The Europa League dream continues for Evertonians, after an incredible evening in Europe, which saw all of the British teams leave the Europa League apart from Everton. It looked like the tie was over, but an early scare from Young Boys opened the scoring. Everton would soon control the game completely and score three goals from it. Although the second half wasn’t as exciting as the first, Everton was still in control and a few players shone in the evening’s fixture. One of them was Luke Garbutt, dominating the left side and was boss all evening. Here we look at Garbutt’s performance in more detail.
First-Half performance
An incredible first-half performance from Everton and Luke Garbutt, coming back from one goal to be winning 3-1. Luke was incredible down the left side, putting a lot of pressure on the Young Boys’ right-back, having 52.78% of his touches in the opposition half. Garbutt was the key creator for Everton, replacing Leighton Baines in the position for the game. The youngster created 3 chances in the first-half, one assisting the second goal which was fired in by Romelu Lukaku. Garbutt attempted 5 crosses in the first-half, just one failing to find an Everton player. He also completed two take-ons and he even won 2/3 of his aerial duels. Luke attempted a shot is well, curling just wide.
Second-Half performance
Luke continued his pressing, having 52.63% of his touches in the opposition half in the last 45 minutes. He also continued to create chances, creating two more for the Everton side, including creating a chance for Arouna Kone, which hit the post on the 76th minute. He also attempted two more crosses (one being successful). Garbutt ended the night having had one shot, 79% passing accuracy, creating five chances (most in the Everton side), attempted 7 crosses (most in the Everton team), completed two take-ons, winning 40% of his aerial duels (2/5), and having made 4 clearances
Constant pressure
Here is Luke Garbutt’s heat map from Thursday nights match. Everton started with three defensive midfielders (Barry, Gibson and McCarthy) with enabled Garbutt to put a lot of pressure on the opposition right-back and overlap with Steven Naismith without worrying to much about getting back.
This gave loads of options in the final third and a lot of space for Luke Garbutt to use his crossing abilities, which he well demonstrated in Lukaku’s second goal. Garbutt sprinted down the left side before delivering a terrific ball into the penalty area for the Belgian striker to finish.
His attacking pressure and runs really helped Everton breakthrough, which looked like a well-organized defence but would soon go into meltdown.
Creating Chances
Prior to the match against Young Boys Bern, Everton had only created 57 chances in the Europa League – no team, apart from Dnipro, had created fewer chances that came out from the group stage. After the match, Everton have made 73 chances in Europe (holders Sevilla have created 76).
Everton had created 16 chances in one game, only Inter (17) Broussia M’gladbach (20) and Sporting Lisbon (21) had created more on that evening and most of the chances created for Everton came from Luke Garbutt.
Here is all the chances created from Luke Garbutt on Thursday evening, the yellow is a chance created and the blue is for an assist. Having a player create so many chances is crucial to Everton, as we haven’t had a player we have provided on to create chances for our strikers. Having Garbutt boom down the left side was fantastic to watch.
Conclusion
On Thursday, we saw the next rising talent in English football. He was brilliant the whole match, normally doing what Leighton would’ve been doing on the left. He created a lot of chances, which is exactly what we need if we were to move forward in our Premier League campaign and our Europa League dream. Terrific performance.
(Stats via Squawka.com)
Up the Toffees.
Joel Parker
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