Let’s start by taking by taking a look at the key statistics from our 0-0 home draw to the Toffees yesterday.
Possession
We were dominant in most areas of the action at the London Stadium yesterday, but unlike recent games possession wasn’t one of those areas. The visitors had the Lion’s share of keep ball with 59.3 percent possession to our 40.7 percent in the bore draw. However, we were largely regarded as the better side against Ronald Koeman’s men, in a rare positive home performance.
Shots on and off target
Our dominant display against the Blue Boys of Merseyside was reflected by our number of attempts on and off target yesterday. We had 15 efforts overall compared to the Toffees 3 attempts. Disappointingly for Slaven Bilic, only 5 of our attempts were directly at the Everton goal; however, this is made to look good up against the Toffees 0 shots on target. The attacking statistics really suggest that we should have come away with the three points yesterday, but like on many other occasions this season we just lacked quality in the final third.
Corners and passing accuracy
Unlike many other games this season, we were not made to pay for our poor passing in the absence of our skipper yet again. Despite, the Toffees weak performance they managed 81.6 percent passing accuracy to our poor 74.9 percent. The passing stats are a contradiction to our good performance yesterday, but one thing is for sure, we must improve on our passing if we are going to finish the season strongly. Without our usual deal of attacking aerial threat in the side, we were unable to make the most of our vast number of corners against Ronald Koeman’s men. We managed to win double the amount of corners the Toffees did, with 8 to the Merseyside clubs 4. However, the fact remains that we just weren’t clinical enough with our crossing and corner opportunities and this is displayed through the amount of corners we managed to win, without really troubling Maarten Stekelenburg in the Everton goal.
Clearances and blocks
One main positive to pull from our 0-0 draw to the Toffees yesterday was our defending, yesterday’s performance was widely regarded as our best defensive displays of the season and it is not hard to see why from the defensive statistics. We were only forced to make 1 defensive block whereas we forced our visitors to make 7. We were justified in making far less defensive blocks than Ronald Koeman’s men as the Everton attack didn’t really threaten us during the course of the 90 minutes. There wasn’t much to separate us and the Merseyside club in terms of clearances made. We managed to cut off the Toffees supply to prolific striker Romelu Lukaku by making 20 defensive clearances to the visitors 24 clearances. There is no doubt that after a season of defensive frustration, our defence is finally improving with the new 3 at the back formation being tried by Slaven Bilic.