A Frank admission
Frank Lampard went into this week as arguably the most strongly-backed manager brought in by Farhad Moshiri but given the Everton owner’s track record for pressing the panic button, the current Blues boss could now be wary of the fan backlash that has accompanied these three successive defeats. Lampard has been onside with the majority of Evertonians from the start – along with Carlo Ancelotti whose unequalled credentials in football’s leading dugouts made him something of an untouchable at Goodison Park, he is the only one of Moshiri’s appointments to be afforded his own song – but the cheers have quickly turned to jeers this week through the sequence of bum notes on the pitch.
In many ways the antithesis of his emotionally-distant predecessor Rafael Benitez, Lampard has tapped into the passion of Everton and harnessed those emotions but ultimately like the former Liverpool manager, who lost nine of his last 13 Premier League matches in charge, and indeed as all in his profession are, he will be judged upon results. Half of the top flight’s bottom eight clubs – including Bournemouth – have sacked the manager they started this season with and while most of us who care for the Blues and watch them on a regular basis recognise the folly of the constant cycle of hiring and firing that has sent the club on a downward spiral on the field under the current regime, questions are now being asked by some.
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The last thing Everton need is to rip it up and start again with continuity desperately required ahead of building a team worthy of gracing the magnificent stadium they are constructing to move into in the 2024/25 season but the Blues also need to ensure they’re competing in the Premier League when they decamp to their new 52,888 capacity home on the banks of the Mersey. As Lampard himself admitted after this game, while this was always going to be a season of rebuilding and transition, both he and his players still need to be doing better… certainly much better than this.
Even trusted lieutenants struggle
You could tell by the frustration etched on Lampard’s face that he felt let down by the fringe players who failed to grasp their opportunity in Tuesday night’s 4-1 defeat but while many of them may no longer now have a long-term future at Everton, you know things aren’t going your way when the senior pros who you depend upon are also out of form. Jordan Pickford has delivered in big moments for both club and country – Lampard hailed his spectacular stop to deny Chelsea captain Cesar Azpilicueta in last season’s 1-0 win at Goodison Park which was voted the English top flight’s ‘Save of the season’, as actually being the best he’d seen during the entire Premier League era – but this was not the Blues goalkeeper’s finest hour.
Pickford went on to make several impressive saves as Bournemouth threatened to run riot but memories from this fixture will understandably surround his blunder when failing to hold on to what for someone of his talents, a routine save from Dominic Solanke and spilling the ball into the path of Marcus Tavernier to score. Home fans promptly seemed to take almost as much glee in taunting Pickford as enjoying the fact that their side had gone ahead in this crucial fixture and barracked him with shouts of “England’s number three” and “You’re just a s*** Aaron Ramsdale” in support of their own former goalkeeper who now plays for Arsenal and is one of the Everton man’s understudies within the Three Lions squad.
In a week in which beleaguered Blues have been up and down the roads only to suffer humiliation when following their team, despite the fact that Bournemouth is at the opposite end of the country to Newcastle and some 348 miles south of St James’ Park, the Vitality Stadium suddenly appeared to resemble a miniature version of the Magpies’ home with Pickford’s every subsequent misstep roared in hearty fashion. Lampard, like Gareth Southgate, maintains complete faith in his goalkeeper though but there will be concerns that he wasn’t the only one in the visiting line-up to struggle.
The new-look central defensive partnership of James Tarkowski and Conor Coady has generally forged a tower of strength alongside Pickford in a solid triangle at the back for Everton this term but following on from their disappointments against Leicester City, the pair suffered more problems here. Like Pickford, Coady is going to the World Cup on merit but he and Tarkowski, whose form also put him in the mix for what has been something of a problem position for the national team, struggled against Bournemouth’s attackers and might now benefit from a chance to take stock ahead of the Boxing Day showdown at Goodison that the on-loan Wolverhampton Wanderers man cannot play in against his parent club.
A weak week
Here’s a novel take, perhaps the World Cup break has actually come at the best-possible time for Everton because they go into the break on the back of a week of woe that ended in shambolic fashion and at least the 45-day hiatus stops the rot. Never mind a week being a long time in politics – we know all about that in recent times with the revolving door at 10 Downing Street – for the Blues, the final three fixtures have witnessed a horrific unravelling of their season, as swift as it was dramatic.
Had they beaten Leicester City the previous Saturday in their final Goodison Park fixture, Everton would have moved into the top half of the Premier League table but that 2-0 reversal now seems a relative eternity ago given the double dose of destruction that has followed since at the Vitality Stadium. We all know that footballers more than most professions rely on confidence and the shift in momentum brought about through this chastening brace of reversals against another team who were below them, has prompted what had been a slow but steady campaign of progress to veer wildly off course.
Back in December 2007, Everton faced a similar scenario of back-to-back away games against West Ham United, first in the League Cup and then in the Premier League. David Moyes went strong with his starting line-up for the first match – making just a single change from the previous fixture at Fulham – and was rewarded with a 2-1 victory which was then followed up with three points on their return to the Boleyn Ground three days later with a 2-0 success. Against Bournemouth, Frank Lampard changed his entire starting 11, saw the shadow squad members who had been knocking on his door asking for additional playing time, beaten 4-1 and that unfortunately – despite what the Blues boss and his opposite number Gary O’Neil told us publicly – set the tone for the second fixture, which the hosts also triumphed in by a three-goal margin.
The Cherries had lost their previous four matches before their emphatic pick-me-up in a Carabao Cup competition that has subsequently been shorn of several big name clubs who would have had realistic ambitions of lifting the trophy but this latest setback leaves Everton with a string of unwelcome statistics. Not only have they still failed to win a Premier League game at Bournemouth in six visits, they have been unable to beat their last eight newly-promoted opponents and this was the first time in almost 20 years – since December 2002 – that they have been beaten twice by the same side in a single week when a Chelsea outfit, featuring Lampard on both occasions, defeated them 4-1 in the League Cup at Stamford Bridge and then 3-1 in the Premier League at Goodison Park.
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