Everton Fan View: Possession? Forget it - now it's about winning

There was a beautiful contrast between this season and last, and also the contrast in footballing philosophies on display at Goodison Park on Sunday. A manager who is seemingly more interested with trying to play a certain way, rather than to actually win matches? A manager who stubbornly won’t change his style against different opposition? A manager who will point to dominance in possession like it actually means anything? Yeah, we had one of those. We don’t anymore.

We had 29% possession, and it made me laugh. When Guardiola had his initial spell of dominance with Barcelona, possession became this statistic that all teams must have if they want to win. As is quite blaringly obvious and often stated, there is only one statistic that matters. Everton had four in that column, Man City had a nice round zero.

So often under Roberto Martinez games were a tale of frustration after dominating, and not being able to finish off chances. Man City’s dominance in possession didn’t even translate to dominance in good chances, Man City had the most shots, but Everton never really felt under pressure. When Man City had the ball, we defended extremely well.

In the first half, we often showed a lack of composure, but we have the quality of players to switch it on at any time. That was shown when Tom Davies got the ball, perfectly weighted a pass to Mirallas, Mirallas with great vision then executed a pull back to Lukaku, and Lukaku completed the move with a clinical finish.

Clinical was the word of the day as Mirallas scored the second just after the break with a perfect finish. Tom Davies was the man of the match, and his display was a thing of beauty. His skill for the third goal was exceptional, and his chip over Bravo was sublime. It felt like a wonderful way to end the match, but that wasn’t the end. The finishing touches couldn’t have been more sweeter as a John Stones mistake allowed our new signing, 19 year old Ademola Lookman, to score the fourth and final goal.

Last season Everton had their worst home record of all-time as we managed just 23 points from our 19 games, this season we’re already on 22 points after 11 matches. The performance was everything last year wasn’t. There was passion on the pitch and there was passion in the stands, both were missing last season.

It has been an up and down season for Everton this campaign, but things are getting better in terms of performance and attitude. The good feeling around the club is hopefully translating it way onto the players. The bad performances are getting rarer and the wins are getting more frequent. So much about what Everton are doing at the moment is building for the future and that’s what we have to do for the rest of the season.

7^th place at least should be a given, we’re far superior to any of the teams below us. That might be good enough for Europe depending on the cups, but more wins will keep pressure on the top six and allow us to take advantage if any of them go through a rough patch.

This time last year things were getting really poisonous, it seems to have taken a long time for Everton to shake that off. We keep stuttering and tripping up, but things are moving in the right direction on the pitch. Football isn’t about possession, it’s about winning. Koeman knows that, he has a ruthless winner’s mentality. Maybe the reason for a patchy form has been the clubs adaptation to that. If they are starting to adapt, then they’ll be a lot more winning to come, regardless of our possession percentage.