Everton have been notoriously profligate in front of goal this season.
It is a notion outlined just yesterday by both Gary Lineker and Ian Wright, and one recently reaffirmed by the manager, Sean Dyche.
He will know more than most how frustratingly obvious this issue is, and the hope is that he can conjure up a solution sometime soon.
However, given that nothing seems to ever change with the Toffees this season, it feels disappointingly unlikely.
What Sean Dyche said about Everton v Manchester United
Speaking to BBC’s Match of the Day after the match, the 52-year-old manager sought to make sense of yet another afternoon in which his side dominated but failed to make their chances pay.
It is becoming an all-too-regular occurrence nowadays, and with his side now just four points clear of the relegation zone, they cannot really afford to keep getting this unfortunate.
That being said, Dyche attests that they are not far from where they want to be, taking the time to detail how his side can turn things around in front of goal.
He said: ’There’s a devilment in scoring a goal. Sometimes you’ve got to get hurt to score a goal. At the moment I think there’s a little bit of that, waiting for the right moment, the perfect moment.
‘There’s chances, if they just had that little extra inch, that little extra yard, that little extra moment till we have that fight and that desire to score a goal. And that’s the bit that’s just waning.’
Everton have no patterns of play
For all the goalscoring opportunties they may create and the lofty expected goals tally they often tend to accumulate, it must be said that there are very few patterns of play exhibited in Everton’s style.
When Liverpool first appointed Jurgen Klopp, although rocky to start off with, it was quite clear what the end goal was. What they wanted to achieve with his style.
The same can be said with Pep Guardiola, and even more recently with Ange Postecolgou and Andoni Iraola. They took risks early on and stuck with their principles to later gain the rewards.
And whilst Dyche is not quite in the same privileged position as some of those names, it is worrying that it remains unclear whether this team can progress much further within the current system.
After all, it is supremely basic, and therefore could surely only be improved by bolstering the playing staff; a venture which might prove difficult given the club’s financial restrictions.
So where do we go from here?
It feels like this side just keeps falling into the same old traps, happy to shoot on sight rather than play the extra pass to ensure a goal.
The longer this goes on, where this philosophy continues to fail to create the outstanding chances that simply cannot be missed, the more scrutiny Dyche will receive. And after a while, it must become warranted.