Paul Clement has opened up on the responsibility Frank Lampard has handed to him in terms of Everton’s set pieces, and explained the intricacies of improving the side in the field in the near future.
Paul Clement said: “I think it’s one of the things that could be improved. There were lots of things, and there continue to be lots of things. The manager has given me some responsibilities regarding set plays, both on the defending and the attacking side. It’s something that I had quite a bit of experience of working under Carlo [Ancelotti]. Since those years I think set plays have evolved a lot in the way they’re analysed, in the use of data. I think some teams even employ absolute specialist set play coaches with that as their only responsibility, I think mine is a little bit wider than that. But we’re working hard on them. We did get some immediate improvement, but that’s probably plateaued off or decreased slightly which I’m going to address with the players in the coming days and games. I think it can be a real strength of ours, recognising that we’ve got players who have good delivery. Unfortunately Andros is now injured but we’ve got Anthony [Gordon], Demarai, Donny [Van de Beek] – players who can all hit a good ball into dangerous areas. We’ve got some powerful lads in the box as well, obviously not having Yerry [Mina] has been a bit of a blow. But Ben’s [Godfrey] back now, we’ve seen Mason [Holgate] score, we’ve seen Michael Keane score. Every opportunity that we get from a set play is a chance for us to create a good goslscoring chance with those players. On the defensive side, I would say there was certainly some improvement early on. Particularly in the Newcastle game, playing one of the best set play teams in the country, we defended 17 set plays – a lot of them coming in injury time. Good deliveries in, big guys in the box, I thought we were immense in that game. That’s the attitude and the kind of level we’ve got to take forward. You hear the cliché in football of only focusing on your next game, but with set plays you can only focus on the one that’s there at that time – look no further forward than that. We’re working hard on our organisation defensively and we’re also trying to look at creative ways of coming up with opportunities on the other side.”
It’s not just Clement working on the set pieces, however. The coach praised the work of the analysis team at Finch Farm in helping him deliver new tactics to the Everton squad thanks to their meticulous data on upcoming opposition.
Paul Clement added: “We’ve got a fantastic analysis team here, we’ve got lots of data and statistics coming in. Nothing is more important for me than looking at the video of the opposition. That’s not just looking at the last game and the game before, it’s all the historical games as well. Teams change around what they do, because if you only do what you did in the last game, teams will know what you’re going to do. You’ve got to look at five or six games ago, you might even look at last season. On the offensive side we can’t show what we did in previous games, because the team we’re playing next are expecting it. That surprise element is really important, and the analysis team are very thorough in providing the coaches and me with lots of information – so I can then come up with ideas on the training ground.”
