da betway： I come from an Everton supporting household, and so I’m well-versed on the views that are preached on the terraces around Goodison Park, with my brother and dad being season ticket holders in the Park End for a number of years. While this may sound like blasphemy to most bluenoses ears, barring his goals, I’ve often failed to see the worth of having Tim Cahill in midfield, with his contribution in the six yard box what counts.
da pixbet： Trust me, I know how strange calling Tim Cahill a luxury player sounds. The connotations often assorted with a luxury player is a fancy-dan foreign sort, fleeting of foot but with a weak physique, and when the phrase is mentioned, names such as Carbone, Kinkladze and Diamanti often spring to mind. But if Cahill fails to perform his role properly, he can become a passenger in games as often as the aforementioned players were.
I can’t deny that he’s proved an absolute bargain after his £2.5m switch from Millwall seven years ago, I can’t deny that his goals have proved invaluable at times for Everton and I also can’t deny that his loyalty to the club seems genuine and that he’s undoubtedly a fan favourite, but with the goals drying up to an extent in the last 18 months or so, Cahill’s presence in the Everton starting eleven should come under some unusual closer inspection. All of his ten goals last season came via his head, so surely pushing him further forward and up front is the solution.
Everton have a lovely midfield, one that my brother argues is without peer in the top flight, and while I wouldn’t wholly subscribe to that view, with the likes of Arteta, Fellaini, Bilyatedinov, Rodwell and Pienaar among their ranks, the club has come a long way from the hatchet men days of the Walter Smith era and they’re more than capable of playing some silky stuff on the deck, despite evidence to the contrary in their opening day lacklustre defeat to a tough Blackburn side.
Well therein lies the problem with Cahill when he’s not contributing as he should do. Cahill’s presence is assured due to his aerial prowess and ability to make something happen in the final third of the pitch. But I’ve never attributed Cahill with an especially good range of passing and to get the best out of him you have to completely adapt your formation, perhaps it has to be said now with the amount of talent at Moyes disposal, to the detriment of the rest of the side.
Of course adapting a formation to get the most out of your best players is not out of the ordinary, every side across Europe tailors a team to a degree depending on the players that they have, but you’ll rarely, if ever, see Cahill line up in a four man midfield, and if your adapting a formation to suit him, you are entitled to expect a decent performance from him.
Playing Cahill just behind the front man also has defensive reasoning behind it, as it’s meant to ensure that Everton aren’t caught on the break too quickly, but with notoriously slow starters Everton only scoring two goals in their opening three fixtures, perhaps it’s about time that they abandon caution to the wind and play an unfamiliar front two. Indeed, rumours are circulating today that Moyes is considering starting Cahill and Fellaini up front as a battering ram sort of duo against Man Utd in their next upcoming league encounter, as he’s beginning to lose faith in his faltering front line.
Playing one man up front is a formation which has worked well over the years for both Moyes and Everton. Whether it be Andy Johnson or Louis Saha, the side have never struggled largely because of the support and goals supplemented by Cahill from just behind the front man. Well without them, there really isn’t much point of Cahill playing there. It is worth saying that Cahill did grab the side’s only goal in the 1-1 draw at home to Blackburn, and that yet again it was a predatory finish that Gary Linekar would have been proud of, which makes the case for putting him up top even stronger.
Cahill’s style of play, tenacious and effective as it’s been at its best over the years, is now at odds with the style of play the rest of the team can now play. Could it be a case of club outgrowing their player?
I’m used to being the black sheep as it were in my family with my footballing opinions, and most probably among everyone else that reads this site and the variety of blogs on here, but I’ve always never fully bought into the school of thought that Cahill is a top quality player.
We football fans are a fickle bunch, if someone scores a few goals it often papers over the cracks of the rest of a players performance, his deficiencies and his weaknesses, but with Cahill at least I’ve always found them glaring.
Gerrard Houillier said about Steven Gerrard when he was Liverpool manager, that the older the Liverpool skipper gets, due to his excellent finishing ability, that he’ll end up being pushed further and further forward to utilise his skills as probably the best one on one finishers in the Premiership, and this of course has turned out to be just the case. Well I see something very similar happening with Cahill. It’s unusual for a player to be pushed further forward as they get older as it’s often exactly the opposite as the legs start to go and experience at the back becomes priority, but I think Cahill would benefit similar treatment to Gerrard.
Far greater footballing minds than mine have always deemed him capable of playing in the heart of midfield to get the best out of his swashbuckling style of play, and to great success it has to be said, but as he gets older I just think that Cahill would serve Everton better now as an auxiliary centre forward as opposed to link man, a position which only serves to exploit his weaknesses.
Cahill will be 31 years of age by December, and with a formation suited to his talents, if he underperforms, then so does the whole side and you’ll only start to see the sort of woeful attacking display that Everton put on at Ewood Park more regularly, and more importantly, the woeful finishing that everyone witnessed at Villa Park.
Pushing Cahill further forward another 15-20 yards, for all intents and purposes, may not seem like such a big shift of formation, but in the fine fractions of the modern game it could make all the difference. Cahill’s main strength is his ability inside the six yard box, and his unnerving ability to be in the right place and at the right time, so why not utilise this more. His aerial ability is unparalleled and it’s in his canny movement where he really comes to life.
Playing two men up front would only serve to make Everton a more threatening proposition. Everton now face a critical juncture in their club’s history, with the makeup of the league well and truly shaken by the arrival of the money men at City, a refreshing degree of uncertainty has taken hold over the Premiership, and there has never been a better time to be ambitious than now.
Everton are a club that could do with a trophy to validate their undoubted progress under Moyes and perhaps a shift to a two-man pronged attack with Cahill as its spearhead could do just the trick, otherwise he may continue to be a peripheral figure in Everton’s play.
Written By James McManus