Blame game
It was an inevitability that protesting Everton fans who stayed back after the final whistle chanted “sack the board” – they’ve been saying that since the shambolic 4-1 capitulation against Brighton & Hove Albion 11 days earlier – but while calls of “You’re not fit to run the club” followed during the post-match sit-in, they came after a new cry of “You’re not fit to wear the shirt.” The chaos, the heartache and abject misery around the Blues right now is such that nobody can be absolved from blame, particularly the players on the pitch who are ultimately responsible for results and shaping the club’s fortunes.
This wasn’t a ragged display like the horror show against the Seagulls last time out – one tiny crumb of comfort for long-suffering Evertonians at this time of crisis could be seeing that the upwardly mobile Sussex outfit have just beaten their neighbours by the same margin – but the fragility around this team is such that they never looked entirely convincing when defending their lead and so it proved. Sequels might be a handy way for Hollywood film studios to make lots of money but they’re often not as good as the original and so this proved for Everton on the day their fans revived the concept of the passionate Goodison Park coach welcome.
There is only so far that support can take you and this group of players could have all the encouragement in the world – the scenes at Old Trafford last time out when over 9,000 travelling Blues roared them on showed just how very fortunate they are in that respect – but when it comes to the crunch, those 11 young men on the turf are the ones who control Everton’s destiny.
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Sub standard
Almost halfway through the January transfer window, Everton are yet to bring in any new signings but while Southampton manager Nathan Jones was able to use his full complement of five substitutes including Argentinian debutant Carlos Alcaraz, Blues boss Frank Lampard’s two options off the bench were both home-grown players. They were two rather different Academy products in terms of their profile in the shape of Anthony Gordon and Ellis Simms but while Lampard had plenty of other experienced Premier League players in reserve, there didn’t appear to be a surfeit of game-changers.
With just one goal apiece all season from the Blues’ main strikers Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Neal Maupay, it’s been obvious for a long time where the team’s biggest problems lie but despite their manager not being shy about the need for additional firepower – it’s understood that two new faces have been targeted for this month – the wait goes on. Such issues will only be exasperated by the team’s dramatic fall and as deadline days draws closer, potential sellers will only sense the desperation even more.
Although there have been changes in formation throughout the season, the choice of personnel has remained fairly consistent. This might be interpreted as the manager knowing his best side – not that they’re delivering – but far more worrying it seems to be a damning signal which suggests a chronic lack of alternatives.
Records tumbling
The last time Everton lost four consecutive home games in 1958, Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister who told the British people that they had “never had it so good” was running the country but even for the beleaguered Blues, it’s never been as bad as this. Two of those four defeats have come against teams who went into the fixture propping up the Premier League table while the third that started the sequence was against a Leicester City team also in the relegation zone.
If Lampard’s side are being beaten by those at the bottom, it’s increasingly difficult to see where the requisite points to avoid the lowest equivalent total in their history and what would be a first relegation in 72 years when Clement Attlee was the incumbent of 10 Downing Street and the late Queen Elizabeth II’s father King George VI was still on the throne. That’s the magnitude of history and harsh reality that we’re dealing with here.
In theory, if Everton could have handpicked an opponent to try and kick-start their season of strife again then it should have been Southampton. Along with West Ham United, the Blues had beaten them on a club record 16 occasions in the Premier League at home with the Saints’ only previous Goodison Park triumph in the competition coming over a quarter of a century ago.
Back on October 1, Everton secured a 2-1 comeback win at St Mary’s against the same opponents – only their second Premier League away success of the past 17 months but rather than prove a watershed moment, the result has instead been an anomaly before a steep decline. Ahead of this game, there were eerie parallels to the Blues’ fixture against Norwich City almost a year to the day before when they were also beaten by a bottom of the table side who had lost their previous six matches in the competition.
There is no way of sugar-coating this, Everton currently have their lowest number of points at the halfway stage of any Premier League season and are only being kept off the bottom of the table on goal difference.
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