Everton Season Review: The Great Escape

End of Season Writer’s awards:
Player of the Season: Richarlison

Despite a few other contenders, I’m going to go with the popular pick here with Richarlison. The Brazilian hit 10 goals and 5 assists in the league, at least twice as many as the next highest goalscorers in the squad. He has scored some big, big goals that won them crucial points at the business end of the season.

Beyond that, he embodied the fighting spirit that the club showed in digging themselves out of trouble and even helped fire up the fans in tough times.

2) Flop of the Season: Allan

Feels really harsh to go with a talisman simply because he couldn’t keep himself fit long enough or the winger that came in on loan before the sacking of the manager that wanted him, leading to just 13 minutes played. So my pick here is Allan.

The destroyer in midfield has performed this role to a very high standard in his past 5 seasons, so much so that he often attracted interest from top European clubs each summer but his performances took a massive dip this season.

For lack of fitness or application, he failed to impact games at all in a ball-winning or ball-carrying capacity, especially relative to his previous standards. This drop-off was also a big part of Everton’s leaky defence all season.

3) Most Improved Player: Anthony Gordon

Easy pick with Anthony Gordon. The youngster came to the fore with some excellent, lively displays in the second half of the season and was arguably key in their eventual survival.

His creativity, pace and ball-carrying ability were big elements in anything good that Everton did at the back end of the season. All the more impressive considering this is a very young player having his breakthrough season amidst chaos, pressure and dysfunction around him.

4) Unsung Hero: Seamus Coleman

There weren’t too many positives for Everton this season but the contribution on and off the field from 32-year-old club captain Seamus Coleman was massively important in them securing survival. Coleman has had his own fitness worries off late but dug in to manage 30 appearances.

He played right-back and notably right centre-back when required. While he wasn’t their best performer on the field, he was a model captain and demanded passion, and fight from the team and led by example with 100% commitment on the pitch.

5) Signing of the season: Demarai Gray

While Mykolenko performed admirably at left wing-back in the crunch time of the season, Demarai Gray edges my vote for the Toffee’s signing of the season. Gray started the season in great touch and his pace, dribbling and direct style were Everton’s greatest threats before injury halted his momentum. He finished the season with 5 goals and 4 assists, a return he’d definitely want to improve upon next season while not losing any of the directness of his game.

Team Rating: 3/10

Ultimately, they have may have done a great job to retain survival in the Premier League but there should be no doubt that a club that’s spent money like they have and harbours ambition as they do, should never have been in this position to start with. It was a very disappointing campaign all around.

The decision to hire Rafa Benitez looked ill-advised considering the inevitable backlash from the fans. But having done so and then sacking him just 6 months into the job after having him sanction the sale of the club’s best defender to win an internal power struggle; looks like very poor leadership.

Their recruitment strategy has generally been poor, last summer aside, with the club often spending large sums on mediocre fringe players at big clubs rather than embracing data to make smart, quality signings that fit within a system.

Discipline was poor, players struggled to stay fit, and the defence made a whole host of errors while the burden of goalscoring rested heavily on their two talismanic attackers only. A poor season and one from which, having survived, you’d have to hope that they can only move in one direction.