English Premier League: Everton and Koeman fight till the end in the EPL!

On return from a bad run of games for Everton, Ronald Koeman makes game-saving changes that help save all three points at Goodison Park.

After week 5 of the EPL, Everton’s manager Ronald Koeman accepted the fate of the blues. He accepted they just were not ready and needed more time before the team gets to their best.

No match for Jose Mourinho’s Man United team, Everton sunk to a 4-0 defeat at Old Trafford. After never losing to Mourinho, Koeman got hammered and found themselves in the way of a romping United team.

This led to week 6 being an extremely important week for the manager and had it all to play for in front of the home crowd. The team was under immense pressure before kick off and was after a long-awaited victory to set the record straight.

After the 49th minute of the game, things were not going to plan and the Blues found themselves down by one goal.

A battered Cherries team managed to put a goal past the home side and kept the game in their favour for majority of the 90 minutes.

Match Stats:

The all-important substitution of Oumar Niasse:

The first 75 minutes or so was just not falling in favour of Everton. After the match ended, the possession shared between the two sides was pretty even and hard fought.

Everton ended the game with 51% of the possession verses Bournemouth’s 49%. This was a clear indication of how intense and tough Everton’s fight was against the Cherries.

But it all worked out for the Goodison guys heading towards the tail end of the fixture. Koeman made an instrumental substitution in the 75th minute, which changed the course of the game. A change that in reality was good enough to only draw Everton level.

A few minutes on the pitch and the sub, Niasse made it level and was flying with confidence during his celebration. Add another few minutes on to the clock, the replacement of Wayne Rooney became the super-sub.

Niasse scored the winning goal in the 82nd minute of the game and doubled his tally in less than ten minutes.

A Merseyside hero on the day, and a sigh of relief for a manager whose been under tons of pressure due to a bad run of games. No better way for a team in a bad patch to get things back on track. Well, unless you hammered your opponents four or five goals to zero.

But when wining in the fashion Everton has, your character and determination gets tested and improves if you manage to do what they’ve done.  The feeling should be as good as gold going around Goodison Park.

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Everton and Koeman can only build on such a performance, they must take this result and use it in their European fixture tomorrow night and their next domestic tie where they face Burnley at home the weekend.