I want to start by saying how highly I rate Eberichi Eze as a footballer, and I am not saying this is a bad way to use his qualities. However in a game like this, when your other main creative outlet in Michael Olise is unavailable, I feel this game plan wasn’t maximising your best player.
In this match, Everton were willing to press high against the midfield (Chris Richards and Jefferson Lerma), be physical with them and compete in duels high up the pitch to win the ball back quickly and sustain pressure.
Palace used Eze as a dual threat to both bypass the Everton press, and to kickstart their attacks from deep.
Once the Everton midfielders had stepped up to try and win the ball from Lerma and Richards, Eze would drop deep into the midfield three, to receive the ball with his back to goal and drag the deepest Everton midfielder (often Amadou Onana) out of zone 14.
This was then Palace’s trigger to attack, Eze either turning and finding a direct option out wide, or laying it off to another midfielder to make that pass. This left the space for Palace to attack, but my main issue with this was you now have your best playmaker not in the position required to create chances.
The few times this looked to work well, was when Palace got the ball from this area out to Matheus Franca. He was then able to go 1v1 with the Everton fullback, and create a chance.
Franca looked good in his 60 minutes, being direct and trying to make things happen, however he is still young and new to the side, and has not yet the understanding of the team that Olise and Eze do, in order to create chances.
When Olise is available, using Eze to drag players away from central zones, that Olise can then occupy to create from is a good way to use these two players in tandem. However without that creative output from Olise, you are looking to Eze for that, especially in a close game where one piece of magic can change the outcome.
As I said, on the few occasions it worked and they got the ball into Franca quick enough for him to isolate the defender 1v1, it did create chances, however it felt Eze wasn’t able to affect the game as much as he would’ve liked, until the sending off where he played higher up, and had a great chance late on due to being closer to goal.
