The Red Devils Visit Goodison as Rumours Of A Takeover Start Yet Again…

So a good week for Everton’s internationals! Don’t care? Fair enough…

I guess the best news that came out of it was that we didn’t get any major injuries from the double-headers that the teams played in. Seamus Coleman came through a competitive 90 minutes against Poland without any problems after a long time out, and others either came through their matches without getting injured or didn’t play. Which is always my preference.

The ‘sense of pride’ that we were meant to show as Everton fans as Phil Jagielka was made England captain was slightly tempered by the general acceptance that unless a centre half gets injured before the Euros he’d be the man to make way. That’s right – a never-fit Phil Jones and Gary bloomin Cahill are seen as better bets than the man who has kept an entire back 5 together as they all fell to injury/bad form in the month of September.

Still, it was nice to see an Everton man captain England from the start of a game for the first time ever. Bit mad that, wasn’t it?

Breaking news this morning was that an American takeover of Goodison Park Stadium could be imminent. Now I personally will believe it when I see it, but the BBC are reporting that it seems legit in that Sporting City Kansas’ rep is an Everton fan and that the owners are looking into a £225m purchase. Yeah, right. Anyway, more details around the purchase are here.

In other news we succumbed to the draw at home to a terrible RS side once again and you got the feeling that (déjà vu) this was our BIG CHANCE to beat them for the first time in 10 games or so. In truth we didn’t do enough but were the better side, especially in the second half. We needed a big game from our wingers and they just didn’t seem to have the confidence to rip them a new one, with Ged especially quiet.

You get the impression that they can only improve from here with their chuckle brother of a manager – he’ll at least get them enthusiastic in a whacky kind of way. Shame, as Brendan was just a few more games from an utter meltdown. At least we’ll see him back soon as either the Villa or Newcastle manager though.

This Saturday sees the Red Devils roll into town in a fixture that should cause us a few concerns but that, on paper at least when looking at the stats, seems to make Everton the favourites. Heck, we could even move above them with a win. For those that do like betting on Everton we have won 4 of the last 5 against them and, more importantly, haven’t lost a 3pm match at home for 34 games.

We have looked good at times this season against those that come to attack us and we can hope that United try this in a similar way to the match against Arsenal. Leaving huge gaps in a similar way could allow Barkley to move forward and, if he chooses the right options, we could have a few chances. We can only hope that Depay plays dreadfully like he has in most games so far and that Martial gets kicked out of the game by Stones.

You know what’s coming next don’t you folks.

FT: Everton 0 Manchester United 1 (Fellaini, 89)