It’s a phrase I’ve heard so many times over the years associated with Everton fans. I’ve used it myself many times.
“Just when you think you’re out, they suck you back in again”.
The last time I wrote an article it was just before the Man City game where I suggested that, if we lost, the games against Carlisle and Newcastle were needed to be won ‘as a minimum’. Well we seem to have achieved that and more.
Three 3-0 wins in a row, three clean sheets with Joel in nets, our ‘superstar’ defender given a well-needed rest in a run of games that we win and us playing entertaining football. Ticks all round then (sorry Tim. I meant… oh never mind).
Stoke City was always going to be a very tough game for us, mainly as we’d not scored a goal from open play against them for about 8 years (one penalty, two own goals, no wins). They were on a bad run but, hey, ‘here comes Everton’!
We managed to very easily avenge that game at Goodison though with an attacking display that simply blew the Potters away and it should have been many, many more goals too with Jack Butland (£3m we could have got him for remember) having a great game for them.
So how has this happened? Is the pressure of getting to a semi-final off? Has Roberto stumbled across his best side due to injuries – remember that we’ve not had Stones, Baines, Howard, Besic (our new hero three weeks ago) and Deulofeu playing in these matches.
Aaron Lennon is playing out of his skin, Ovideo is doing well, Jags and Funes Mori look solid, much to the disgust of Tim Vickery, whilst Cleverley and Barry look great together. Even Kone is… actually, no, he’s still rubbish, sorry.
Going to be interesting to see if he tried to shoe-horn some of the benched players in for the next game at home to West Brom with us then having the FA Cup game and then potentially two weeks without a game. Does he play a ‘weakened’ side for the Baggies game or maybe for the cup match – his last chance of a trophy this season?
We also have that tricky situation in that we are now 8th in the league and looking upwards at West Ham and Southampton. Possibly even Man United. Could we catch those teams and go for Europe? All I know is that Everton still haven’t lost the reputation of ‘chokers’ when it comes to the big matches.
For goodness sakes. We were 3-1 up at City overall. Just had to avoid letting in three goals. Against a defence that shipped three to Leicester yesterday.
I need to let this go don’t I? Or at least start my protest group to stop writing articles when I’m 77% of the way through it or something. In fact I’ll do that. Shame for you though – the last 23% of this article would’ve been dynamite. Inside story of the potential new owners and everything.
Onwards Blues!!!