The Regista - Crystal Palace vs Everton tactical review: Hodgson can do more with Eze; 'nuisance' Calvert-Lewin key for Dyche

Tribalfootball.com's tactics expert Connor Holden pulls apart Everton's FA Cup stalemate at Crystal Palace and details how both managers battled to make the most of their key players - Eberechi Eze and Dominic Calvert-Lewin.

In a game where the headlines will be dominated by a questionable sending off for Dominic Calvert-Lewin, I have picked out a few tactical aspects in this game that were both positive and negative for both sides.

CRYSTAL PALACE EZE USAGE

I want to start by saying how highly I rate Eberichi Eze as a footballer, and I am not saying this is a bad way to use his qualities. However in a game like this, when your other main creative outlet in Michael Olise is unavailable, I feel this game plan wasn't maximising your best player.

In this match, Everton were willing to press high against the midfield (Chris Richards and Jefferson Lerma), be physical with them and compete in duels high up the pitch to win the ball back quickly and sustain pressure.

Palace used Eze as a dual threat to both bypass the Everton press, and to kickstart their attacks from deep.

Once the Everton midfielders had stepped up to try and win the ball from Lerma and Richards, Eze would drop deep into the midfield three, to receive the ball with his back to goal and drag the deepest Everton midfielder (often Amadou Onana) out of zone 14.

This was then Palace's trigger to attack, Eze either turning and finding a direct option out wide, or laying it off to another midfielder to make that pass. This left the space for Palace to attack, but my main issue with this was you now have your best playmaker not in the position required to create chances.

The few times this looked to work well, was when Palace got the ball from this area