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Spreading goals around helps, Everton stopping them does as well

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By Paul Conatzer
Twitter @Toffeepaul.com

Most Everton supporters spent the January transfer window scanning any and all available media just in case Everton moved for that elusive No. 9.

You know, the kind that will bang in 30 goals, like Gary Lineker did for Everton in 1985-86. It’s a season that will live long in the memories of Blues everywhere. For the wrong reason, despite Lineker’s goals, Everton finished second, two points behind Liverpool and just to make things worse, lost the FA Cup to the same group. Everton scored 87 goals that season with Lineker scoring more than a third of the total.

But Everton altered their style of play to suit Lineker and it ended up unbalancing the side. It didn’t help that Neville Southall and Peter Reid missed a number of games because of injuries.

Everton won the title in the year before and the year after. In 1984-85, Everton scored 88 goals in 42 league games. There were five players in double figures – Graeme Sharp 21, Trevor Steven 12, Kevin Sheedy and Adrian Heath both had 11. Central defender Derek Mountfield added 10, mostly with his head. (There must be something about starting your career at Tranmere Rovers. Everton bought a pretty good centre-forward from them in the 1920s. He was a pretty good header of the ball, too.) Andy Gray added 9 goals. Good balance.

So far this season, Everton have scored 36 goals in 27 games. Not really an impressive number, however, when David Moyes’ Everton side finished fourth in 2004-2005 his side only scored 45 goals with Tim Cahill leading the way with 11. Gritty defence was the byword for that team, it allowed 46 goals, but that includes a 7-0 thumping at the hands of Arsenal.

So far this season, Richarlison leads the team with 10 league goals. Gylfi Sigurdsson has nine. Dominic Calvert-Lewin has four. Lucas Digne is the only defender with more than one goal, he has three. Theo Walcott and Cenk Tosun have been disappointing and Calvert-Lewin has shown flashes, but he still needs time to mature before he can lead the line consistently. In Roberto Martinez’s first season, Romelu Lukaku scored 15 goals, but Seamus Coleman (6) and Leighton Baines (5) combined for 11.

Perhaps a bigger problem than scoring goals is giving them away from set pieces. According to Opta, Everton have allowed 11 goals from set-pieces. Hopefully, they have sent a good part of the 17-day break practising defending set pieces.

It’s not all Marco Silva’s fault. He and Marcel Brands inherited a team that had spent unwisely. According to reports in the Liverpool Echo, the dressing room is behind Silva and money man Farhad Moshiri is being more patient than he has in the past. Of course, he doesn’t want to be paying another manager to sit around and do nothing.

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