The Liverpool Echo’s head of sport David Prentice has recently slammed Andre Gomes for his performance against Rotherham United.
During the third round of the FA Cup, the Toffees were able to see off the Championship outfit after an Abdoulaye Doucoure goal in extra-time sealed a 2-1 win (per BBC).
Cenk Tosun had opened the scoring for the hosts at Goodison Park, however, Matthew Olosunde bagged an equaliser to take the tie to extra-time.
One man who played the full 120 minutes for Carlo Ancelotti’s side was Gomes, who partnered Tom Davies in the deeper two midfielders of their 4-2-3-1 starting formation (per WhoScored).
In the latest episode of the Liverpool Echo’s Royal Blue: The Everton FC Podcast, Prentice analysed the clash with the Millers and ripped into Gomes for his performance.
He said: “It was a shocking performance, midfield-wise, from two players that we know can produce so much better. Andre Gomes especially, we know what quality he’s got.
“He had me shouting things at my television screen because he was just so poor from start to finish and it does make you fear about what direction he’s actually going in.
“We’ve said before, the Andre Gomes that performed prior to that appalling injury was so influential and was so good and we just haven’t really seen the same kind of player since he’s come back.
“Is that an aspect of the injury? Is he still recovering from it? We don’t really know. To me, it looked a lot more like just complacency at the weekend.”
TIF Thoughts on what David Prentice said about Andre Gomes…
As can be seen in what the journalist had to say, he has not been impressed with the midfielder in recent weeks and he has not looked like the same player he was since the fractured dislocation to his ankle.
Do you agree that Andre Gomes was not good enough against Rotherham?
Yes, he was a disaster
No, he wasn't that bad
However, looking at the midfielder’s statistics from the game against Rotherham, it appears that the journalist may be being overly harsh on the Portuguese middleman.
During the game, he picked up a 7.32/10 match rating, making the 27-year-old the joint-fourth-best performer to feature for Everton (per WhoScored).
Furthermore, he managed one key pass, took two shots, completed 75 passes and had a respectable passing accuracy of 84%. While those figures are not exactly stellar, they are by no means poor.
So, perhaps Gomes was not quite as “shocking” as Prentice suggested that he was against the Millers.