With another international break interrupting the domestic schedule, November saw our Mighty Blues complete just three fixtures. A good performance in overcoming the stubborn resistance of Brighton was followed by a commendable away point and blanking of Chelsea at the Bridge before a hard-earned, but thoroughly deserved victory over Cardiff.
Seven points from a possible nine and Everton finished the month having quietly moved into sixth place in the Premier League table, ahead of a busy, seven-game December/Christmas period.
Whilst the international break disturbed the flow of games, it afforded players nursing injuries that extra time to recover and nowhere was this more aptly proven than by Gylfi Sigurdsson. Our Icelandic midfield maestro overcame the effects of a wicked challenge by Jorginho at Chelsea in order to play and grab the game-winning goal against Cardiff.
To the statistics, and November saw just sixteen players used with no fewer than twelve appearing in, and six – Jordan Pickford, Lucas Digne, Michael Keane, Seamus Coleman, Andre Gomes and Idrissa Gana Gueye – playing every minute of, all three games.
Ever-improving consistency and quality of performance is being reflected in Marco Silva able to maintain a stable hard core to the side, particularly in defence and midfield. And with quality and hunger on the sidelines, Evertonians are eagerly looking forward to seeing just what this squad could potentially achieve.
The three Man of the Match awards were won by Richarlison – his goalscoring exploits against Brighton narrowly edging out the industrious Gana Gueye; Jordan Pickford romping home with his clean sheet against Chelsea and the newest darling of Goodison, Andre Gomes cruising to victory for his showing against Cardiff.
Despite only three games to be voted on, November comfortably saw the highest monthly average of votes cast so far this season, the draw at Chelsea receiving the largest poll result.
As with last season, we intend to continue posting match reports and MotM polls as quickly as possible after each game, and we encourage all our forum members and readers to vote.
And if you’re reading this via LinkedIn, Twitter or any other platform and you’re not a GOT member but would like to vote each game, simply register at – http://www.grandoldteam.com/forum/ – and cast your vote every game… and join in the myriad of discussions on the biggest and best Everton Forum on the internet.
With the shameless, promotional plug for GOT, the forum and polls dealt with, let’s get on with the announcement…
In third place was Richarlison…
In second place was Idrissa Gana Gueye…
and the congratulations go to, with marginally under 27% of the total votes cast, the GOT Player of the Month for November…
Andre Gomes.
