Past master
Almost a decade on from his departure, David Moyes remains by far the most-successful manager of Everton in the Premier League so there was an added poignancy to his presence here as the Blues sunk to a new low. Indeed, it was only when Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins netted the only goal of the game over 100 miles away in Southampton that this result did not condemn Everton to the bottom of the table.
When Rafael Benitez was sacked as Everton manager 53 weeks ago, it was not because of his previous employment across Stanley Park but rather a run of results that chairman Bill Kenwright would later describe as being “unacceptably disappointing.” The former Liverpool boss had won just one of his last 13 Premier League games, a sequence that included nine defeats.
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Frank Lampard has now won just one of his last 14 games in all competitions, a run that includes 11 losses – his Spanish predecessor actually had a second victory in his latter days through an extra time FA Cup success at Hull City – and perhaps the most-concerning thing about this collapse has been the opponents who have vanquished them.
Leicester City, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Southampton and now West Ham United were all clubs in the bottom three while Bournemouth (twice in four days for an aggregate score of 7-1 with their only victories in their last 13 matches) were one place above the drop zone at the time. Reports had been circulating from the capital that Moyes would be out of a job if he lost this game but while he was dismissed by Manchester United within 48 hours of a 2-0 defeat on his first return to Goodison Park back in 2014, after over two decades’ of experience in the Premier League, his pedigree displays great staying power.
There was of course a relegation with Sunderland in 2017 but a manager who started with the Blues when he was just 38 and little older than some of his players and still operating in world football’s toughest division three months shy of his 60th birthday gets much more right than he gets wrong to survive. Before the current campaign, Moyes had been in charge of Everton’s joint-lowest points haul at the halfway mark of a Premier League season in 2005/06 but then steered his side to twice as many points in the second half and the relative comfort of an 11th place finish.
Lampard is an articulate and intelligent man who was one of the Premier League’s all-time greats as a player, but for all his insistence that he came into this job with Everton struggling to stay up, the fact remains that results have only got worse under his tenure. Moyes magnanimously claimed that his side played no better here than in many of their recent matches but the difference was they scored the goals, but the Blues offered their loyal but long-suffering supporters very few crumbs of comfort that they are capable of turning this situation around without significant change.
A team in trouble
Other than a six-minute capitulation early in the second half at home to Brighton & Hove Albion when they conceded three times, Everton aren’t getting spanked but week in, week out, they’re just not doing enough in Premier League matches and once again they meekly surrendered.
If you’re going to go down – then go down fighting – but rather than this being a blood and thunder scrap between a couple of battlers, it ended up being something of a routine stroll for the hosts. The Blues seem bereft of ideas in all areas of the pitch.
With just one goal in 11 games so far this season, centre-forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin is enduring his worst scoring run since 2016/17, his breakthrough season in the Premier League and still looks a shell of the dominant number nine who struck 21 times as recently as 2020/21. It’s no surprise though as along with a string of injury problems, now that Everton’s main goal threat is on the field, the service to him is almost non-existent with players like Dwight McNeil, surely brought to Goodison Park for £20million to provide a supply line of crosses, starting on the bench and then commandeered into mostly defensive duties at wing back.
Hopes were high that Idrissa Gueye would be able to carry on where left off after three years at Paris Saint-Germain but the second coming of Everton’s latest Prodigal Son has not paid off. It was envisaged that the Senegalese international could dovetail alongside Amadou Onana in the engine room to help his talented but inexperienced partner develop but the senior pro has too often found himself caught out and at 33 appears unable to replicate the all-action game that once made him so effective.
An extra man at the back should also be giving Lampard’s side extra solidity but what started as a solid core early on in the season is now creaking, regardless of the personnel. It all adds up to a sorry mix and options off the bench are having minimal impact either in what is a team that just isn’t working.
Solid Gold
While travelling Evertonians continued to vent their anger over Goodison Park’s power brokers with more banners protesting about owner Farhad Moshiri and the board of directors, this was a day for West Ham United to pay tribute to what the match programme described as their “beloved joint chairman David Gold” who passed away earlier this month aged 86. A lifelong Hammers fan, he grew up at 442 Green Street (a great footballing address), directly opposite the Boleyn Ground.
Although the Irons will always maintain the East End roots from which Gold and so many of their fanbase originate from, the relocation to the former Olympic Stadium has changed their club forever and they now look – if not feel – a very different entity. The tributes before kick-off, including music, a montage video and floral tributes from former captain turned sporting director Mark Noble, joined on the pitch by members of Gold’s family, seemed heartfelt though to one of their own.
Everton supporters are right to be furious to see the club that has spent the most seasons in the top flight of English football (120, some 11 more than closest challengers Aston Villa) and the only founder members of both the Football League in 1888 and Premier League in 1992 to be ever-presents in the latter, in such a sorry state and on course for a first relegation in 72 years but even if they’re ultimately successful in removing those currently at the top, who will fill the void? Nobody appears to be queuing up to step in and if they did find a new owner, it seems highly unlikely to be a Scouse version of Gold.
London Stadium might be big but it’s not beautiful or even built for football and that’s where Everton can have a massive edge once their own new home on the banks of the Mersey is complete. But going down will only bring more question marks over the funding of that project and the thought of the Blues moving there from Goodison as anything over than a Premier League club is not just abhorrent but totally unacceptable given their resources.
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