After four straight Premier League wins, Sean Dyche takes the Toffees to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Get all you need to know with our Tottenham vs Everton prediction and preview.
Tottenham vs Everton Stats: The Quick Hits
- Everton have won four straight league matches, but Tottenham are made the favourites, with Opta’s supercomputer handing them a 56.2% chance of victory.
- Spurs have been beaten in just one of their last 21 Premier League matches against Everton (W10 D10), losing 1-0 in September 2020.
- The Toffees are set to be without their top scorer Abdoulaye Doucouré for this game, with the Mali international out through injury.
Match Preview
After five games without a win – and four defeats in that run – Tottenham have hit back in the last two matches, with Ange Postecoglou recovering a few players from injury and suspension.
Spurs followed up their 4-1 home thrashing of Newcastle United by dispatching Nottingham Forest 2-0, despite having Yves Bissouma sent off.
Tottenham have had four red cards in their 17 Premier League games this season, as many as they had in their previous two campaigns combined. They last had more sent off in 2008-09 (five).
Bissouma’s poor discipline has left Postecoglou without a key cog in his midfield for this match, while Destiny Udogie will be suspended too, having picked up his fifth booking of the campaign.
The Australian will be hoping to have Giovani Lo Celso back in the fold after the Argentina international missed the Forest match, while Brennan Johnson went off with a head injury but is expected to feature.
With James Maddison out, Dejan Kulusevski has picked up the creative mantle for Spurs in recent weeks. He scored Spurs’ second against Forest and teed up Richarlison’s opener. Since his debut in the competition in February 2022, only teammate Son Heung-min (six) has both scored and assisted in more different Premier League games than Kulusevski (five).
While Spurs have got back on track in their hunt for UEFA Champions League qualification, Saturday’s home meeting with Everton could have represented a clash with a European hopeful – given Everton would be in ninth going into Matchday 18, level on points with Brighton, should they not have been handed that 10-point deduction last month for a breach of the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability rules.
As it is, Everton head into the weekend in 16th in the league table on 16 points, seven clear of the relegation zone, but their form is not to be scoffed at; they have won their last four league games, keeping a clean sheet in each of them. Indeed, since losing to Liverpool on 21 October, the Toffees have lost just one league match, going down 3-0 to Manchester United in late November.
Everton lost on penalties to Fulham in the EFL Cup on Tuesday, which could dent morale – especially, after Beto’s late equaliser had forced spot-kicks, as Amadou Onana had a chance to seal progression to a semi-final, yet elected instead to try and fool Bernd Leno, who made a comfortable save.
Going back to their last top-flight outing, Everton saw off Sean Dyche’s former club Burnley with ease at Turf Moor, winning 2-0 thanks to goals from Onana and Michael Keane (who subsequently scored an own goal against Fulham).
However, that win came at a cost, with Dyche losing key player – and his leading scorer – Abdoulaye Doucouré to a hamstring injury, which is likely to see the midfielder miss this match too, though Everton will be hoping for more positive news on full-backs Vitalii Mykolenko, Ashley Young and Seamus Coleman. There’ll be no Spurs reunion for Dele Alli, who is still sidelined through injury.
Along with Doucouré, Dwight McNeil has been in fine form of late, having been involved in four goals in his last four league appearances (two goals, two assists). Indeed, only Doucouré (13) has been involved in more league goals for Everton than McNeil (12) since Dyche took charge.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin is fit, but certainly not firing on all fronts when it comes to scoring – he last found the net at the end of October against West Ham. Beto, meanwhile, has scored two in his last four games, and the former Udinese striker might well get the nod here.
All eight of Everton’s Premier League wins this season have been while having less than 50% possession – it is more victories than any other have managed this term while having less than half of the possession in a match – and Dyche will at least be confident that the onus will not be on his team to go and control the ball this time around.
Everton can at least breathe a sigh of relief, given Harry Kane is no longer at Spurs to haunt them. The England captain has scored 15 Premier League goals in 16 appearances against the Toffees; only against Leicester City (18 in 16 games) has he scored more times vs one team in the competition.
The visitors do, though, have to keep an eye on a player they know all too well – Richarlison. The Brazil forward, who was a fan favourite at Goodison Park between 2018 and 2022, has scored three goals in his last two Premier League games, more than he had in his first 39 appearances for Tottenham (two). He could become the 13th different player to score against Everton in the Premier League having previously played for the Toffees in the competition. The last to do that was Joshua King, back in October 2021.
While Dyche has certainly found some long-awaited defensive solidity as of late, Tottenham have scored in each of their last 29 Premier League games, the longest ongoing run in the competition, so Jordan Pickford will do well to keep a fifth straight top-flight clean sheet.
Tottenham vs Everton Head-to-Head
Tottenham have lost just one of their last 21 Premier League matches against Everton (W10 D10), being beaten 1-0 in September 2020.
Indeed, since winning three away Premier League games in a row against Spurs between 2006-07 and 2008-09, Everton have only picked up seven points in 14 visits there (W1 D4 L9).
Dyche, meanwhile, has lost five of his six Premier League away games against Tottenham, with the exception being a 1-1 draw at Wembley in August 2017.
The former Burnley boss has lost both of his visits to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium by an aggregate score of 9-0, so it is fair to say the omens are not particularly great for Everton.
Recent Form
That being said, only Spurs themselves (18) have earned more away points than Everton (16) in the Premier League this season.
After beating Forest, Newcastle, Chelsea and Burnley, the Toffees are looking to win five consecutive top-flight away games for the first time since April 1970, a season in which they won the league title. They had last won four Premier League matches in a row back in December 2020, while they last won four straight top-tier games without conceding in 2002, under David Moyes.
Having failed to win a single Premier League game in London in both 2021-22 (D1 L5) and 2022-23 (D4 L3), Everton have won all three trips to the capital so far this season. They last won four consecutive league games in London between April 1911 and September 1912, with three of those victories coming against Tottenham.
The first goal could well be crucial on Saturday. Since Dyche took charge of his first game in February, Everton have taken just three points from matches in which they have conceded first.
Spurs’ last two wins have steadied the ship after that winless run, and with Manchester City in FIFA Club World Cup action, a victory for the hosts would see them move up into the top four. Postecolglou’s team, though, have taken just three of the last 12 points on offer at home, having lost to Chelsea, Aston Villa and West Ham before defeating Newcastle.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off this weekend, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Tottenham vs Everton Opta Player Ratings
The Opta Player Ratings are something we introduced ahead of 2023-24. For a quick primer on how they’re calculated, you can check our explainer here.
Before kick-off in this match, here are the top five performing players from both teams in the 2023-24 Premier League according to the Opta Player Ratings:
Tottenham Hotspur
Son Heung-Min: 85.4 (out of 100)
Dejan Kulusevski: 76.7
James Maddison: 76.4
Pape Matar Sarr: 72.0
Micky van de Ven: 69.9
Everton
Vitaliy Mykolenko: 70.6 (out of 100)
James Tarkowski: 68.8
Amadou Onana: 67.3
Dwight McNeil: 65.2
Abdoulaye Doucouré: 64.5
These Opta Player Ratings also power our set of brand-new, free-to-play gaming experiences, which you can play on Opta Analyst all season long.
Tottenham vs Everton Prediction
With their fine recent record against Everton, it is not particularly surprising that our supercomputer makes Spurs the favourites with a 56.2% likelihood of coming away with the three points. Everton have an 18.7% chance of victory, with the draw rated at 25.1%.
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