Michael Ball tackles the big issues at Hill Dickinson Stadium following Everton's 1-0 win over Ipswich Town
Thierno Barry celebrates his winning goal for Everton against Ipswich Town
Thierno Barry celebrates his winning goal for Everton against Ipswich Town
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While results-wise, it feels like this international break has come at the wrong time for Everton, I think it will actually help a lot of individuals who need to catch up on fitness, such as James Garner and Jack Grealish, while providing a platform for Christian Norgaard to step up his recovery.
Alan Shearer got asked the question, and whether he was the right person to answer it I don’t know, but he says he thinks that Thierno Barry meant it when he deflected in James Tarkowski’s volley for his goal that did count. Perhaps strikers will tell the odd white lie here and there for their self-interests, but who cares?
You can score with a variety of different parts of your body and top strikers will do that. Hopefully, the goal will give him a bit more confidence, but he still needs help.
We’ll have to wait and see if anything happens in January, but Barry is going to be our centre-forward for the majority of the season, the one we’re all counting on for the goals, with those numbers judged, and the hold-up play.
Everton still need to find our style of play as I still feel like we’re stuck in the middle. We can produce some great passages of play but it’s only in small doses.
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Players should be proud of being able to keep the ball and proud of finding their team-mate. That’s not just the individual in possession but his team-mates asking for the ball too, those in the midfield demanding it from their defenders, dictating the play and then trying to find the forward line.
I think a lot of Evertonians were thinking that if we get a win against Ipswich, it is a good start to the season but the pressure is on in these type of games where Everton have often let themselves down in recent years. The question was how we were going to do it as Ipswich have got full-backs who bomb on and that was my concern as we seem to struggle against teams who do that.
The Premier League is a lot closer than it has been for a number of years and you’ve got to take these opportunities when you get them. It wasn’t a great watch but we got the goal and we won the game.
It was a strange feeling coming out of the stadium. But ultimately there is elation that we got the win because in the recent past, we’d have dropped points in matches like this and that shows where we are now as a football club.
We showed character and our players worked hard, putting a real shift in. That’s a complete turnaround from all those times that we’ve left Goodison Park and Hill Dickinson Stadium pleased with the performance but not having taken maximum points, such as the Manchester City game towards the end of last season.
We pushed them to the limit but couldn’t take advantage. Okay, Ipswich are not Manchester City, but there were other examples too like when Wolves took a point here earlier this year.
I don’t often check the statistics but I did on this occasion because I wanted to see whether my eyes were tricking me. So far this season, possession-wise, we’ve really struggled to keep hold of the ball in midfield as there have been a lot of misplaced passes.
Even the likes of Jarrad Branthwaite and Jordan Pickford, it hasn’t been up to standard. We’re making it more difficult to win football games because we’re turning the ball over far too easily.
It was the highest possession that we’ve had, just over 50%, but we’ve had a lot less in other games. There were still 83 misplaced passes though and that’s something that David Moyes and the coaching staff can start working on.
We’ve got a young midfield so that also means they’ve got the legs and they’re trying to win the ball back but I’d like to see more of a pattern of play where they’re keeping hold of it. Instead, we’re trying to go forwards far too quickly and go from back to front at every opportunity.
That’s fine, I understand that, but sometimes it’s not on because Barry is up there on his own. From where I sit, I could see that Ipswich were set up with four or five attacking players, but our forward line is just Barry on his own and he’s very isolated and we need to get more bodies around him to try and dictate games more.
When it comes to Everton’s second goal being disallowed for offside, I don’t know the laws of the game anymore!
It was a great run and fantastic header from Barry so to not get rewarded for that felt harsh. Yes, Brennan Johnson was stood in an offside position but there’s no way the goalkeeper is going to save that – it was going straight into the top corner – the only way he interfered was in stopping the keeper from watching the ball go into the net.
That’s the type of goal you’d like to see a dance celebration from, rather than the first. Last season it might have been given but if that’s the new rules, it is what it is, and you’ve got to be a bit more cute and clever.
David Moyes is right when he says that these type of decisions seem to go against us, and it predates his return to the club.
Everton needed to take advantage of numbers game
It sounds crazy but it can be difficult playing against 10 men. I remember Pep Guardiola at Manchester City would often have training sessions where it was 11 v 10 or 11 v 9 as the team had to learn how to play keep ball with extra players on the pitch and dominate your opponent.
Yet, Ipswich started creating more opportunities and we were hanging on towards the end as nerves can creep in and people drop off. There was nobody brave enough to put their foot on the ball and use their football intelligence to take advantage.
These are the times that you need to make the pitch as wide as possible and keep hold of the ball but we didn’t seem to do that. Instead, it looked like we were just trying to kick the ball as far away as possible from our goal and then sit back and defend.