Everton 2 West Ham 3: So Whose Fault Is THIS One?!?!?

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I wrote in an article a few weeks back that we were essentially turning into Wigan Athletic. Seems this theory won’t go away…

More entertaining games (good!) but soul-crushing defeats (bad) leave us now behind West Brom in the league and three points ahead of Bournemouth. West. Brom. Pulis. That wasn’t really part of the plan was it?

After 60-odd minutes of the game at home to West Ham (who we hadn’t lost to in the league to for 9 years remember) things were looking okay. Down to ten men we were still in control of the game with several players giving their all and making the difference.

Then it happened. As soon as the penalty was dribbled against Adrian (and forget the ‘off-his-line stuff – if he delays his run what do you think will happen. And it was a rubbish attempt too) everyone knew how this would end. The mental strength of this team is non-existent and before long three goals had gone in as the Hammers carried out an aerial bombardment which, according to one of their players, was pre-planned as one of our weaknesses (crosses).

So who is to blame for this?

– Miralles for getting stupidly sent off, meaning that the players ran themselves into the ground and paid for their poor fitness levels at the end? – Lukaku for missing the penalty and then a straight-forward chance before West Ham got one back? – Funes Mori for seemingly having a few birthday shandys at half time and failing to stop all three goals by closing his eyes and looking at the floor when the crosses came in? – Martinez for bringing Lennon off and replacing his with competition winner Niasse, moving to what looked like a 4-3-2 formation ad West Ham came forward? – Tim Howard just for the hell of it?

– Chelsea?

Essentially there are so many things that went wrong on Saturday that it’s not worth the levels of fume that are within every Evertonian looking at social media over the weekend. We have to put it down as ‘one of those things’ just to keep our sanity.

As we all know though, these situations are happening most weekends now. Be it Bournemouth, Chelsea, Swansea, West Brom, Leicester, Palace or anyone else we’ve fluffed our lines with – we now kind’ve expect it at a time where we have our apparent strongest squad in years.

The input of riches from our Iranian friend could not have happened at a better time. He will have a keen business eye on our progress on the field to increase the value of the club and surely these league position will come into play here. How on earth can we expect to get better commercial deals if we’re going to be team that finish mid-table every year and fluff their lines in the cup semi’s every season?

I’ve said it before – Martinez is a good, humble, likeable person who would be good as a Director of football but we need an arrogant, winning manager to come in and shake the club up. I know we won’t get him but someone like a Mourinho-type manager coming in would be one hell of a culture shock. Maybe not a risk Kenwright would take but Moshiri? Who knows.

As a reminder (source: @alan_gibbons on that Twitter thing), Martinez’s record in charge of Everton, even taking that fantastic first season into account is:

Played: 256 Won: 80 Drawn: 74

Lost: 102!

GD For: 326
GD Against: 403!

Still got the worst Home defensive record in the top 5 leagues in Europe. This is a team that used to pride itself on a rock-solid defence. Imagine if we had a decent defence to go alongside our attacking threat? Is that actually possible?!?

Next week’s game against Chelsea is massive and essentially our last chance to salvage which has at time been an exciting/dreadful/exhausting experience.

Fail this test and the close season could be a very interesting one indeed.