Neal Maupay's new look can't mask simple Everton failure to leave Dyche downbeat
New hair colour, new number – but the same lack of finesse in front of goal for Neal Maupay.
And that sadly for the frustrated home fans spread to his team-mates on an afternoon when Everton should have scored a shed load.
Goodison boss Sean Dyche said: "We created four or five golden chances in the first half and were very good on the break as well. I thought we were the better side overall, but sometimes you don’t get what you deserve.”
Bobby De Cordova-Reid supplied the ultimate sucker punch with a 73rd minute winner which indicates another long hard winter ahead unless they can unlock the door to goal. Fulham boss Marco Silva admitted: “It was not a good performance by ourselves. We gave away many chances and Everton should have punished us on the counter attack. Bernd Leno kept us in the game.”
How Maupay hadn’t helped himself to a hat-trick by half-time was a complete mystery. With just a single goal in 29 appearances since joining the Toffees from Brighton the summer has seen the misfiring striker opt for bleached hair and the number 13.
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But time after time the goal jinx which seems to have blighted his stay on Merseyside struck after the home side had begun with energy and passion leaving Fulham gasping for air.
After just 34 seconds Maupay found himself free inside the box only for a well struck effort to glide just past the far post.
When the speedy Alex Iwobi’s cross hit Abdoulaye Doucoure and landed in Maupay’s path just six yards out the home fans sensed the hoodoo was about to end. But to their horror Leno was able to deflect the low shot around the post. And in another one on one between striker and keeper it was Leno who once again came out on top.
The overrun Cottagers were fortunate to see a Michael Keane side footed finish ruled out for an illegal James Tarkowski challenge on Leno while Doucoure was denied from close range by the former Arsenal keeper.
Dyche insisted: “Tarky does nothing really. There was minimal contact. It was more the keeper landing on him. The minimum should be that you (the referee) go and look at the monitor.”
And that decision and the wasted opportunities came back to bite them when De Cordova-Reid who had replaced an ineffective Willian at the start of the second half pounced on a cross from another substitute Andreas Pereira.
He should have scored again from a Harry Wilson cross while new boy Raul Jimenez’s barren spell in front of goal – it’s now 24 Premier League games without any success – continued when he struck the post.
It didn’t matter as Everton continued to mess up in front of goal, Nathan Patterson, Iwobi and Tarkowski adding to the unwanted catalogue of misses.
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