Unfortunately Everton have travelled about as well as Guinness in recent times but if the Blues want to be raising a glass to toast Premier League survival this season then chances are they going to have to buck their ideas up on the road.
League matches against Fulham used to be Everton’s biggest home banker – between 1961-2018 they won 21 in a row at Goodison Park – but last Saturday’s 3-1 defeat to a Marco Silva side who had lost their previous five has left the Blues’ top-flight status in the balance. With seven games remaining – four of which are away – only goal difference is currently keeping Sean Dyche’s men out of the bottom three as they bid to avoid what would be the club’s first relegation in 72 years.
In order to avoid the drop, it looks like Everton are now going to have to secure results on their travels. They have a massive-looking ‘six-pointer’ at second-bottom Leicester City on May 1, but before then there is also the trip to Crystal Palace this Saturday to tackle a side who have expunged their own slide toward danger with a hat-trick of wins under Croydon’s very own Methuselah of managers, Roy Hodgson, now less than four months shy of his 76th birthday. With the Eagles now looking safe, the Blues ‘should’ want this more. But the same could have been said when the Cottagers came to Goodison with manager Silva banished to the stands and top scorer Aleksandar Mitrovic suspended. However, it was the hosts, who in the words of Dyche himself, looked “lackadaisical” rather than the visitors ‘having their flip-flops on’.
