And so, after a sublime 3-0 victory over Manchester United the week before, Everton do what they do so often, and quickly came crashing back down to earth at Villa Park. The writing was on the wall in the opening exchanges, as we simply could not match Villa’s intensity or energy, and got absolutely nowhere near the ball for long periods. It’s true, Villa needed the points a lot more than we did, but the most of the performances from those in white were so abject they looked like they were already on the beach. Villa’s second goal summed up a torrid afternoon, as no one picked up Benteke who ran from deep to slot at the far post, with the hapless Tim Howard inexplicably appealing for offside. Bizarre, calamitous stuff. A 3-2 score line suggests a ding-dong battle with both teams going for it, akin to some of the games against Villa in previous seasons, but it was anything but. That scoreline flattered us tremendously.
Anyway, that’s been consigned to the history books now, and we move to Sunderland at Goodison in Saturday’s early kick-off. Like Villa, the Black Cats are right in the relegation mire, and their final 4 fixtures do not make pleasant reading from their point of view. After us, they face Leicester at home in a huge game, with Arsenal and Chelsea, both away, to conclude the season. As a result, they’ll have identified this weekend’s games as one they have to get something from.
In one of the more surprising managerial appointments we’ve seen in recent times, Sunderland plumped for Dutch journeyman Dick Advocaat to take over from Gus Poyet. He’s enjoyed a mixed start, but they have only failed to score once in his first 5 games. They’ve splashed out on Jermaine Defoe which has been a shrewd move and could be the difference between them staying up or going down. The bigger worry for me though is Danny Graham. He has failed to score in two years since signing for the club. Would there be a more ‘Everton’ thing to happen than for him to notch one on Saturday? Jack Rodwell is also amongst their ranks, but he’s probably injured.
So what about us then? How should we line-up? Should Roberto shuffle the pack and give some of the fringe players or youngsters an opportunity?
I reckon the manager will probably revert to the team that started against United and finished against Villa. In hindsight, it was a poor decision to bring in Naismith and Mirallas for Barkley and Osman. The Mirallas is more understandable, we definitely looked a threat against United with Lennon on one side and Mirallas on the other when the Belgian came on for Osman, but the Naismith decision was strange. Barkley had a solid game against United, so to drop him for Naismith instead of allowing Barkley to carry the momentum from his previous appearance into the Villa game. Whilst it still wasn’t great, there was a marked improvement once we reverted to the United line-up.
It would be nice to avenge last season’s defeat at Goodison to Sunderland, whose goal lived a charmed life for pretty much the whole game despite us only having 10 men for the majority of proceedings. It perhaps doesn’t feel like it, but we are actually unbeaten at Goodison in 2015, winning the last 4 without conceding a goal. If we could carry that on to end of the season, that would be grand.
Up the Toffees.
