Match date: 16 March 2013

Everton had a terrible showing last week against Wigan in the FA Cup, but looked to bounce back at Goodison, a venue that not many of the big sides have come and gotten points from.

Manchester City simply looked to stay within 12 points of Manchester United. Roberto Mancini opted to start with three at the back, with two wing backs, a decision that seemed questionable because of their problems with this system in the past, being away from home, and their need to get 3 points. So here’s what it looked like with City’s three:

Trouble on the Right

It’s a bit of an odd one for City to play three at the back as they haven’t had a great deal of success with the system and some of the players just don’t seem to play well in it and it showed today. One of the biggest problems was the inability for the back three of Zabaleta, Toure, and Nastasic to comfortably stretch across the back line as the wing backs pushed on. It wasn’t so much a problem for Zabaleta, as he plays right back most of the time for the reigning champions, but Nastasic is a centre back rather than a left back and just didn’t seem comfortable when he had to slide to the left.

The problem this caused was that when Kolarov made his runs forward, Nastasic would, at times, stay far too narrow and it would allow a good amount of room on the right side of Everton’s attack. Kevin Mirallas and Seamus Coleman did a brilliant job at exploiting that space as well. Far too many times, Mirallas and Coleman would out number Kolarov and at times Mirallas would drift in, allowing Coleman to become isolated with Kolarov, a situation that led to Everton’s first goal. Coleman was able to dribble at Kolarov and find Osman a bit outside of the box, who then finished with a bit of skill and luck.

Switching the System

You could see Roberto Mancini and David Platt having rather heated discussions on the sideline that certainly seemed to have something to do with Mancini’s decision to use 3 at the back.

Nearing the end of the first half and for the second, City switched to something of a 4-4-2/4-4-1-1 in an effort to stop the amount of influence that Everton’s right side were having on the game.

Silva isn’t really a someone who was going track Coleman’s forward runs, but having Silva there, him being a more natural left sided player that Tevez, forced Coleman to hold back a bit as he couldn’t give Silva space behind him, especially since Tevez moved centrally to partner Dzeko, occupying both centre backs.

It was a combination of the system change and the red card to Steven Pienaar that allowed City to really start asking questions of the Everton back four and Mucha, who stood up to the challenge covering for Tim Howard.

Conclusion

As City pushed forward to try to grab an equalizer, Everton were able to break and Nikica Jelavic was able to one past Joe Hart to seal a 2-0 win for Everton.

It may have been a different outcome had City started with their usual system, but with their 3 man system, they sat back a little deeper and the holes that they left at the back were exploited well by Everton. When they switched to a 4-4-2/4-4-1-1, they certainly created more chances and then really pushed on once Everton were down to ten men.