Well, that was a mental game against Sunderland wasn’t it?
A terrible and sloppy start by the Blues almost saw us (deservedly) two down before Sunderland turned rubbish and let us somehow score twice. They then decided to attack us and scored twice and opposed to being a ‘Big Sam’ typical defensive team decided to just attack from all angles. Unfortunately for them our front 3/4 were on form and punished them on the counter attack every time leaving them on the end of a 6-2 defeat.
The fact that they capitulated in such a dramatic fashion does make you believe that the Black Cats are doomed. They just have very poor quality in their defence and in the middle of the park which made Deulofeu, Lukaku, Kone and even Barkley look dangerous every time they got the ball. Lukaku in particular was superb, holding the ball up and producing sexy assists for the reborn Kone to slam in three times.
I think most people in football would be happy for Kone after the injury problems he’s had. Crazy though that we’ve scored two hat-tricks this season and they’ve gone to Kone and Naismith though!
Tim Howard continued to look to become our most hated player by far showing a new level of increased arrogance in his interviews over the weekend. It appears that he thinks that current form shouldn’t matter and that having good performances “in the bank” means he is un-droppable. Well that’s lovely for him, but I think most fans would really like to see this being his last season for us. The MLS is calling and they’ll love him over there. Especially as the number of performances “in the bank” seem to have disappeared around the same time as the RBS collapse.
Still, he didn’t throw any goals into his own net this time and saved one with his feet so we have to be grateful for that I guess. I imagine he went home and colour in another star on his ‘T-DOG SUPERSTAR WALLCHART” for another banked faultless display. Yee-haw! etc.
So this weekend is West Ham away – the last ever time that we get to visit the Boleyn Ground (in the League at least) and that’s a massive shame. It’s been a great hunting ground over the last few years with Rom Lukaku particularly helping himself to many a goal for us – in fact he has scored 6 goals in 6 games against them. He’s certainly one to get into your fantasy team or get as an anytime scorer for this weekend.
We’ve actually only lost once to the Hammers since 2007, and that was the defeat on penalties in the FA Cup last season! That’s one defeat in 17 matches, with Everton coming out on top 11 times. We did the double over them last season, winning 2-1 both home and away and in both games our goalscorers were Rom and Leon Osman who will no doubt be on the bench for this one.
It’ll be a tough match for us as West Ham are in sixth at the moment and have had some excellent results so far, winning away to some of the top sides. The thing is, they’ve had some rotten results too and tend to fail to break teams down that come to defend and then pick them off. They found this at Watford last week and, so long as we don’t get over-excited after last weekend and stay controlled I can see us getting a win here too. And I don’t say that very often…
I see that the “whopper-off” continues between Kenwright supporters and haters, with a plane going up this weekend in support of the silver-haired lovee. I think it’s nice after all the stick he’s been getting but the floodgates are well and truly open and if we lost this one I imagine another plane will be winging it’s way over Goodison for the next home match…
COYB!!!