After their rather hard but tired-looking performance against Lille on Thursday (not that I’m disappointed with the point) Everton were back to near their best at times with a great win against Burnley.
It’s the kind of game that earlier in the season I’d guess that we’d have let a late equalizer in, but we held tight and even nearly won 4-1. It’s also the second game in a run of 5 that I said we could do superbly in.
Here’s my thoughts:
Samuel Eto’o
Wow – I said a couple of weeks ago that I was just getting used to Eto’o playing for Everton. I was underwhelmed when he signed as I thought he’d be there and barely play. At the moment he’s first on the team-sheet. Expect a bad injury imminently…
Anyway, two superb goals and almost a hat-trick gave him the man-of-the-match award, and his overall hold-up play was exactly what we needed. Apparently he is spending time with Lukaku. I’d be up for tying them together during the week to try and get some of the class to run off on the big Belgian.
Antolin Alcaraz
That’s a bit better from the big galoot. After some shaky performances in the past for us he is showing us that he can play well alongside Jagielka and actually be a large part of the first team whilst John Stones is out. Distin played against Lille but you get the impression that it would take an injury or illness for him to play in the Premier League for us again.
Osman/Right-Wing
An odd one this. Osman was okay, but he’s not a right-winger and we all know this. With Miralles out for a while I know that someone has to play there, but why not play McGeady there despite all his inconsistencies? Or Catsu who can at least run at people with pace (okay, maybe just give him 15 minutes or something…).
We didn’t play with a huge amount of width apart from the full-backs getting forward and that could have been an opportunity missed.
The fans
3.6 million people went to Lille apparently and another 4,000 went to Burnley for this match. On a run of games away from home the fans have really shown their support and the team have responded really well to it. Lets hope this continues when we play at home this weekend.
Lukaku
That’s 4 goals for him this season. The sooner he learns from Eto’o the better. He was determined for his goal as he pushed his way through, but that is quite a rare thing to happen from what we’ve seen so far.
Jury is still out on whether he’s worth all that money. A hat-trick would be pretty nice this weekend, or at least an appearance full of aggression and intelligent passing. That would be a start.