Rewatched the Everton game and it should be said that out-of-possession we played a pretty good game, considering the circumstances. The plan was to press for the ball particularly when Everton tried to play the ball forwards from their CB’s & GK, however the designated free player was mostly one of Branthewaite or Tarkowski; who had most of the ball. People who say we don’t press high are just spewing the popular narrative, we do press high but it’s situational, rather than absolute, which of course can be problematic. Everton couldn’t get through our settled defensive shape and so they resorted to long balls/passes on the floor from deep into Beto, Ndiaye and the like. There wasn’t any consistent exploitation of our defensive block from an Everton POV But more importantly: Their best moments came after a possession reset, Wirtz, Gakpo and Isak were caught too high away from their support units, Pickford is able to throw the ball into Gueye, eliminating all three players. Everton were really smart and played quite swiftly. They achieved numerical parity on our backline (3v3), we lost our +1 advantage & then the rest is history. This for me makes it clear rather it being anything tactical it is a reorganisation issue.
