Unlucky Big Fat Sam you big fat get.
Sometimes in football you get exactly what you deserve, you reap what you sow. On Saturday, fatty Allardyce got exactly what he deserved when he instructed Jeffrey Schlupp to roll back onto the pitch. Last season, not only would we have rolled that ball out of play like good little boys, but old Roberto would have ran on and done that cramp leg stretching thing to Schlupp we were that nice/pathetic. But this version of Everton is a different beast. If a team is moulded in its managers image, that one little act of dismissal had Ronald Koeman stamped all over it.
Koeman took no prisoners as a player and some of the things he has come out with since arriving at Goodison prove he is the same as a manager, ask Niasse or latterly Delefeu. It now seems that the players are also getting the message. I think the ball could have been put out of play by five of our outfield players during that incident but every one of them (rightly) made the decision that the wrath of the manager would be worse than the wrath of the Palace players, staff and fans combined, and I love it.
If you ask any blinkered Palace fan what they thought of the lead up to that goal and you will hear nothing but a slagging for our boys. You could correct them and point out that Schlupp was in fact the unsporting one when he rolled back onto the pitch. You could point out that the game does not have to be stopped for an injury unless it is a head injury. You could also point out that Joe Ledley (he of the hilarious dancing at the Euros) also had an opportunity to put the ball out of play but chose not to. But instead, just laugh, like what Ronald did to Pint of Wine Features.
“Up the Toffees” RK
The nature of the goal aside, that was a very satisfying performance for more reasons than one. The City result last week was fantastic, but I’ll be honest, I expect to give anyone a good go at home, “big four” or not. Away from home though, in this sometimes unforgiving league, results are not so easy to come by. Now in my eyes I think we have the makings of a good team here and a game against any team from seventh down should in reality be a war of attrition with us on top as I genuinely think we look a lot better than any team below us, Saturday was exactly that. We were knocking on the door all game and at no point did I really expect Palace to score but this being Everton, I half expected it to fizzle out into a draw. We were comfortably the better team and although we kept knocking I just sensed a nil nil draw would be the outcome. Thankfully my spider senses are s***e.
Some other positives from the game include the performances of Robles, Funes-Mori and Ross Barkley to name a few.
Robles, or Joel, or Ja-Rule if I haven’t got my glasses on, rightfully got a lot of plaudits for a great save from Scott Dann. For me though, the most impressive thing he did was come for every cross in the last ten minutes or so, every single one. How refreshing is this after years of watching Tim Howard do a star jump on the line and save f**k all. You know his star jumps got that bad, I stared to suspect it was his Tourette’s coming out when he was under pressure “F**K!!! (starjump), sorry Jags”. I think he has now earned the chance to show he can save us some money at the end of the season and keep him in goal until then. Fingers crossed for the lad.
Funes-Mori is another who divides opinion. He does often look like he has a mistake in him but I feel Saturday was his best game yet, I think playing in a three suits him. I have to say, I want this lad to do well, I like his snidey nature, we haven’t had anyone like that for years now. Rightly or wrongly, I’ve liked him since he did keepy uppies with Divock Origi and then kissed his badge during the worst Derby performance in living memory. At least he showed some passion I figured. You would also like to think someone touted as an Argentina captain could cut it with us. More of the same please you big snide.
Last but not least, the enigma that is Ross Barkley. The emergence of Tom Davies for some reason has brought out the best in Ross, I’m not sure why, perhaps it takes pressure off him or perhaps as some have said it due to Davies’ tendency to always play forward. Whatever it is, he’s coming along nicely this last few weeks. He bossed this game. Right now, young Davies is getting all the plaudits but on Saturday Ross was at the heart of everything and deserved to be on the winning side. I wonder if he thought about the fact that it was Allardyce that dropped him completely from the England squad. If I was Ross, I’d have ran over to fat face and done Nelsons laugh from the Simpsons when “Simon Coleman” netted.
I think Sam may actually have burst if he did. If you watch Allardyce next time his bloated chops are on telly, watch how his rate of chewing goes up when he’s angry. When we scored the unsporting/offside/boss goal, he was chewing his chewie that fast he could’ve powered the f*****g Delorean from Back To The Future. “Marty! We need a flux capacitor…..or failing that, an angry Sam Allardyce!”. I bet he was still kicking off at eleven-o-clock that night, ranting in his kitchen spitting wine and dinner kebab everywhere whilst Mrs A slyly turned up the volume on Strictly.
There were many positives in the game apart from the three mentioned and I hope at the next time of writing I will be talking about some others. Bournemouth will park the bus so will prove to be the kind of test we have really struggled with the last few years. I do however, expect another three points.
All in all, January has been a good month really, good performances in the league and some good manoeuvring in the market. Hopefully we see some more names on the “roster” (sorry, I’ve been watching the NFL too much) come February 1st.
The futures bright, the futures “Oranje”.
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