Danny Higginbotham: Everton boss Ronald Koeman has inherited a great squad, but he has plenty of work to do
The Analyst takes a look at the 2016-17 Toffees and what former Southampton boss needs to do to get them on track
RONALD KOEMAN has inherited a great squad at Everton but today will be a first chance to see if he has recognised what went wrong under Roberto Martinez.
In many ways Tottenham are the ideal test for them, because they operate the high press that undid Everton at Goodison far too often last season.
Teams would put the Toffees under pressure as soon as they got the ball, with lots of bodies pushing up the pitch, trying to force them to hurry.
Spurs are particularly adept at it. Harry Kane doesn’t give you any time and they also have Christian Eriksen, Dele Alli and Erik Lamela hunting the ball down early, with high full-backs snapping in too.
They feel confident doing that because Eric Dier sits with the two centre-halves, making a back three.
The centre-backs are comfortable going to wide positions to defend which means the rest of the team can press very high.
But last season, when teams played like that against them, Everton couldn’t cope.
The statistics were damning. Only two teams scored more home goals than them but only two conceded more at home — Bournemouth and Aston Villa.
They only had three clean sheets at Goodison and those were against the three clubs who went down.
One reason was the mistakes they made at the back. Everton were the fourth worst for errors leading to goals and the third worst for them leading to shots.
Away from home they were set up to play on the counter but at Goodison, because Martinez was so adamant about playing out from the back, teams could press high against them.
No matter what you did they would try to play the ball out and never play long.
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When I was at Stoke, the longer ball was something that always worked very well for us against Arsenal in particular.
Tony Pulis told us to turn the opposition and get them running back towards their own goal.
The Britannia pitch was small and compact and more often than not you would force the opposition into a mistake.
Arsenal wanted to be on the front foot and really struggled against our set-pieces, especially the long throw.
We knew their full-backs would play high so we would always put it into the space down the sides that they vacated.
Physically our strikers were a match for Arsenal’s centre-backs so that would lead to a throw in a dangerous area, which was really strong for us.
Last season teams could go to Goodison, let the full-backs push on and leave the ball with the centre-backs, who had to bring it out.
Their options were so limited because they’d been told not to go long, there would be misplaced passes leading to chances, or the ball would go out of play. It never changed. Martinez was stubborn.
If you look at their back four from last season, Seamus Coleman and Leighton Baines are outstanding full-backs, John Stones has just gone for nearly £50million, Phil Jagielka is an experienced international and so is Ramiro Funes Mori.
They’ve also replaced Stones with Ashley Williams, who is a top Premier League defender.
They’re all very good players, you wouldn’t look at them and think 'they’re shaky' but they were being asked to do things that weren’t their first instincts.
Away from home it worked fine because if teams pushed high they would play up to Lukaku to exploit the space in behind, but at home they kept on playing out.
They’ve still got a great squad, top-eight quality without a doubt, but if they didn’t score in the first 24 minutes at home, they didn’t win all season. Koeman has to show the difference.
His Southampton side scored the same number of goals as Everton but only four teams conceded fewer.
They mixed it up. If they needed to, they’d play it up to Graziano Pelle, who had Sadio Mane around him, or go a bit longer and bypass the midfield press.
Everton have so much pace but they have to use it properly and they didn’t do that last season.