For f*ck sake Everton. You do our heads right in.
The worst thing about that goal – amongst many reasons naturally – is that it was all too predictable, you just knew what was coming. Obviously Norwich being sh*te didn’t help too.
Was anyone else watching the second half thinking “surely he’s got to change it now†too? Instead we let them right back in it and the inevitable happens.
The only good news is that we’ve got a mid-week home game to try and get over it quickly. The bad news is that it’s against Arsenal who we seldom do well against and then were away to City on Saturday. Ev-er-ton.
The league isn’t looking so boss now and we’re five points behind WBA who really deserve far more plaudits than we’ve had this season after a fine start some results we’ve be creaming over. Well done Steve Clarke, sobering for them that they had potentially a very decent manager right under their noses and they didn’t realise it. Oopsy.
So it’s the all-consuming Arsenal show in town under them beautiful floodlights at Goodison on Wednesday. They’re in sixth place, behind us by both a place and a point so if we want to strut around the league thinking were all that then we need to do something about it. Like beating them without any drama and sending their scrotes back to North London in the freezing rain.
They’re having a bad season by their own standards and the locals are growing restless. By restless I mean twitching in their nice heated seats. It’s been a relative period of meh for them after one of the best teams to grace English football finishing the season unbeaten and then reaching the Champions League final in 2006. No trophies have been won since.
Their fans point to austerity by the current board but in reality they can do one it’s f*ck all compared to our predicament, as ours isn’t to say Sheffield Wednesday’s to be fair. Plus they’re all sat in a beautiful new stadium with some top players and they could afford to pay £10m for Arteta.
Arsene Wenger is second longest serving manager in the league and with good reason. He is a bitter one eyed twat when it comes to anything going against his team and wears a coat that looks like some tit at V festival has cut the bottom off his sleeping bag and walking around in it to prove how wacky he is.
Fan wise they’re a mixed bunch. They’ve got the benefit of being the darling of the Home Counties which is their wool support, if you will. There’s a section of their support which is like Planet Chas n Dave has just crashed into Planet Danny Dwyer and a whole new annoying world is born. And the rest are bells.
It was always going to be difficult for Arsenal this year after losing one of the best strikers in the league in Van Persie, near enough impossible to replace those goals in the team. They’ve spent some money though on replacements like the bland faced Podolski and Giroud who after a slow start looks like finding his feet of late. They’re no Van Persie though, but then no one was a Henry when he left either.
Jack Wilshere is back from injury and is a fine player but I keep seeing his tweets mentioned in the press, he seems to be masquerading as some perceived all-knowing soccer oracle instead of him being a twenty year old who’s been sucking on the privileged teet of professional football since as long as someone realised he was good with the ball. Quiet you tit.
Oxlade-Chamberlain is fast and direct on their wing if he starts but if he was Nigerian there would be questions about his birth certificate authenticity as there’s no way he’s just 19. I bet he was sick of being cajoled into the offy by his mates when he was 16 for bottles of White Lightening, and the dead give-away of being under age of paying in 10, 20 and 50p pieces.
Cazorla has looked the business. If he’d be playing for the sh*te be’d be a false 10, we’ll call him a playmaker. The best little Spaniard we knew is back to our gaff and has established himself as a good player for him even if he’s not the player we know in say 2009.
Defence and goalkeeper have been a problem for Arsenal over the recent years but it’s become a lot sturdier in recent times with Vermaelen and Mertesacker forming a decent partnership. Sagna has a twat of a haircut but birds are going to sit on his face because of his profession so I doubt he’ll care one jot. Carl Jenkinson looks he’s testing an app on his phone which takes a photo of you and then shrinks your faceto much mirth from your mates. Szczesny is sturdy in goal, they could do better like we could with Howard but he does a job.
They’ll try and pass the ball around and look at you in disdain if you don’t do little triangles in midfield. They’ll pass the living sh*te out of you if you allow them, so hurt them blues and hurt them bad.
Injuries played a part in our downfall on the weekend. Fellaini would be a miss for most teams and it was noticeable that if we did go from back to front quickly then it wasn’t sticking. It’s like Jelavic has a forcefield which repels the ball away from him at the moment. He’s out of form but he’ll start slotting again and you know it.
Hopefully we’ve got some players on the bench as it was tedious as f*ck watching our midfield get over ran in the second half and not changing anything against Norwich. I don’t doubt being a football manager is a difficult job, it’s one that most of us don’t have the skill-set for but it’s no bad thing on sixty off grand a week and the media kissing your arse for keeping little Everton competitive. You might even think it’s a job exceptionally done. But to us it’s some sort of sh*te groundhog day where Everton haven’t won a trophy for 17 years or finished in the top three for 24 years. Check that, nearly a quarter of a century. Some of us do know our history like.
We’ve got the best squad, albeit a small one, of players for a generation or two and it’s not easy to sit back and enjoy the ride when we’re f*cking it up by being sh*tbags on the pitch. For example v Newcastle, Fulham, Reading, Liverpool & QPR.
Back to the team, it’s touch and go for Gibson, Mirallas and Hibbert to play a part but we’ll need some of them. In particular Mirallas who has been a miss. Hitzlsperger done well again first half but he’s prone to fading second half drastically, when he isn’t giving the ball away like. Oviedo was a rare plus point from the weekend, he was effective and a threat. I do hope he gets some more time and maybe he will when you’ve got players like Pienaar horribly out of form.
Naismith might not be everyone’s current cup of team but he’s netting and we need it, besides Cahill managed to stay in the team a year ago without even offering that.
Defence was a bit lop sided but it will be when you have three centre backs and one full back. Jagielka didn’t do that bad but against better teams in that position we’ll likely have a problem. Coleman is going to be out injured and we’ve got some testing games coming up so the assuredness of Hibbert will be no bad thing, even if we lose some attacking threat compared to the mad browed Irishman there.
Tim Howard is having a poor season, it’s not just hit tittish jumps when confronted with a player – I’d rather he honestly just stood still and didn’t look a blert – but any confident keeper would have been out and dealt with the equaliser on the weekend. It’s turning into a position we need to look at if we want to improve and gain more points.
Wednesday should hopefully see the last of the moustached players with it being the end of ´Movember´. Sound as they look like twats and it keeps tricking me that it´s the eighties and Everton are boss again.
It´s been a while since a mid week game and let´s be honest they´re usually miles better than the weekend games. Don´t let the league fool you, we´re on a bit of a sh*te run and need to snap out of it. That winter chill is tempering our optimism a bit.
Arsenal shouldn´t bring the same sort of fear that they once have as they´re not as a good as they once were and we´re a bit better than we usually are.
Should be a good game then. Get into them blues.