5 Telling Stats from Everton’s Familiar 2-1 Defeat to Burnley

This has to go down as the least surprising “surprise” defeat of the season.

Everton at home to one of the league’s perennial strugglers who like to keep things tight, did anyone who’s watched us this season really think we’d cruised to a comfortable victory?

Anyway, let’s see what the stats told us about this performance.

There’s No Place Like Home

The Blues have lost 7 of their last 11 home league games

Obviously “home” advantage isn’t the same this season. But it’s the same for every team in the league.

But Everton are now 15^th in the league for home form, having picked up just 17 points from 14 home games – with seven of those points coming in our opening three games.

Second Half Comebacks

Everton haven’t won a game they were losing at half-time since September 2015

I’ve mentioned this stat quite a lot lately…

Essentially, if Everton are losing at half-time – they’re not gonna win the game and they’re very unlikely to grab a point.

It’s just not in our mentality to deal with adversity at the moment.

Possession Problems

Everton have lost 6 of the 11 games they’ve had more of the ball

Indeed, the second half was another display of an inefficient Everton.

Burnley sat deeper in the second half (while still threatening), knowing full well that the Blues simply don’t know how to break teams down.

Everton “enjoyed” 65.5% possession against Burnley, but never really broke down the Burnley defence.

Differences

Burnley won the ball in Everton’s half 20 times in the first half

All this said, this wasn’t a complete replica of the Newcastle and Fulham “performances” though. Indeed, this was a very open and end-to-end first half – exactly the type of game Everton should be looking for against opponents like this.

Unfortunately, Everton were loose in possession in their defensive half and Burnley were all too happy to capitalise on this, winning the ball 20 times in Everton’s own half before the break. In comparison, Everton won the ball in Burnley’s half 11 times over the course of the entire match.

Classic DCL

Another header inside the six-yard box

When Everton put good crosses into the six-yard box, you can feel confident that DCL will be there to put it away.

Indeed, the striker now tops the table for most headed goals in the Premier League this season with 5. All of his 14 Premier League goals have also come within 10 yards of goal, as you can see below: