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This article is part of Football FanCast's In Numbers series, which takes a statistical look at performances, season-long form and reported transfer targets... 

Everton threw everything they had at Sheffield United but lacked the quality to break through their defence, and ultimately never looked like scoring.

In most cases, their attacking players would have to be questioned, but Marco Silva set the team up in the wrong way, playing two players on the wing who like to move inside - where they were met with a wall of Blades players.

Their midfield trio of Oliver Norwood, John Fleck and John Lundstram snuffed out any Everton danger throughout, leading Silva's side to resort to the failed method of crossing, with only seven of 40 attempts successful all match.

Despite that, Everton dominated throughout and the pressure was beginning to mount on the visitors towards the end of the first half as Richarlison's header came close, with Gylfi Sigurdsson pulling the strings until Yerry Mina's own goal seemed to deflate his side.

The Iceland international did well to take up space and if he managed to get on the ball in crossing positions more then often he may have provided the quality needed for a goal, just as he had done in Everton's previous home match against Wolves.

As it was, his record of 33% crossing accuracy was the highest on his team, and according to WhoScored he made good use of the ball throughout.

In most games Sigurdsson would be praised for a remarkable pass success rate of 97%, and the fact he made four key passes suggest his side should have made a breakthrough at some point, but they instead managed just three shots on target, all of which were comfortable for Dean Henderson.

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The fact Everton's number 10 played so well makes his team's lack of width even more alarming.

As the home side they should have looked to stretch the opposition whenever possible, and they had the quality in midfield to do so too with Fabian Delph and Morgan Schneiderlin having pass success rates of 92% and 94% respectively.

As a result, they could have passed the ball out wide, creating space in the middle for Sigurdsson to exploit and potentially link up with Moise Kean and Cenk Tosun when he came on, but instead they were left isolated, as shown by their combined total of 38 touches despite having 70% possession.

Despite that, the 30-year-old battled well throughout and tried to make things happen, and if he can continue to do so he should help his team to move up the table.