I'll always look back to the incredible levels we played the pressing and counter pressing game in 19-20 in Fab's absence, in the run Jurgen and Liders hailed a few of our performances as near perfection when people talk about midfielders and tackles and intercept stats
I appreciate that the status quo of almost everyone here is of hard running midfielders chasing players down flying into tackles sliding in to intercepts and that it's exciting and entertaining for them and why they like it
However in terms of pressing and counter pressing played to the highest level, it actually demonstrates those players aren't doing it well enough and are frequently poorly positioned
Thiago hasn't made us over achieve at all, his passing has barely yielded an assist or released a player to assist and a lot of our issues have come through needlessly overplaying and the biproducts of it
We've under achieved hugely in terms of progression since our 19-20 peak through persisting with players our peak revealed as surplus to requirements and not good enough to play the system to its highest or even higher levels and poor recruitment including Thiago
Had we not had the 20-21 injuries so got to play Gini Hendo Thiago all players fit things could have been very different, but with Fab around despite his inability to play the system to its highest or higher levels Jurgen never would have done that for the necessary run of games
"If Everton were playing at the bottom of my garden, i'd close the curtains”
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