Okay, this game is only going to be remembered for one thing. The penalty. We’ll address that first up as you’d imagine.
Now, we’ve all seen the footage of Mirallas picking the ball up, putting his head down and ignoring his mate Lukaku, Naismith, Baines and other Everton players as they milled around. The official line from Naismith is that they had no problem with it. Same line came from Martinez. They forget that we now have ‘TV’ and that the evidence is there that shows that Naismith was far from happy about it. Ultimately Baines should have clouted him round the head and taken it off him. And then no doubt he’d miss I imagine…
Someone on Twitter has just suggested he did it on purpose to get himself out of the club. That’s ridiculous.
Let’s go back though – if Baines wasn’t playing, who would we want taking that penalty? Probably Mirallas. I know that doesn’t take things away from what a horrible, gutting decision that was for Kev Belgian to take the ball, but it’s true. We need to not just think about that incident but the whole match. It would have made things a lot easier for the team, but who knows what would have happened if we’d scored the penalty? We’ve lost against Pulis teams at home before remember…
The one thing that is an over-riding fact about the game though is that we had over 90 more minutes to find a way past relegation-haunted opposition and lacked the imagination and firepower to do so. I mentioned in my previous report v City that we’d perhaps struggle against those teams who came to defend at Goodison, as most teams do these days. That was unfortunately very true.
Time and time again Everton tried to neatly pass their way up the pitch, find players in the way, pass it backwards, pass it forwards and then lose it via a poor pass – Gareth Barry being a huge culprit in this area. Many times (I lost count) they also seemed to be passing it into space behind defenders and hoping that an invisible player had made an intelligent run so as to be able to get in on goal. That didn’t happen once. And when we did get the ball wide the crossing was so, so poor. Players hitting the first man, playing it into the area when no-one was there – just not good enough. And corners remain a complete waste of time.
Martinez decided to play with a very narrow team again, with Mirallas on the left and various players swapping onto the right, but mostly Naismith. Players that love to come inside and play – especially Mirallas who, even before the penalty had decided that everything he did was going to be about him, ending with a shot. His head seems to have been turned via 2 good subs appearances v West Ham and the fact that his contract is running out. You want Champions League football? You might get it Kevin, but on this form and with that attitude it won’t be with an English club.
We are screaming out for an in-form Pienaar to return to play with Baines on the left-hand side and get him back into some form as we just don’t have any width at all. Whilst Mirallas spent a lot of energy in that first half, trying to make things happen, it would not have surprised me to see him hooked at half-time anyway purely due to his inability to stay wide and help Baines where required. We also very much miss Leon Osman in these types of games to pick a pass through the defence and calm things down. A bit of leadership would be nice too, as Jagielka seems devoid of this behaviour.
This was a similar performance actually to the QPR game (albeit without the forward running from Barkley in that match, who yet again was completely anonymous) – it’s just that whilst we occasionally shot and got lucky in that game via deflections our players seemed to git the first man or try and pass their way into the goal every time. QPR also have the defensive stability of one of Katie Price’s contraceptives.
We’ve spoken many times about having a Plan B, and maybe that is the ‘long ball’ that we saw against Man City. But against a team like West Brom who came for the draw (and we saw Berahino on the left in a defensive role for goodness sakes) we need a Plan C, which involves playing actual wingers. Or, if we have no wingers available, tell some players to at least stay wide!
Our next few games?
Palace away, Liverpool home, Chelsea away, Leicester home, Arsenal away, Stoke away.
Now, on current form what do you reckon? Top of my head I’d say 1 win, three draws. Got the Europa League games squeezed in there too. By the time March reaches its end things could get very interesting. At least Martinez has experience of relegation dogfights, eh? *sob* And without Eto’o who seems to be off too. A striker to replace him would be nice please Roberto?
This is the absolute time to get behind the team though. The boo-ing doesn’t help the players or the situation, although I’m not going to chastise people for doing so as they pay the money and can make their own choices. When we have young players like Barkley seemingly terrified to take a chance in case he gets abuse for it we know we’re in trouble though.
NB: I was going to fume about Besic (who was again brilliant) being taken off but I read this morning that he got a kick and had to come off… And that came from the press, not Martinez, so I might believe that one…
Also, I’m ignoring the fact that it’s the second time that Stallone has turned up and we’ve not won. And what was that half-time thing about? At least it gave us something to cheer about I guess…