This matchup with Brentford is extremely important since Everton faces Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, and Manchester City over a six-game stretch around the holiday season.
Everton has only lost twice in their last ten games at Goodison, but victories are necessary. This season, they have only won once at home, against Crystal Palace two months ago.
Attacking incompetence is the obvious root of Everton's difficulties, as no team has scored as many goals in 11 games as they have, with Beto's late strike against Fulham at the end of October being their most recent goal.
The Toffees have recently had success against Brentford, though, as their three-game winning streak against the Bees was aided by their completion of the league double the previous season.
Even though Everton is now unable to purchase goals, Thomas Frank's team is scoring a lot of them and is currently regarded as one of the league's best entertainers.
Brentford has scored 44 goals in their games, evenly split between 22 goals and conceded, more than any other team. They have also scored and conceded in 10 of their 11 games thus far, but the only time that hasn't happened is when they lost badly to Liverpool in August on their other trip to Merseyside.
Last time out, Frank's team defeated Bournemouth 3-2, despite some dubious defending, demonstrating that outscoring the opponent can be effective at this level.
With 16 points won from a possible 18, the Bees have the best home record in the Premier League, which is not surprising given that Brentford has lost all five of their away games thus far. That put them in 11th place, just two points outside of the European spots.
Brentford has only lost their first six away games twice, in 1924 and 1961, and only three other teams in Europe's top five divisions have yet to record a point away from home.
