There is no hiding from the fact Everton have been poor in front of goal over recent seasons, but just how far back does this lack of goal scoring stretch?
The Blues signed Romelu Lukaku on loan from Chelsea in 2013, which was made permanent in 2014 for a then club record fee of £28 million.
During his first season at Everton, he scored 16 goals in all competitions, 15 of those coming in the Premier League. This helped The Toffees finish the top flight in fifth, their highest finish of the last 10 years. The only time these goal figures have been matched since was in the 2020/21 season by Dominic Calvert-Lewin, however, Everton only managed an 11th placed finish that year.
During Lukaku’s four-year spell on Merseyside, they never finished lower than 11th place with him scoring 15, 10, 18 and 25 goals in the league respectively.
Since Lukaku’s departure in 2017 goals have had to come from multiple players as opposed to one main goalscoring outlet. These players include Wayne Rooney with 10, Oumar Niasse with eight and Cenk Tosun with five. Richarlison was also a key man in the goal scoring post-Lukaku. Everton seemed to manage well in the following two seasons after his departure, finishing eighth twice in a row, which Everton fans would be extremely pleased with today.
Despite two solid finishing positions, The Toffees struggled to find a replacement, swapping and changing unsuccessful strikers for the following few seasons. Dominic Calvert-Lewin looked like a worthy successor in the 2020/21 season where he bagged 16 goals in the league for Everton, however, since then he has failed to hit close to that mark again.
Over the past five seasons especially, Everton have really struggled in front of goal with their main target man, Calvert-Lewin lacking the goal scoring threat of Lukaku. Part of this can be put down to injury issues which spanned across multiple seasons. Because of this, Everton have generally had to look elsewhere in the line-up for their goals, with Calvert-Lewin’s role becoming more link up based.
