How Everton Turned 20 Shots and 2.12 xG Into Another Frustrating Draw
Everton's inability to finish in front of goal leads to a 0-0 draw that we should've won 3-0, at minimum
Twenty fucking shots.
Twenty.
You know how I know this? Not because I looked at the official stats or anything. No, I counted all these shots because what else was I going to do during this soul-crushing exercise in finishing futility?
Was I going to watch Jack Grealish create his fifth chance of the match, knowing – knowing – that we'd1 find a way to waste it?
Did I want to watch Beto sky another one into Row Z?
Or watch us win our tenth corner and accomplish precisely fuck-all with it?
This morning was filled with so much hope. So much potential.. There was genuine supporter excitement going into today, and it was justified. Everton hadn’t beaten Aston Villa in a Premier League match since Villa returned to the top flight in 2019.
Over the previous three or four seasons, this match would’ve been written off by the supporters before the match even began.
But after enduring a terrible summer transfer window due to the potential looming scythe of PSR, Unai Emery’s barely-improved squad started this season in shockingly poor form.
Everton were on the opposite end of things.
I was so excited for today’s match. I even laid out my Everton outfit last night, so as to not wake the wife this morning whilst trying to get dressed in the dark.
I went to bed excited. I woke up excited.
When the club announced the lineup for today, I couldn’t help but shake my head and marvel at our bench.
Our bench.
This is not a joke: last season, when the club announced the lineups on match days, I avoided looking at the bench altogether. I pretended it did not exist2, mostly because it really didn’t.
Today? I stared at that bench for a good, long time, imagining the possibilities and the options David Moyes had available to him.
We weren’t going to lose to Aston Villa. Not today, Satan. I predicted a 2-1 final, with Everton scoring twice in the first half and then, in traditional Everton fashion, holding onto their butts in the second half, trying to prevent the Villains from scoring three times.
We didn’t lose. But we didn’t win, either, and we really should have..
Here are my three takeaways from Saturday.
Three Takeaways: How to Waste 2.12 xG and Your Saturday Afternoon
Twenty Shots and a Striker Who Can’t Finish
Here's the thing that's driving me absolutely crazy: we played well.
Twenty shots.
2.12 xG.
Ten corners.
Complete control of the match.
Grealish was cooking – five chances created, giving Matty Cash nightmares that'll last until Christmas. James Garner, playing out of position at left back, absolutely frustrated Villa's right side while still managing to link up beautifully going forward.
The back line? Magnificent. Villa managed just 0.3 xG. That's not a typo. Zero Point Three. Tarkowski and Keane turned Watkins into a ghost. O'Brien's long throws were causing chaos.
But – and there's always a fucking but with Everton – we put TWO of those twenty shots on target. TWO. It's like building a Ferrari and forgetting to put in the engine.
All that beautiful buildup play, all that pressure, and Beto is shooting like it’s his first day learning how to kick the ball.
Beto has proven during his time with the club that he simply cannot be relied on to convert shots that even strikers in the fifth tier of English football convert on a regular basis. It’s maddening. For all his promise and his immense physical prowess, he’s unable to execute the simple stuff. This is nothing new, either; it’s been that way from the start.
Next week, it’s time to put Thierno Barry in the starting lineup and keep him there.
The Grealish Renaissance (And Why It's Not Enough Yet)
Playing against the club where he launched to stardom, Jack Grealish continued showing he is the player we thought we were getting.
He's finding pockets of space, linking with Garner and KDH, and by the 70th minute Villa were literally triple-teaming him because they had no other answer for him. That volley in the first half? The little dink to set up Beto? The man was channeling his best days, just in royal blue instead of claret.
The problem is we're asking him to be the entire creative department while Beto's first touch sends balls into orbit. It's criminal that this version of Grealish – confident, aggressive, taking players on – is reliant on a forward who can’t finish the dinners Grealish is serving him.
Still, if Grealish keeps this up and we can find someone, anyone, who remembers what the goal looks like, we are going to be a dangerous, dangerous team to contend with.
Moyes Ball 2.0: The Good, The Bad, The Familiar
David Moyes has us organized, pressing high, and creating chances. The shape is good, the effort is there, and for the first time in months, we actually look like we have a plan beyond "hope Pickford saves us." The crowd was electric, the team responded, and we dominated a Premier League match from start to finish.
But here's where the Everton PTSD kicks in: this felt exactly like vintage Moyes. Lots of possession, plenty of half-chances, crosses flying in from everywhere, and absolutely zero cutting edge when it matters. It's like watching a band perfectly play all the notes but somehow miss the melody.
The encouraging part? Villa came to frustrate us and we didn't let them. We kept pushing, kept creating, kept the crowd engaged. The concerning part? This is exactly the kind of match – against a team that can't score, at home, with everything in our favor – that teams who want to finish high on the table must win. And we didn’t.
Still, I'd rather watch us create twenty chances and waste them than watch us create nothing at all. That's progress, I guess. The bar has been so low, for so very long, and we’ve spent years just hoping we’d avoid running into it with our faces. Today, we’re not only clearing the bar; we’re raising it, substantially.
Today’s result was frustrating, but for entirely different reasons than the ones we’ve experienced for so long.
We should have won, and we didn’t.
But I’ll take that sort of frustration over the hopeless despair of the past four or five years any day of the week.
By we, I am of course referring to Beto, who put in a shift that might be shown to future players as an example of how to not properly finish.
When the bench features two goalkeepers because the manager has no other way to fill the quota of required players for match day squads, well, it might as well not exist anyway.