THERE’S been a statement to make about Everton this season that might have seemed a fairly obvious, uninsightful bit of reporting: They have some good footballers. 

Surely all players at the top level of the professional game, which the English Premier League obviously is, are good footballers? 

True, but there is still a certain type of player, one who is secure in possession, rarely gives the ball away, tries to make things happen, is adventurous rather than safe, and ultimately helps their team win games. They’re players who can sometimes help to carry the piano but can also play it to a high level.

Of those players, Jack Grealish and James Garner remained in the side for Everton’s meeting with Arsenal on Saturday night, but they were missing two of the others, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Iliman Ndiaye.

The combination of these four players when in the same team this season always gives Everton a chance of winning, but without a couple of them for an extended period of time, they could struggle. That’s especially the case against a top team like Arsenal.

Ndiaye is legitimately one of the best players in the Premier League and a player regularly raved about in these pages, but he, along with compatriot and Everton teammate Idrissa Gana Gueye, is now at the African Cup of Nations with Senegal.

Everton manager David Moyes has regularly talked up Garner as an England national team level midfielder, and the same could be said of Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who has been up there with some of the best English attacking midfielders around while also having the ability and the engine to play a deeper role.

Dewsbury-Hall is currently out with a thigh injury, which meant that Everton missed two of those next-level footballers against Arsenal.

Grealish still showed the occasional spark, but he was missing his fellow creative catalysts off whom to bounce his on-pitch ideas.

Garner has great delivery, an expansive range of passing, and a tidiness about him in midfield areas, but was missing the extra speed off the mark and quick-thinking of Ndiaye and Dewsbury-Hall to form the required combinations to make Everton’s overall attacking play more dangerous.

As a result, Everton didn’t create much of note, but they were not as far off the league leaders in this game as the stats suggest.

They were in it throughout, holding their own and going toe to toe in many individual battles, but at the same time, they never looked like they would win it.

Arsenal’s only goal came following the inexplicable decision by Jake O’Brien to reach up and handle the ball in his own area at a corner, and Viktor Gyokeres blasted home the resulting penalty kick.

Everton had started well and were often one pass or movement away, or an Ndiaye or a Dewsbury-Hall away, from creating chances of their own. They lacked pace on the counter-attack and never really looked like they would find the goal to level the score.

Arsenal were deserved winners in the end, hitting the post a couple of times through Leandro Trossard and Martin Zubimendi, while Bukayo Saka was a constant threat, not least from his corner delivery.

Everton were often close to doing something good as a rousing pre-kick-off tifo and light display created a buzz in the stadium, but there were no fireworks from the home side during the game. The worry is that, without Ndiaye and Dewsbury-Hall, close might be as good as they get in the coming weeks.