IN the last few seasons Everton have been synonymous with spending a lot of money but not getting much value from it. They’ve also lurched from manager to manager, all of them with different styles and approaches. From Ronald Koeman to Sam Allardyce to Marco Silva to Carlo Ancelotti to Rafael Benitez to Frank Lampard. Little wonder Everton’s play has stagnated while their players have frequently looked confused and/or lost.

But nine matchweeks (and eight games) into 2022-23 and there’s a new feeling permeating the ancient corridors of Goodison Park. That feeling’s name? Optimism. And the man responsible? Frank James Lampard OBE. Lampard has constructed a new, lean and most importantly cheaper team, one which has currently conceded fewer goals than any other side in the division. On Sunday night Manchester United – a team who conceded only one goal fewer last weekend than Everton have all season – come to Goodison Park for one of English football’s most historic fixtures. It’s time for Lampard’s Everton to demonstrate to the nation that they have changed. Or have they?

No matter what the naysayers and nu-luddites may claim, football is a sport built on numbers. Different flavours of data are available, from basic macro level information like, say, goals conceded, to underlying metrics like goals prevented and expected goals. On the face of it, Lampard has pulled off a masterstroke, bringing in Conor Coady on loan from Wolves, James Tarkowski from relegated Burnley on a free and a bargain fee of £2m to bring back Idrissa Gueye from PSG. Gueye was outstanding in his first spell at the club (hence the move to Paris) and has slotted back into the Everton XI and immediately improved it. If we look at the club from the start of Gueye’s first spell in 2016 through to now, they have a win percentage of 41% with him and only 34% without. These are not huge differences but over the course of a season they take a club like Everton from the fringes of the relegation battle to a comfortable mid-table position.

So the Coady/Tarkowski central defence has worked so far, as has the Gueye/Amadou Onana midfield. Onana, of course, is another new signing but for the slightly-less-bargain fee of £33m. They have also dovetailed with Alex Iwobi, the former Arsenal man who for a long time at Goodison Park was seen as emblematic of the club overspending on players. Now, though, Iwobi is thriving as a progressive number eight, and has three assists in his last four Premier League appearances, only one fewer than he managed in his first three seasons at Everton. And then there’s Jordan Pickford, a goalkeeper who has duplicated his England form for his club side and is one of the main reasons Everton actually avoided the drop last season. Pickford has already prevented 2.4 additional goals this season based on xGOT, while he currently has his best ever saves rate in a Premier League (81.6%).

But you don’t need to be a football genius to realise that if your goalkeeper is the most in-form shotstopper in the entire league, then your side may not be as secure as the goals conceded numbers suggest. And a glance at the club’s rolling xG average since the start of last season reveals an uncomfortable truth; only in the first few weeks of the ultimately doomed Rafa Benitez experiment have the club enjoyed an attack and a defence both performing well. That ended after about eight games last season and ever since then Everton have been conceding much more xG than they have been creating. Lampard has narrowed this gap at points, most importantly at the very end of 2021-22 to avoid relegation, but the same overall tendency has been apparent this season too and we know that long term a team’s results will not outpace a negative expected goals trend. Not unless Jordan Pickford becomes a legitimate superhuman, which, to be fair, can’t be ruled out.

Nevertheless, if Everton are not yet as good as they feel or look then that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Because football can’t be reduced to just a set of numbers and metrics, not yet at least. These are human beings we’re dealing with and Lampard has undeniably changed the culture and the confidence at the club. Indeed, some of Everton’s good results this season probably come down to the new-found togetherness and framework the current management team have implemented. They have brought in good characters (Wolves certainly don’t look the same team shorn of Coady) and if the likes of Pickford and Iwobi are saving and assisting their way to great results then there’s absolutely no reason for Everton fans not to be delighted with how their team is doing.

Ultimately successful football is about a manager installing a system that gets the best out of the players they have at their disposal. The one thing a manager needs in order to do this is time, and that’s something that Frank Lampard has a lot more of now, because of how Everton – level on points with Liverpool – have started the season. A club cannot have a bright future if they keep overreacting to the present and chasing short-term fixes. With a new ground on the way and renewed belief in the stands, Everton can finally start planning for the longer-term, no matter how their results fluctuate over the next few months.

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