Mucha do about nothing
Today’s FA Cup Quarter Final with Wigan Athletic is heading the same way as our last trip to Wembley with a number of key injuries including Phil Jagielka, Tony Hibbert and Tim Howard. Today we look at Howard’s understudy Jan Mucha.
Jan Mucha is a bit of an enigma with Everton fans. He is rarely seen due to the fitness and skills of Tim Howard and when he does play it has been quite poor, but this follows his initial signing when Everton fans believed they had gotten quite a coup.
In 2010, Everton signed a pre contract with Slovakia International GoalKeeper, Jan Mucha. Competing with Iain Turner, John Ruddy and Tim Howard, Everton fans were quite excited about this signing having seen him perform admirably at the 2010 World Cup helping Slovakia get past the group stages. Mucha has now retired from International football, but made 35 appearances for his country.
Mucha has had to wait 3 years to get his first league debut and he did this last weekend in the 3-1 win at Reading. Mucha has made a number of nervous appearances for the first team in the league cup and them appearances have led Everton fans to worry about our back up.
Mucha (as expected with so little first team football) has looked nervous and unassured, not really living up to his reputation as a decent keeper who made 95 appearances for Legia Warsaw, winning the Polish Super Cup and Polish Cup. His form at Legia was brilliant and this is what talked David Moyes into the signing.
One thing that worries Everton fans is the amount of times that he has played in cup matches for Everton, which we have gone on to lose. These include Brentford (where he did save a second half penalty) and Leeds United. Competing today against Wigan will see Mucha come up against the powerful Aruna Kone.
Can the crowd play a part? Absolutely, there can be a tendency to moan and bicker if things go wrong, but the Goodison Park faithful need to get behind Jan Mucha today and give him confidence. There could well be a decent keeper in there, trying to come out. Mucha is a well liked player in the Everton Dressing room and quite often when players score they will run to Jan. We just need him to have the game of his life over the next month while Tim Howard is ruled out.
Show your support to Jan on The Everton Forum https://www.theevertonforum.co.uk/thread4906.html
Join our #getbehindmucha campaign on twitter today!!!!!!
I think you will find that todays match is a quarter final not semi final, so well will be playing at Goodison not Wembley!!!!
lol, good point. Well presented. I was reading about the Semi from the other year as I wrote that! Changed! Thanks for noticing! 🙂