Everton's Struggles in Goalless Bolton Pre-Season Match
Everton’s pre-season moved up the road to Bolton, but the short journey into Lancashire underlined a familiar, longer-term problem. David Moyes’s side kept a clean sheet, gave minutes to key players and welcomed back Jarrad Branthwaite. They also failed, repeatedly and often painfully, to convince anyone that they possess enough goals in this squad.
On a warm afternoon that should have suited sharp forwards, Everton’s attack looked anything but.
Branthwaite back, but reinforcements thin
The headline before kick-off was Branthwaite. Wearing the No 4 shirt, the defender made a “massive” return to fitness and slotted straight into the starting XI, a rare piece of good news in a summer where Moyes has been forced to juggle absences and a thin squad while recruitment stalls.
New signing Hayden Hackney, the solitary arrival so far, remained uninvolved. Tyler Dibling also missed out with a minor knock, both earmarked instead for minutes against Stoke City on Tuesday. James Garner is now recovering from groin surgery, while Vitalii Mykolenko rejoined the group after time away for the birth of his second child.
The lack of fresh faces higher up the pitch, though, hung over this game like a cloud.
Slow start, flashes from wide, no finish
Bolton began on the front foot, pinning Everton back in their own half. O’Brien briefly broke the pattern with a ball in behind for Lewis Dobbin’s replacement, Lewis Barry, to chase, only for the home goalkeeper to rush out, mis-head and then collide with the forward. The referee saw it as a foul by Barry. That set the tone: marginal calls went Bolton’s way, Everton’s attacking moments fizzled out.
Merlin Röhl overlapped smartly and should have earned a corner when his cross clipped a defender on the way out, but the officials missed the touch. Bolton resumed their pressure and Rodriguez cut in from the corner of the box to test Mark Travers.
Everton’s best work before the interval came from the flanks. Aznou slipped a neat pass into Barry’s feet, only for the striker to hesitate and allow a defender to smother the chance. When Barry did get his delivery right, his cross was turned behind for a corner, yet the set-piece routine that followed was tame and easily cleared.
In midfield, Tim Iroegbunam anchored well, snapping into challenges and screening the back four, but the “homer” refereeing – as the travelling support might have put it – let a series of Bolton fouls slide, disrupting Everton’s rhythm.
The visitors almost struck when James Tarkowski picked out Dwight McNeil with a crisp pass. McNeil’s left foot did the rest, whipping in a superb cross that Barry met with a glancing header inches wide of the far post. Moments later, Röhl drove a brilliant low first-time ball across the six-yard box and Barry finished from close range, only to be denied by a marginal offside flag. It was the one moment where Everton looked like a Premier League attack operating at speed.
Bolton still found joy down Everton’s left, getting in behind Aznou before the full-back recovered well to disrupt the shot. At the other end, Aznou and Barry combined again but failed to produce a telling cross. Barry then worked a neat one-two with Armstrong, only to roll a weak effort straight back to the keeper when the chance cried out for power.
Everton did at least push higher in the closing stages of the half. The problem was obvious: plenty of approach play, almost no incision.
Barry’s baffling moment, Beto’s struggles
The second half began with a sequence that summed up the afternoon. Barry received the ball in an advanced central position, only one defender in front of him. The scenario screamed for a shot. Instead, without looking, he swept a pass out to his left – to nobody. The ball drifted straight into touch, the “ghost of Alan Ball” the only blue shirt in the vicinity in the imagination of those watching. It was astounding, and not in a good way.
At the other end, Bolton finally forced a serious save. A firm header drew an excellent stop from João Virginia’s replacement, King, who had come on for Travers at the break, with Michael Keane tightly marking the striker.
Barry’s afternoon did not improve. Dispossessed far too easily in midfield, he ceded possession in an area that invited pressure. Moyes had seen enough and turned to Beto, hoping the Portuguese forward would bring presence and purpose.
There were glimpses. McNeil worked space and fed Röhl, whose driven effort across the keeper was parried away. On the left, George and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall combined well, only for the cross to evade everyone in the middle. Bolton responded with a batch of substitutions around the hour, breaking up the flow.
Then came Beto’s moment – or what should have been. A well-judged ball over the top dropped perfectly for him, the kind of situation strikers replay in their heads. Instead of a clean strike, he misread the bounce, snatched at it and launched the ball high and wide. The description from the stands was brutal: “shockingly poor.” It was hard to argue.
Bolton continued to threaten intermittently. King had to push a shot behind for a corner, while Dewsbury-Hall was cynically pulled back by his shirt, earning a yellow card for the defender. McNeil tried to take responsibility with a long-range effort, but his shot sailed as harmlessly as the others.
George then attempted an ambitious cross-field pass towards McNeil that flew beyond him and straight out of play, another attack gone.
Late changes, same story
Both managers turned to their benches again. Graham won a free-kick wide on the left, but the delivery came to nothing. Dewsbury-Hall’s next cross drifted over everyone. Bolton’s further changes slowed the tempo and chopped the game into fragments.
Still, Everton carved out one more chance that should have changed the mood. George threaded a beautiful ball through for Beto, splitting the defence. The forward’s touch deserted him again; he stumbled, bumbled and lost the ball. For a player of his salary and status, it was a damning sequence.
Set pieces offered no escape. A George free-kick found Tarkowski, who nodded it back across goal, only for Keane to completely misdirect his header, nowhere near the target. Three more Everton substitutions followed with 10 minutes to play, including Mykolenko’s introduction, and the Ukrainian full-back had to stretch to cut out a slick Bolton move, conceding a corner that was eventually cleared.
From distance, Malik Olayiwola produced one of Everton’s better strikes of the day, a clean effort that tested the keeper but flew too close to him. Bolton responded with a direct ball through the middle that was lashed into the side netting.
Then it was over. No late surge, no breakthrough, just the referee’s whistle and a flat 0-0 that told its own tale.
A workout that raises louder questions
On paper, this was a useful exercise: minutes for Branthwaite, a return to the fold for Mykolenko, another look at Röhl, Iroegbunam and the younger faces. The structure, for the most part, held. The effort was there.
But the glaring issue up front cannot be dressed up as pre-season rust alone. Barry’s indecision, Beto’s squandered openings, McNeil’s wayward finishing – they all fed into a picture Everton fans know too well.
Moyes can point to fitness, to experimentation, to the absence of key creative players. The reality is simpler. Unless that recruitment team finds real attacking quality, and fast, afternoons like this will not be confined to July.
