For the first time in the club’s history, Everton changed their entire team for a League Cup tie and were unceremoniously dumped out of the competition with a 4-1 thrashing by a mostly second string Bournemouth side which begs the question, if they’re prepared to just toss away one of their two realistic opportunities for silverware, what exactly is the Blues’ raison d’etre in English football right now?
Let’s get this into context, Frank Lampard is the club’s most-popular and in tune manager for several years and deserves the time and support to turn things around, but he chose to name an entirely different 11 to the one that had started the Premier League game against Leicester City on Saturday evening for an away Carabao Cup tie against a fellow top flight opponent.
That is too many. Far too many, and so it was borne out with the result as Everton were handed a humiliating battering at the same ground they will now return to in just three days’ time for a crucial Premier League fixture.
Lampard might cite the importance of that forthcoming fixture as the reason behind swapping the whole team as the Blues go into that game just one point and one place above Bournemouth in the table, and a mere two points clear of Southampton in the relegation zone as the managerless Saints travel to Anfield in the final round of matches before the unprecedented situation of a mid-season World Cup break. This unique scenario has placed extra emphasis on the current situation because when it comes to ‘pass-the parcel’ in a congested bottom half of the table, nobody wants to be in or around the bottom three when the music stops and there’s nothing you can do about it until Boxing Day.
The League Cup – infamously the only major domestic competition that Everton have never won – has long been a trail of tears for the Blues with a string of painful exits to lower division opponents over the years, but while it made those losses even more painful, it wasn’t for the want of trying as the team would always have at least some regulars in it. Everton have never gone whole hog though and changed the lot.
The closest they previously came was when Ronald Koeman made 10 changes for a home tie against second tier Sunderland in 2017, which the Blues won 3-0. Lampard himself only made seven changes at League One Fleetwood Town in the previous round to the line-up that had started at home to Nottingham Forest in the Premier League three days earlier.
It’s like Everton don’t learn from the lessons of history though. Last season, Lampard’s predecessor Rafael Benitez made five changes for a third round tie at Championship Queens Park Rangers but even that proved too many as his side were beaten on penalties.
Some fans remarked that the Blues were so bad against Leicester City last weekend when they arguably produced their worst display of the season that none of them deserved to keep their place but while the idea that their under-performing stars were all dropped is an interesting take, that’s obviously not the case. In Lampard’s defence, there were at least three enforced changes with Idrissa Gueye, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Amadou Onana all picking up injuries against the Foxes that forced them off but beyond that, these were all alterations by choice.
You could also argue that Nathan Patterson and Anthony Gordon are in essence first team regulars while Abdoulaye Doucoure, Michael Keane and Yerry Mina (on the all-too-rare occasions that he was fit) were last season, and the likes of Asmir Begovic, Mason Holgate, Tom Davies and Neal Maupay all have plenty of top flight experience under their belts, but the truth is when they were all put together cold in this situation, they could not gel. Given that Bournemouth themselves made nine changes, it’s also been claimed by some – including Lampard – that this Everton team should have had enough about them to still win the tie but the fact that they didn’t has only given Gary O’Neil’s side a timely boost ahead of heading back down to the Vitality Stadium and doing it all again on Saturday.
But just what was everyone taken out of the side being saved for anyway? Obviously not the money-spinning trip Down Under to the Sydney Super Cup! Jordan Pickford is the only one likely to be going to the World Cup and goalkeepers don’t need to be rested.
Could the rest of them really not manage three games in a week? When Everton last had a midweek game, Lampard made just two changes for the trip to Newcastle United after Tottenham Hotspur then named an unchanged side for the home game with Crystal Palace.
The next round of Carabao Cup fixtures will be played in the midweek before the Premier League returns on December 26 and Lampard has already stated that his team are set to be playing behind-closed-doors friendlies in this period to regain sharpness. Surely with no European football, this squad could have coped with the burden of half a dozen extra fixtures if it climaxed with a place in the final.
The Blues also seem to have developed an infuriating habit in recent times of giving opponents who find themselves in the doldrums, a much-needed ‘pick-me-up’ and this was no different. Bournemouth went into the game on the back of four consecutive defeats, including the morale-sapping 4-3 loss at Leeds United in their previous fixture when they had thrown away a 3-1 lead at Elland Road. Now they’ve stopped the rot though and 32-year-old Junior Stanislas, who broke Evertonian hearts with his 98th minute equaliser in the dramatic 3-3 draw at the Vitality Stadium back in 2015 but who had been without a goal since netting against Sheffield Wednesday in the Championship 21 months ago, has now ended his scoring drought.
There has been fierce debate among Everton supporters whether it was right to dismiss an early Carabao Cup exit like this as collateral damage given that Premier League survival remains the priority again, a mere six months after the team survived a disgustingly near miss to what would have been their first relegation for 71 years with the joint-lowest equivalent points total in their history but football, certainly for clubs of the Blues’ stature, should be about the pursuit of glory.
Those who have been duped and browbeaten into believing that merely staying up is a worthwhile existence should remind themselves as to what ‘Nil Satis Nisi Optimum’ actually means. Frank Lampard, as one of the few people in the game to possess a GCSE in Latin knows and he also knows the importance of winning trophies like this, having collected 11 major honours as a player with Chelsea.
It’s often said that the darkest hour is just before dawn and that proved to be the case in the season after Everton’s ‘Great Escape’ when they came from 2-0 down to defeat Wimbledon in 1994 as the following season they lifted the FA Cup for their last time to date. The closest they’ve come to adding to that since was of course when Lampard scored the winner against them in the 2009 final.
As the only founder members of both the Football League in 1888 and Premier League in 1992 who remain ever-presents in the latter, Everton have won trophies across nine different decades, a feat that only neighbours Liverpool and Manchester United can top in English football, but are currently enduring their longest-ever silverware drought which will soon extend into a 28th year. While proud Evertonians might begrudgingly accept that unless there is a major change within the game’s financial landscape, a 10th league title won’t be arriving any time soon, should they really be seen to be ‘giving up’ on either of their two avenues of winning something?
Plenty of ignorant outsiders talk down Everton’s achievements and expectations, they shouldn’t become guilty of doing that themselves. Many mocked Blues fans for celebrating wildly after defeating Crystal Palace in May but such occasions are going to be the only big games they get if they can’t make it to Wembley, so just what are they playing for these days?
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