Sean Dyche is a manager who prides himself on his teams’ set-piece prowess — but this season Everton have had a problem at the wrong end.
One of the most surprising elements of the 2-1 win over Crystal Palace last Saturday was the extent to which Dyche’s side struggled defending set pieces.
Against a Palace team not exactly known for their aerial threats, Everton coughed up a number of big chances, including Marc Guehi’s first-half goal.
It continued one of the early themes of the season at Goodison. Everton, despite their height, have been curiously vulnerable to balls into their box.
Including Taylor Harwood-Bellis’ header for Southampton in the Carabao Cup, they have now conceded four goals from set pieces in this campaign. This is no statistical anomaly. Dyche’s team have conceded the third-most shots and the fifth-highest expected goals against (xGA), a measurement of the quality of chances they have faced, total from set plays.
Everton have been leakier than they were last season, where only four sides had a lower xGA from these situations.
So what is going wrong? It is a blip in an otherwise strong record? And will the return of key defensive figures make a difference?
A loss of dominance in the six-yard box
Dyche’s defensive set-up from set pieces is a hybrid of zonal and man marking. The idea, as he explained this season, is for a number of ‘blockers’ to “stop runs and leave your key headers to attack the ball”.
The below image, taken from the recent 1-1 draw with Leicester City, shows a fairly typical Dyche set up.
They have players on both posts and centre-backs James Tarkowski and Michael Keane, regarded as two of Everton’s strongest players in the air, are stationed in the middle of the six-yard box so they can attempt to clear.
The problem is that Everton have been far less dominant in that area.
As the ball is swung in, midfielder James Garner and striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin collide, sending the former to the turf and depriving Everton of a key body in a crucial zone.
Tarkowski and Keane attempt to clear but are beaten in the air by Wilfred Ndidi. Note that eventual goalscorer Stephy Mavididi is free closer to goal in the space Garner should have been occupying. Goalkeeper Jordan Pickford starts to challenge for the ball but thinks better of it.
Everton can’t clear and the ball breaks somewhat fortuitously to Mavididi, who is quicker to react than Keane and sends a scuffed effort into the ground and over Dwight McNeil into the net.
You would expect one of Tarkowski or Keane to dominate in this area, but there is a decent amount of misfortune, with Garner’s slip and the ricochet working in Leicester’s favour.
A more egregious example of Everton’s surprising frailty in that zone came against Tottenham Hotspur a few weeks earlier.
Again we have a fairly typical Dyche set-up, with Tarkowski and Keane tasked with defending the central part of the six-yard box.
McNeil, Tim Iroegbunam and youngster Roman Dixon are the three ‘blockers’.
By the time the corner comes in, goalscorer Sergio Romero has evaded his man and has a free run at the ball…
He climbs above Tarkowski and Keane to head past Pickford from close range. Again, the goalkeeper is rooted to the spot.
“Attacking the ball is the biggest thing,” Dyche said when asked by The Athletic about the goals Everton have conceded from set pieces. “Sometimes that clarity comes with having the confidence and belief to do it, but that’ll return because we have players who know how to do that.”
There is a belief that the return of Branthwaite, another dominant figure, will help Everton’s cause, as will a more settled backline. But a week after making his first start of the season, Branthwaite is battling to be fit for Saturday’s game against Newcastle United after picking up a minor quad injury.
Fresh fitness concerns over the giant England international mean the general sense of flux in defence will continue for at least a little while longer.
These are not easy problems to navigate, but it is also true that Everton have still lost more aerial duels in that central zone than they should have done given the personnel at their disposal.
Pickford’s reluctance to come off his line may have played a role. Before the Leicester draw five games in, he had stopped just one of the 57 crosses that had come into his box at the lowest percentage (1.8) in the league.
The evidence from recent weeks suggests he has started to be more proactive. That stop rate from crosses is now up to nearly six per cent, closer to his average last season of around five.
Blockers not doing their job enough
If Romero’s goal highlighted the impact of poor blocking on Everton’s ability to clear set-piece danger, Harwood-Bellis’ goal in the Carabao Cup weeks later cemented it as an issue.
McNeil this time is stationed not on the post, but as a blocker. When the cross comes in, he is closest to Harwood-Bellis.
The Southampton defender drifts into a more central position and no Everton player follows….
McNeil sees the danger late and tries to respond but is too late and Harwood-Bellis rises to plant his header into the corner.
In response to a question about the goal from The Athletic, Dyche explained that a late sickness bug had forced him to adapt his defensive system on the morning of the game.
“The setup is what we did last season but adjusted for personnel,” he said. “We had 20 minutes this morning to virtually adjust every player.
“It’s not the same thing when that happens. It would be big picture if it was the same people all the time but it’s a different group (in this case).”
Palace exploited short corners and the back post
It is no surprise, given the image of Everton as an aerially dominant side, that teams have taken a league-high 76 short corners against them since the start of last season. Only Bournemouth face a higher percentage of short corners.
It is a trend Dyche and his staff are well aware of.
“The percentage of short corners against us was way higher than for anyone else,” assistant manager Ian Woan told The Athletic this summer. “Teams tried to isolate us around the edge of the box because of the way we set up, but we’re always reluctant to take players off posts.
“We think we can defend the box if we have numbers in there. We’re always tweaking it and that always depends on personnel and size. We had lots of big, solid lads and that dictated how we set up.”
Everton have been reluctant to change their setup too much to counteract this problem, but do make occasional tweaks based on recommendations from their analysts and coaching staff.
Palace targeted this area and found joy. They kept Everton guessing, varying their deliveries — short or long — into the box and exploited space around the area and at the back post in particular.
For Guehi’s strike, the returning Branthwaite has been given a man-marking role on striker Jean-Philippe Mateta. Tarkowski and Calvert-Lewin are left to attack the ball in the six-yard box…
Adam Wharton plays a short corner, initially catching midfielder Daichi Kamada cold…
Everton’s Jesper Lindstrom reads the situation well and is favourite for the ball, but is outmuscled by Kamada, who regains possession and feeds it back out to Wharton.
Wharton’s cross isolates the imposing Maxence Lacroix against Abdoulaye Doucoure at the back post, with Guehi unmarked close to Vitalii Mykolenko. It is an aerial mismatch that Palace take full advantage of, as Guehi is first to the knock-down and stabs past Pickford.
Palace almost repeated the trick with a similar move not long after, this time direct from a corner, with Jefferson Lerma evading his blocker and winning a header at the back post to set up Daniel Munoz for an effort blocked on the line by Iliman Ndiaye.
They nearly scored through Eddie Nketiah after a short corner saw the former Arsenal man left in space to strike on the edge of the box.
The variety of their deliveries kept Everton guessing and left them susceptible in a number of key areas. Changing the point of attack worked in their favour.
Results have improved in recent weeks but it should still give Dyche and his staff food for thought.
Set pieces are a major focus in analysis sessions and it was normal last season for Alex Scanlon, the analyst mostly tasked with this area, to check their setup and communicate live with first-team coach Steve Stone during games.
Scanlon has since left, leaving Dyche, Woan and Matthew Hawkes, the lead performance analyst, to fix the issues that have arisen.
Finding solutions will be key as Everton look to move up the table.
(Top photo: Guehi scores, from a set piece, against Everton. Jan Kruger/Getty Images)
