Everton – A reccurring throwaway story.

So, it’s happened again. I’m writing this while absolutely furious. This is now the sixth game (Chelsea, Stoke, Leicester, Norwich, Bournemouth, Watford) where Everton, the players and manager, have completely let down the fans. And that isn’t including games I could have, such as Liverpool, Tottenham, Crystal Palace. We have conceded 8 goals in 80 min +. Watford (1), Man City (1), Bournemouth (3), Stoke (2) & Chelsea (1). This isn’t good enough.

So what’s happened?

I want to share some thoughts. I’m no tactical expert, I’m rubbish at trying to emulate the Executioner’s Bong and Everton Musing (two excellent tactical and statistical article writers). But a few things any old donkey could see:

I must say this in nearly every game Everton play. Even the ones we win. I’ll ignore the little things I get frustrated by, such as not blocking a team high up the pitch when they have a throw, or not getting in the ref’s face.

I’m talking more about our game management when we have a lead. At 2-0 up today, the microphone picked up one of our management team saying ‘a solid 5 minutes please’. It shouldn’t be a solid 5 minutes; it should be a solid 30. Away from home you have a two goal lead, you should either dominate the ball or put every man behind the ball. We did neither. We gave the ball away needlessly and invited them on to us, yet left Barkley and Lukaku on the half way line not even challenging their ball playing midfielders.

So they grab their first goal. I’ll get onto how that happened later, but they have it. What do we do? Our heads go down and continue on the same path that had just given them their first goal, only this time they had the momentum and it took a lot less time to equalise. What the fuck are we doing? This is where game management should come in. Feign an injury, piss about with the ball from goalkicks, freekicks etc. Make a sub. Do something to slow the game down and take the sting and rhythm out of their play. Quieten their fans down. Get Costa recklessly angry again by winding him up instead of the angry where he has the bit between his teeth. It’s absolutely pathetic game management to simply let them dictate that period after 2 goals to the good. Is it a one off? No, that’s why I’m writing this. See the game against Bournemouth, the Norwich game where we just needed to see out a ten minute period at the start of the second half after battering them in the first.

And then what has also infuriated me in many a game this season is the fact that it’s our experienced players letting us down. Barry has been incredible this season, but today at 3-2 in the added on time he charges out with the ball and eventually releases it to Deulofeu, who in my opinion it should have gone to 10 seconds earlier with Barry remaining in his martialling position. If people think I’m being a little picky, I’ve seen him give away the ball and make wrong decisions when we’re leading a few times this season, I can point to Bournemouth as a second example.

Another example of our experienced players letting us down is Howard. Another way to slow a game down is to hold on to the ball for a stupid amount of time when it comes into the goalkeeper, no matter how slow or tame the cross or attempted effort. Now he did this when we were 3-2 up today, but he wasn’t doing it at 2-0. Why not? Does he deem it too early? Teams come to Goodison and do things like this from the get-go. What makes us different? Another example of this was at the Etihad on Wednesday, where two times in the final ten minutes, when they were completely on top of us, he released the ball near enough straight after he caught it, only for it to cause unnecessary pressure and for us to lose the ball to do some more defending, which we’re not very good at.

I think it’s fair to say that Roberto Martinez’s teams don’t know how to defend. Wigan were renowned for being very leaky, and while Everton fans have seen us be leaky for Martinez’s last 18 months in charge, the media are finally picking up on it.

This is very difficult, because a lot of our goals are coming from individual errors. So how do you put the blame from that to Martinez? Surely it’s just the players letting him down? Unfortunately, though, there is a very strong link with Martinez. Wigan were a team that had the most individual errors in the league in their final two years in the Prem. Guess which team now holds that record in the last two years? Yep, 100 points to you, the correct answer is indeed Everton.

You take today’s goal. Phil Jagielka, one of our most experienced players in the whole group, chases back a long ball, has a yard or two advantage on Costa, and fails to deal with the ball. What he was trying to do I’ll never know. You get taught as a 16-year-old to not let that ball bounce and clear your lines. We move on to Howard, who again comes out and swipes at the ball, only to completely miss and take out Jagielka. Every fucker knows your keeper, if coming out, should be absolutely wiping out everyone in his path there.

I’ll try to not make this a long section because I believe the above two issues are much more the problem, but we haven’t been helped in these games we’ve thrown away.
Now in official terms, added time is MINIMUM. This is fine. If this was how every game was played consistently, I’d be happy to accept this. 3 minutes added, if someone scores in this period, add 30 second, if there’s a sub, 30 seconds, a booking/time wasting, 30 seconds, yada yada yada… But the fact is that in the majority of games, despite the above rule being in place, referees nearly always blow up on the dot of the allocated added time to finish the game. We’ve even had it in one game where he’s blown up early (I was at the Stoke game, I started timing it from the added time announcement [before they took a penalty and had a resulting celebration] and he still blew up 15 seconds too early).

In two real disaster games for us this season, Chelsea and Bournemouth, the ref from nowhere has played an extra minute on top of the allocated time. It just doesn’t fit. Today, did he add an extra minute because we scored in the 90th minute? If so, why didn’t he do it when Terry scored the equaliser? He blew up almost immediately after the restart. There’s even inconsistency in a matter of minutes!

Of course today there was an offside goal to put the cherry on the cake, but mistakes are made. We got off with a penalty at the Etihad midweek. Obviously had referees been able to do their jobs, we’d still have had 3 points instead of 2 (providing Aguero would have scored the resulting penalty).

So what happens from here then? I honestly don’t know. Are we going to keep trundling on with these hideous draws? It looks like it. Another mid-table finish beckons. I can’t see anything changing with Martinez in charge, as he doesn’t seem to have learnt and fixed the two main problems in this article in his 9 years in management. He’s built an incredibly talented group of players, and our scoring from open play is second to none. We’ve scored the second most goals in the league, and considering we’ve only scored from about 2/3 set pieces, that is incredible. But something needs to change in his management for us to succeed, I can no longer celebrate our goals as I know they don’t count for much.

@Moderndaylister