Tottenhan Can Learn from Everton’s Win Over Manchester City

By Ryan Wrenn | Mar 3, 2017

January 15th 2017, Goodison Park, Liverpool, England: EPL football league, Everton versus Manchester City; Rival Everton manager Ronald Koeman and Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola look on from the technical area (Photo by Alan Martin/Action Plus via Getty Images) /

Everton’s run of form in 2017 should intimidate Tottenham, and few performances likely matter more than their win over Manchester City in January.

Ronald Koeman welcomed City to Goodison in the week before Pep Guardiola took on Tottenham. The ensuring 93 minutes were utterly dismal for the visitors as they conceded four goals and scored none of their own.

That victory, if anything, encompasses the remarkable surge in quality Everton have enjoyed since the new year. As we covered earlier on Friday, the Blues are unbeaten so far this January 1st, having won five of the last seven matches.

City are, thus far, the biggest challenge Everton have had over that run, at least up until they meet Tottenham on Sunday. Just how much, then, can Mauricio Pochettino learn from that match against a team that his own side could only muster a narrow 2-2 against a week later?

For one, he can derive a fact made especially obvious over the course of the full campaign: Romelu Lukaku is a force of nature. In 39 appearances for club and country since the beginning of last summer, he has scored 25 goals — including 17 in the Premier League. That’s enough to draw him level with Spurs’ striker and reigning Golden Boot holder Harry Kane.

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Those 17 goals represent 40% of Everton’s entire goal haul for the season, per WhoScored. He, naturally, scored in that match against City. Pochettino will be especially focused on ensuring the Belgian isn’t gifted any chances on Sunday.

Lukaku is so dominant, in fact, that he threatens to turn Everton into a one-man operation. The next highest scorer in the side is Barkley, with four goals, and an identical amount scored by right-back Seamus Coleman.

To be fair, Kane accounts for 35% of Tottenham’s goals, not that much less than Lukaku and Everton. It’s no surprise, then, that the first and best method opposing teams take when combating these sides is to isolate the strikers, cutting off their supply from the creative players around them.

City tried to do just that against Lukaku and clearly failed. He managed three shots on the night, one of which found the target and converted into a goal.

Which brings us to the crux of the lesson here. Lukaku’s goal on one accurate shot wasn’t in isolation. Everton as a whole only managed four shots on target in the entire match from four different players — all of which were converted into goals.

Now, part of the fault here lies in Claudio Bravo’s inability to stop even one of these shots on his goal. That is a trend that’s developed over the course of the season, and indeed continued a week later against Tottenham.

More blame should fall toward John Stones, who had a howler of a game at centre-back. All four shots came from within his half of City’s box. The irony of the former Everton man conceding those chances after his £47.5 million move last summer was lost on precisely no one.

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Can Everton hope for the same haplessness against Tottenham though? Assuming they are healthy for the match, Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen are plenty experienced enough to box in and suffocate Lukaku as needed.

A healthy Tottenham backline has kept out the likes of Sergio Agüero, Alexis Sánchez and Diego Costa this season though. Doing so again against Lukaku and this prolific Everton side will be a challenge, but it is far from impossible.