The ball did not actually go in off Yuka Momiki.
This is important, apparently.
In the 94th minute against West Ham, with Everton heading towards a goalless draw, Momiki curled a free-kick into the area. Laia Codina got her head to it. The ball went in.
Own goal.
Football has administrative procedures for deciding who scored goals. Defenders tend to care rather less about them.
Momiki had been on the pitch for roughly 15 minutes.
Everton won 1-0.
Three days later, against Birmingham City in the Subway Players Cup, Scott Phelan tried something altogether more radical.
He started her.
Everton won 2-0, with Momiki assisting the first and scoring the second.
So, with Liverpool waiting at Anfield, perhaps the most interesting question surrounding Everton is also the simplest.
At what point does an impact substitute become too useful to remain a substitute?
Everton Are Fifth. Everything Is Fine. Sort Of.
Three WSL matches. Six points. Fifth in the table.
Everton have followed their opening defeat with consecutive 1-0 victories against Charlton Athletic and West Ham. Add the cup victory against Birmingham and they arrive at Anfield having won three matches in succession without conceding.
Lovely.
There is just one peculiar detail.
Everton’s two WSL victories have both been secured by opposition own goals.
Six points are six points, and nobody has yet been asked to return league points because the opposition scored them on their behalf. Still, there is something faintly strange about reaching fifth while waiting for an Everton player to score a league goal from their own boot.
The results suggest Everton should keep doing what they are doing.
The matches suggest there might be room for improvement.
Momiki complicates that arrangement.
Birmingham Changed the Question
Her contribution against West Ham could easily have strengthened the argument for keeping her on the bench.
Bring Momiki on late. Let the match become tired and stretched. Give her 20 minutes against defenders whose legs have started negotiating separately with their brains.
There is logic to it.
Then Everton started her against Birmingham.
After 17 minutes, Momiki spotted Zara Kramžar moving beyond the defensive line and delicately clipped the ball over it. Kramžar headed Everton ahead.
Then, after 55 minutes, Momiki drifted in from the right and struck left-footed from outside the penalty area into the top-left corner.
2-0.
Two goals created in completely different ways.
For the first, Momiki recognised somebody else’s movement.
For the second, she became the threat herself.
Within three days, Everton had seen her decide one match from the bench and take control of another from the start.
The “impact substitute” label suddenly begins to feel less like a tactical role and more like an administrative convenience.
The Impact-Sub Problem
Football loves an impact substitute.
It sounds deliberate.
A manager is not leaving one of their most creative players out. They are “holding something back”.
Sometimes that makes perfect sense.
Sometimes it is simply a flattering way of saying one of your best attacking players doesn’t start.
The problem with saving Momiki for the final 20 minutes is that Everton first have to reach those final 20 minutes in a favourable position.
Against West Ham, they did.
At Anfield, perhaps it would be more useful to let her influence what sort of match develops in the first place.
Would Everton rather have Momiki attacking tired Liverpool legs for 20 minutes?
Or have Liverpool worrying about Momiki for however long she lasts?
Liverpool Present the Right Problem
Gareth Taylor’s Liverpool want to play positively and press forward.
That can create opportunities of its own.
Momiki does not necessarily need to beat three players. She needs one defender to become uncertain.
Start her from the right and allow her to drift inside, and Liverpool have decisions to make.
Does the full-back follow?
Does Fūka Nagano move across?
Does Jenna Clark or Grace Fisk step forward?
Who takes responsibility when Momiki receives between midfield and defence?
The best players in those spaces do not simply find gaps. They manufacture uncertainty.
One defender stepping forward can create the space Kramžar needs. One midfielder moving across can open another passing lane for Honoka Hayashi.
Liverpool at Anfield can look a little like Mechagodzilla: large, mechanical, carefully assembled and intimidating when approached directly.
Everton do not need to build their own Mechagodzilla and start throwing punches.
They need somebody capable of noticing the loose panel underneath the armour.
Momiki feels unusually qualified for the inspection.
Then There Are the Free-Kicks
Derbies are rarely famous for uninterrupted sporting elegance.
People collide. Someone objects. The referee points somewhere. Thousands of people shout at someone for taking six seconds over a throw-in, which remains one of football’s more specific cultural rituals.
Set-pieces matter.
West Ham have already discovered what happens when Momiki gets one in the right area.
She did not technically score.
Again, paperwork.
What she did was put the ball somewhere sufficiently unpleasant that Codina had to make a decision while facing her own goal in the 94th minute.
Sometimes the creative player’s job is not to score.
It is to make somebody else panic.
In a match likely to contain free-kicks and corners, Everton’s best delivery from those situations probably belongs on the pitch rather than underneath a substitute’s bib.
Stop Waiting for the Match to Need Her
There is a reasonable argument for keeping Momiki back.
Liverpool’s pressing will demand energy. The game could stretch. Spaces that barely exist after ten minutes may become enormous after 70.
We already know Momiki can exploit that.
But starting her does not require Everton to abandon the structure that has brought consecutive league wins.
It means putting more creativity inside it.
Everton’s start has been good. Six points prove that.
But two league victories courtesy of two opposition own goals also suggest this attack has another gear available.
Momiki has spent the last week proving she can change matches.
Against West Ham, Everton waited until the match needed changing.
Against Birmingham, they didn’t.
Seventeen minutes later, she had created the opening goal. By the 55th, she had scored the second herself.
Perhaps the lesson is not particularly complicated.
Everton have an attacking problem and a player currently offering solutions.
They should stop waiting until the problem becomes urgent before using her.
Blue shirts cross the park
Momiki waits between lines
Let her start this time
