Marco Silva has revealed that exposing Declan Rice was the key to Everton’s success over West Ham at the weekend.
The Toffees boss had Bernard, Alex Iwobi and Walcott – working around him which helped create space around the much acclaimed Hammer.
But he reckons it was Theo Walcott’s performance which ensured the plan worked out saying: “Theo is a really important player for me and for us. “He showed me during the week he was ready to play and I gave him a chance because he deserved it.”
“We had a plan to find space either side of Declan Rice and Theo was key. It was a tough moment for him when he got that injury against City in the first minute. His was an individual performance of the highest level along with others,” he added.
ClaretandHugh says: That the key to victory for Everton lies around muting Declan Rice shows just how far the young Hammer has travelled over the last couple of years. That he should become a key figure in defeating us speaks volumes. Pace isn’t among his biggest virtues and nobody would dispute the role that Walcott played in and around the young man. Sadly Declan wasn’t helped by lack lustre performances all over the pitch and it may be slightly over the top for the Goodison boss to claim total credit when it was clear that the Hammers definitely contributed to their own downfall. However, the revelation of his plan should act very much as a warning to Manuel Pellegrini who will need to counter the position Dec found himself in on Saturday with another tactical set up when Sheffield United and Newcastle come visiting over the next couple of weeks.
Which should have left one other player free, but sadly behind Iwobi and Walcott, there was Gomez and Davies nullifying Noble, Fornals, Anderson and Lanzini, as the latter trio can’t graft, or at least weren’t prepared to.
Our manager should’ve realised it wasn’t working in the engine of the pitch and changed it with Snodgrass for fornals or lanzini, helping noble and rice. Instead we continued to be overrun as he made the wrong sub entirely as Yarmolenko doesn’t address the problem.
Sometimes you take a step back (defensive changes) to go 2 steps forwards (helping us nullifying Iwobi and Walcott, nicking the ball away more often and thus leading to attack better).
Pelligrini tactics aren’t getting any better . A very bad effort in attack against Palace followed by not turning up against a so called struggling Everton . The West Ham United charity bus pulled up outside Goodison loaded with free gifts . One up front tactic has to change . We don’t in reality have the talent we are always shouting about and it’s a problem for Pelligrini to sort out . We should have been third after the palace game , but instead of that we went and got all silly again thinking we are better than we actually are and now find ourselves middle of the table .
“ I will not change the way we play “ ; Pelligrini . ,,,,,, why the F not , is the question !
Time to start thinking of not losing instead of throwing away points just to satisfy his ego .
I think basically we always be an average at best team ..we can talk all we want but nothing ever changes … The only thing that can change it is if a very rich person ploughs a lot of money in to the club ..and hopefully buys the David’s out…m.p is past it and his replacement players have been a joke .we are just going round and round in circles ..I think the lack of comments on the story’s suggest the fans just can’t be bothered anymore.. I know I can’t …consistency is the key and we will never be it….sad times after the over e excitement of this season…we will win a couple games in a min and then it wil? All.start AGAIN