prepares to face Leeds United, Sean Dyche has revealed.

The striker started the manager’s first game in charge but was withdrawn after an hour as a precautionary measure in light of his numerous fitness problems over the past year.

Ellis Simms was then chosen to start the clash with Liverpool over Neal Maupay with Calvert-Lewin’s issues once again emerging, and it will be yet another game without him at Goodison Park on Saturday (18 February), although Dyche refuse to criticise the lack of any attacking signings.

Speaking in his pre-match press conference on Thursday (16 February), as per the Liverpool Echo, the Everton boss said: “No, the root of the problem is pretty easy from the medical side of things and now it’s all about making sure his body is well.

“I think the mentality has to be you score as a team and you hope not to concede as a team. It’s the mentality of the group that is important.”

On the fact that no strikers have been signed by the club he added: “I’m not deserving of an explanation from before I arrived. You and the world might have noticed how many strikers are out there and how many are Premier League-ready? That’s not an easy market.

“I was searching, trawling, looking at angles. Look at things that could affect the group. I can only speak about my time here and the relevant people worked very hard to get deals done within certain situations.

“I came in here with open eyes, I know the squad, I know the situation. It’s a difficult job, I’m not going to mask that.”

Asked specifically about the chances Calvert-Lewin is involved on Saturday, the manager called it “improbable”.

Crunch

The honeymoon period that encompassed Dyche’s arrival sweeping the Toffees to a morale-boosting win over Arsenal was ended with the derby defeat.

But those two games could reasonably have been seen as unlikely to bring much of a return so, the performance at Anfield notwithstanding, the three points recorded was somewhat of a bonus.

It is however going to be the matches such as the upcoming one against sides who are similarly scrapping at the wrong end of the table that have the potential to be far more damaging.

Points for Everton are important wherever they come from, but points for the opposition when playing the teams around them are a big problem – they are called six-pointers for a reason.

So against manager-less Leeds the Toffees need to take advantage of the fact that Dyche’s arrival has at least provided some stability going forward.

But it looks like the striker issue is, quite unsurprisingly, going to be a key concern for the remainder of the season.

The failure to sign anyone in January didn’t look like such a problem when beating the Gunners, but stood out for all to see on Monday (13 February).