Dominic Calvert-Lewin the biggest beneficiary of tactics Carlo Ancelotti has imposed on Everton

It is no coincidence that, as Everton sit second in the Premier League table, Dominic Calvert-Lewin heads the division’s scoring charts.

Despite the attempts by the new handball laws to seize the attention again, it was the manner in which the Everton striker was used at Selhurst Park that was the most telling aspect of the visitors’ victory. Because to watch him in action was to see a player and a system in perfect harmony.

Calvert-Lewin has been the biggest beneficiary of the tactics Carlo Ancelotti has imposed on the club. And it is a method that brings out the best in his way of playing. This is a case of total mutual dependence.

It works like this. Everton play with Calvert-Lewin alone up front. Five midfielders sit behind him, squeezing the space out of the game, with width being provided by the two full-backs tearing down the flanks, released by the careful stewarding in the middle by the holding midfielders, Allan and Abdoulaye Doucoure. Crosses come in from the wings and, for it all to work, the system needs a striker in the middle to finish things off.

“He is more focused on the box,” Ancelotti said of his free-scoring centre forward, whose goal against Palace was his fifth in the first three league games of the season.

“He spends more time there. When you play with one forward, he has to do that.”

Ancelotti has encouraged his man to resist the temptation to drift. It all came to perfect fruition after 10 minutes against Palace. Doucoure passed to James Rodriguez, who sent an exquisite, disguised pass in behind the home side’s back line and Seamus Coleman, a captain Ancelotti reckoned as good as any he has worked with, fizzed in a cross that Calvert-Lewin finished with unanswerable sharpness.

There is more to the player than just goal-hanging, however. The system requires him to hold the ball up while the full-backs catch up with play. Tall, mobile, physically capable, he is a growing influence with his back to goal. His gritty duel with Palace’s emergency centre-back, the excellent Cheikou Kouyate, was one of the highlights of the game. So good was his all-round play, one observer likened him to Didier Drogba, whose deployment in a similar role helped Ancelotti to win the Premier League title with Chelsea a decade ago. It was a comparison that made the veteran manager smile.

“Drogba? I think it could be an honour to be compared to Drogba,” he said. “He has to work a lot to be Drogba. But he is on the right way, I think.”

The more pertinent question for Gareth Southgate, however, is whether Calvert-Lewin might be able to do the same for England as he is doing for Everton. The player has never shied away from expressing his international ambitions and a call-up for the next round of Nations League fixtures would seem apt reward for his start to the season.

But Southgate likes to employ a very different system to Ancelotti, with a front three, and he wants his central striker to drop back, to move around and provide the wide runners with passes in behind. In short, to do all the things that Ancelotti is discouraging Calvert-Lewin from doing, preferring him to concentrate on always being the most forward, most central, most goal threatening player.

Hardly lacking in self-confidence, Calvert-Lewin would back himself to adapt to any system, but there can be no doubt that the Ancelotti way is getting the best out of him right now.