Phoning it in
While they’re now seen as windows on the world and an essential part of everyday life for many, we all spend too much time on our mobile phones and footballers are no different. Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has long complained about his players’ excessive use of their handheld devices and railed against the hours they spend trawling through Instagram while a photograph of Everton’s neighbours Liverpool’s dressing room after their Community Shield win earlier this summer highlighted the issue with several members of the Reds squad having their heads down looking at a screen.
To be fair, if there’s one player in particular within the Everton squad who cannot be accused of phoning in his performances so far this season it’s Alex Iwobi but the Nigerian brought is mobile out for the Blues’ pre-match walk around the Fleetwood Town pitch as the visitors took in their surroundings and its content seemed to pique the interest of a couple of his team-mates. Anthony Gordon and Demarai Gray were pictured crouched around Iwobi, eager to take in whatever information his phone was showing ahead of the Carabao Cup tie against their League One opponents.
Just what might they have been looking at though? It was too early for Gray to find out that he was playing as Tom Davies didn’t get hurt until the warm-up a while later.
Surely it wasn’t the transfer latest on Gordon’s future and Chelsea’s pursuit of Everton’s home-grown hero! Maybe they were just checking out the contents of the ECHO’s Live Blog?
Crellin’s homecoming
Davies’ injury in the warm-up – this is becoming a worryingly fairly regular occurrence at Everton – of course provided a late call for Gray and he duly rewarded Frank Lampard with the match-winner but his place on the bench went to Billy Crellin, back at the club where he started his career. Born just down the road in Blackpool, Crellin made 13 senior appearances for Fleetwood Town – five of which were in League One – with loan spells at FC United of Manchester, Chorley and Bolton Wanderers before joining Everton for an undisclosed fee on January 31 this year, the same day that Lampard was appointed Blues boss.
With Joao Virginia and Harry Tyrer both out on loan and England number one Jordan Pickford having been given the night off, Crellin moved up the pecking order to be included in this tie but still found himself behind fellow Lancastrian Andy Lonergan and Asmir Begovic, who kept his first clean sheet in the Carabao Cup for Everton a year on from making his debut for the club at the same stage of the competition at Huddersfield Town.
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Hitting the high notes
Featuring the lyrics: “Ooh na na”, Rihanna’s What’s My Name? blared out over the public address system at Goodison Park last Saturday in a tribute to Everton’s big signing of the summer but it was the Belgian international himself who was hitting the high notes at Fleetwood, because of the string of brutal challenges he was subjected to from Scott Brown’s yard dogs. Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror Alien contains the iconic line: “In space no one can hear you scream” but they certainly can from the Highbury Stadium Press Box given the compact nature of the League One side’s 5,327 capacity home.
Having celebrated his 21 st birthday last week, this was something of a painful rite of passage for Onana and whatever he’s faced so far in his fledgling career with Lille in Ligue 1 or in Bundesliga 2 with Hamburg, it’s unlikely that he’s had to come up against anything quite like this. It seemed clear from the start that Fleetwood had earmarked the Blues’ £33.5million signing for rough treatment and Ged Garner, Danny Andrew and Drew Baker were all booked for hacking him down and at times, seemingly riving in agony.
Thankfully, the midfielder kept on getting back up though and as Lampard said afterwards: “I was pleased with how Amadou Onana faced the challenge and I thought he grew into the game. He showed his physicality and stood up to things.”
Cod outfit
It wasn’t just on the pitch that Fleetwood were up for the fight and at one moment during the first half when the ball was kicked into touch by home keeper Jakub Stolarczyk, there were loud cheers for a fan in the home end who rose from his seat to head it first time back towards the touchline and the eager spectator duly celebrated his feat with a clenched fist. They both have a penchant for sea shanties with Everton’s Z-Cars theme based on Johnny Todd and The Cod Army celebrating their goals with the Captain Pugwash Theme (Trumpet Hornpipe) – thank goodness we were spared that on this occasion – but when it comes to footballing heritage, these two clubs are poles apart.
As the club who enjoyed the largest average attendances for the first decade of the Football League, Everton can justifiably claim to be the game’s oldest major fanbase and well over a century on they continue to sell-out wherever they go despite enduring the longest trophy drought in the club’s history, going back to 1995, two years before the current incarnation of Fleetwood Town were even formed. Tickets were like gold dust for travelling Blues wanting to attend this fixture so it must have been frustrating to see gaps in the home end as the hosts were unable to fill a ground that holds less than Goodison’s Park End.
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