Former Everton winger Pat Nevin believes Iliman Ndiaye could be the key man for David Moyes as he looks to plot Premier League survival. The 61-year-old’s second spell as Blues boss begins tonight against Aston Villa at Goodison Park and with the hosts in desperate need of a spark of inspiration to improve their prospects of avoiding the drop, Nevin reckons the Senegalese ace could be the player to start moving Everton up the table.
Speaking courtesy of talkSPORT BET, Nevin told the ECHO: “I love Iliman Ndiaye – as I would as a player. The few times that I’ve been up to Goodison recently, I’ve thought ‘just get the ball to him in the final third’.
“It won’t always work, it won’t always happen, but it doesn’t matter. It only has to happen two or three times in the game and you could get a goal either scored or created by him.
“Everton wide players have to be hardworking and that’s always been the case, so the problem is you find yourself chasing back, tackling and doing all the hard work. So, the energy is sometimes sapped by the end of games.
“Also, they’ve not been getting enough of the ball to him in the final third when he’s on blob as you call it, feeling fit and strong and healthy to give him individual one-on-ones. Somehow that situation needs to be manipulated because if you get him one-on-one against most full-backs, he’ll beat them and win to get a cross in and create something.
“Everton need to work on a way that he gets that more often than he’s been getting. People have been saying ‘oh, Ndiaye has had a quiet game today,’ and I’m looking at it and thinking: ‘Yeah, he got the ball about three times in 90 minutes in good positions.’
“That’s not his fault. That’s the fault of the team not being able to get him into the right situations.
“Obviously the keeper (Jordan Pickford) has been unbelievable and the defence looks great, but Ndiaye could be the most important player. In the end, Everton are going to have to score goals and he could be the most important player for them between now and the end of the season, so they need to get the ball to him more in good situations, and more often.”
Nevin reckons that as Everton start the second half of their Premier League season, Moyes will be able to make the tweaks to the side necessary to start getting more out of the squad who have picked up just 17 points from their opening 19 games. He said: “David has always been adaptable. Like Sean Dyche though, he’s not always been in a position to spend a lot of money in comparison to everyone around him.
“At West Ham, some of the fans didn’t take to David but have subsequently thought ‘oh my God’. Sometimes, you don’t realise what you’ve lost until you’ve got something new that doesn’t work.
“What David did down there for periods of time, they’ll never forget winning a European trophy under him. He never quite got them to the level that they wanted to get to, because they want to be top six, but doesn’t everybody?
“Not everyone loved the style but I think most of them accepted in the end that he was a good manager. Now though, not for the first time, West Ham fans are asking themselves: ‘Have we got that right?’
“Without being Sean Dyche, David knows how to do the ‘Sean Dyche stuff’ too. That brilliant defence that Everton have had for a while, he’s not going to tinker with that or make a mess of it, he’s not daft.
“He’ll leave that mostly in place I’d imagine but what David has to do somehow is to get a little bit more creativity and some more goals and that’s tough. That usually costs money and the one thing that Everton don’t seem to have, is an ability to spend.”
Nevin added: “I think that generally David does not get the credit he deserves as a tactician. I’ve been a chief executive myself in the game and I’ve had to bring in managers and I didn’t think, ‘why are we not top three?’ when we were the 10th biggest spenders in the division, I look at what a manager can do with what they’ve got available to them.
“That’s why if you take away the points deductions, Dyche had an unbelievable season. It wasn’t beautiful to watch but it was a phenomenal achievement.
“David is a bit like that as well. There are many times when the rug has been pulled through underneath his feet, yet he’s still got back up and fought it.
“He’s a manager who is tactically astute in many different ways. Football changes all the time and we’re right in the middle of a sea change at the moment but I suspect that David will be right on point with that one.”