When
the fixture list came out at the start of the season, there was one game of
special interest because it became apparent that Saints would be playing in the
last ever game at Goodison Park before Everton moved to their new stadium, and
the worst away end in the Premier League got bulldozed to the ground. The bit
about it being bulldozed to the ground was an assumption that everyone was
making until about three days ago, when Everton announced that they wouldn’t be
knocking down their old ground at all, but instead, using it as the home ground
for their women’s team, who last season had an average gate of about 2300. If they housed those 2300 people in what
passes as an away end for the men’s team presently, the women will want to be
moving back to whatever ground they are currently playing at.
It is of course very unusual for the land of an old ground to not be
redeveloped for housing, when a new ground comes along. There have been many
occasions in the past where I wish we had kept The Dell for teams blow our
first team to have played at, but mainly for nostalgia reasons. Even I can’t
bring myself to blame Rupert Lowe for not going down that route even though he
was a massive twat, however, and he still is of course.
Everton have been their usual selves this season, starting this season
dreadfully and looking like a relegation side, before rescuing themselves quite
comfortably. They thought they needed a
change of manager mid-season in order to achieve that this year, with Sean Dyche
being replaced with David Moyes, whose arrival has brought a huge upturn in
results and they could even make a late bid to finish in the top half before
moving to the Bramley Moore Dock next season. They didn’t need to replace Dyche
to survive of course, being one of the ring fenced Premier League 17, but
that’s another story.
David Moyes Everton of 2025 is much like the David Moyes Everton of 20 years
ago in that that they are physically tough and they get the ball into dangerous
areas and play the percentages effectively enough to win enough games. Playing
the percentages isn’t for everyone however and we of course, don’t do it. We
don’t get the ball or bodies into the box and it remains to be seen if we can
do so today.
Our performance last week against Manchester City might have been a blueprint
for how to play against the better sides in the league, but we are going to
need a little bit more than that today, like we needed a little bit more
against Leicester two weeks ago and totally failed to deliver. Yes, we’ll have to do some defending today
against the likes of Beto and Ndiaye, but we have to have something about us to
put some pressure on Jordan Pickford in the Everton goal. Despite the whole “Goodison not being knocked
down” thing, this is going to be a massive occasion for Everton and their fans
and there will be some nerves around so we have to play on that. We have to not
give them anything and see if they make mistakes. It’s not a lot to go on, but there is fuck
all else riding on this game apart from the fact that Saints owe their
travelling fans a performance after the shit show at Leicester last time out.
Simon Rusk hasn’t warned us during the week of any issues with any players
apart from the fact that KWP might not quite make it and sure enough he didn’t,
and nor did Jan Bednarek, who has been reported to have some issue or other. I
have a feeling that the issue with both KWP and Janny B, is that they have
moves sorted out at the end of the season and don’t want to risk anything in
what is for us anyway, a pretty meaningless game. On the one hand, I can see
their point of view but on the other hand, they are being paid to play for Southampton
and it’s not a good look.
So, team news and it’s Nathan Wood for Bednarek and Joe Aribo has been rewarded
for his decent 45 last week, with a start in place of Big Les. I’m not sure that taking the more combative
Lesley out of the starting line-up is a good thing, especially given that this
is a completely different assignment to last week. Sulemana is up front and though there is
always hope, I bet that he will be shit.
Everton immediately are the first team to show as Saints look their usual
passive selves. There is none of the intensity
of last week n display and I immediately have the feeling that our biggest
contribution to the day will be that “Everton versus Southampton” is printed on
the scarves that Everton have given to everyone as a memento of the day.
Stephens concedes an early corner to stop Coleman‘s break and when it comes in,
there’s a free volley for Mykolenko at the back post and absolute carnage in
the box with Beto taking a swing and Ramsdale having to pull off a point blank
savee to prevent us going 1-0 down in the first minute.
It doesn’t take long enough for Everton to get the party started with Ndiaye
picking up the ball on the edge of the box, lending it to O’Neil, who walks
through a challenge from Sulemana and with Ndiaye easily getting away from Aribo,
he then has all the time in the world to pass it into the corner of the net
from the edge of the box. Fucking pathetic.
It’s nearly two, a minute later as and Ndiaye finds Beto in the penalty area on
the left and he opens up his body and sidefoots wide the far post with Welington
making sure it’s going off by smashing it off for a corner with no one anywhere
near him. It’s a predictably free header for Brathwaite at the back post when
the corner comes in, but he can only put it into the side netting.
There’s a minor heart attack as a back pass to Ramsdale puts him under a bit of
pressure, but he takes too long to clear it and Beto gets a foot in, but
luckily we scramble well to save Rambo‘s embarrassment. Unbelievably, we then have an attack, and it
comes to a predictable end and Everton break and one pass later and they are
clean through our midfield, running at our defence. It goes out wide and then
into the middle and Beto slams it into the net but fortunately he is a little
bit too eager, and despite Beto‘s finger wagging at the linesman, it is clearly
offside.
Tyler Dibling is clearly getting frustrated out on the right wing and he
flattens Ndiaye and gives away a free kick which is played into the box, not
dealt with and Everton, with a series of pretty nifty one touch passes, work it
out to Ashley Young on the right and his cross is acrobatically headed into the
net by Beto but he has once again gone early and he’s offside once again.
We survive until just before half-time, whilst predictably offering fuck all in
the Everton half and then McNeil pokes a first time ball through the inside
left channel, where THB should be, and Ndiaye finds himself clean through against Ramsdale and he
jinks round him before slotting it into an empty net and finally Everton have
the second goal that they deserve. We however, are beyond embarrassing.
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Half-time and I note that our stats are zero shots at goal, an xG of 0.0 and we have had two touches in the opposition penalty area. Impressive stuff from the . Absolute shower of cunts. Everton could not have wished for better opposition to play their last game at Goodison.
The second half starts with us having made no changes because obviously, the first half performance was so good and to the amazement of everyone, it’s Everton who have the first shot with Garner being given the freedom to be able to smash it at Ramsdale from well within the penalty area but luckily, it’s straight at him and pushed away. They cross it back into the mixer and Beto is once again up above our defence but this time he heads it over. Putting the ball in the box in dangerous areas and competing for it. It will never catch on. As I’m thinking about that, Ashley Young puts in another superb delivery from the right wing and this time it’s Doucoure who goes flying in but he can’t get a clean contact on it and it’s wide for a gold kick.
On the hour mark even Simon Rusk can see that his tactical master plan for the day is not going to work and it’s triple substitution time with Smallbone, Archer and Stewart coming on for Aribo, Wood and Sulemana. It looks like we’re going to a back four in what amounts to tactical innovation.
Straight away, Stewart completes with Branthwaite in the air and it causes a bit of havoc in the Everton defence with Young accidentally hooking it across his own goal and Stewart has a chance which he gets on target but Pickford gets down well to save. With that, Rusk decides the substitutions might change things and off comes Dibling for Robinson.
With us putting a bit of pressure on, we actually win a corner which of course is crap and a chance for Everton to break, which they do and the ball eventually gets played across to Calvert-Lewin and unbelievably, Cameron Archer has tracked back seventy yards to shepherd the ball back to Ramsdale. Am I living in a fucking parallel universe or something? Genuinely, that is more distance than Archer has covered all season and it’s an absolutely brilliant bit of play but it raises more questions than answers.
Fernandes has come to life now and weaves his way past three challenges in midfield before the ball finds its way to Robinson on the right, who pisses past the full back and pulls it back into the middle where Archer connects and Pickford spreads himself to pull off a really good save and Smallbone can only hit the outside of the post with the rebound.
Smallbone then obviously decides to disregard instructions and puts an early cross into the box which Stewart meets and heads narrowly over the bar. It’s fucking amazing what happens if you put the ball in the opposition penalty area and put pressure on. Too fucking late though and on 94 minutes, the Everton party can get fully under way once the guests from down South have gone home.
Well that was absolutely shit, again. Turned up passive, conceded after five minutes, had no intensity in any area of the pitch for the next forty minutes, got lucky as Everton had two goals disallowed and then finally managed to concede a second on the stroke of half-time. All of this whilst not looking to pass forwards, let alone having any sort of effort on goal. It’s fucking embarrassing, like a limp dick in a brothel. In the second half, we did just enough not to get embarrassed as Everton went into testimonial mode and settled for their comfortable win. We were a little bit better once we made some substitutions in the second half, but he doesn’t really count for anything because for all the time that this game actually mattered, we were absolutely pathetic.
So let’s go back to the part of the game when it was still a contest. Joe Aribo was selected ahead of Big Les and after five minutes he showed his ability to lose his man, which would be great if he was attacking, but when you’re defending, it’s not great. He was the man picking up Ndiaye when he first got involved in the move in the fifth minute and he was absolutely no fucking where near him a second later when he passed the ball into the corner of the net under no pressure from anyone.
Aribo was also the victim of people not losing their man in the first half when on one occasion he picked the ball up 30 yards from goal and though Sulemana, Dibling and Fernandes were all in front of him, none of them fucking moved and so we expertly worked the ball back to the halfway line so Everton now had 11 players behind the ball. You could argue that Joe couldn’t pass it forward because there was no one moving and you could also argue that he was never going to pass the ball forward anyway because we haven’t been doing that all season, so even if someone makes a run, they aren’t getting the ball. The only reason Everton weren’t further in front was because of two goals being disallowed for offside. I’d like to say this was because of our disciplined defensive line but that would be a lie because Beto, for all his improvement this season under David Moyes, doesn’t know the offside rule but at least he’s making runs and trying to get into the danger area, unlike all the fuckers in yellow.
I used the term ‘disciplined defensive line’ in the paragraph above. The second goal happened for partly the same reasons that Leicester’s first goal happened two weeks ago. THB came bolting out of the defensive line and didn’t get the ball so there was absolute carnage in the space that he was no longer in, because once he’d bolted and achieved nothing, he was twenty yards out of position. You could argue that Ramsdale should’ve been stronger in the tackle as Ndiaye walked around him, but Ndiaye is too confident and too good to miss one on one with the keeper. Back to THB though - if you come bolting out of the defensive line, then you have to get the ball or as a backup option, you have to clatter someone to stop the game. Doing neither just absolutely fucks everyone else. Dreadful defending.
In the second half, we had the bizarre incident where Cameron Archer, raced back seventy yards to stop a counter attack, like a proper footballer would. Fair play to him - it was brilliant but why is it happening in the 37th game of a 38-game season and he’s barely been able to raise a jog for the previous 36 games? He also had our best chance and brought a decent save out of Pickford. The cynic in me would say that his agent had other teams watching him today. Ross Stewart again looked lively in his cameo but then anyone would look lively after what had gone before and at least he had a couple of shots that were saved and blocked respectively.
People will look at the performance when we changed formation and went to four at the back, and say that we should’ve started that way and they could well be right, but the point is the it doesn’t matter what formation you have if you’re going to a game with no attacking plan and you put in as little effort as we did in the first hour. The best formation and the best manager in the world won’t make any difference if you play with that little effort and that little intensity. Oh for a Francis Benali, a Jason Dodd or Matt Le Tissier to tell these feckless fucking players what it means to represent the city. Who has been driving the standards all season? No one, would be my guess. How many of those players today, actually gave a shit about the badge on the shirts and about the supporters who travelled miles for a shit kick off time to watch that gutless pathetic pile of shit, trying to masquerade as a Premier League football team. Wankers.
After the performance against Manchester City last week, which took 100% effort from everyone, it was absolutely typical that the team could not back it up because that’s what we’ve had in our last two seasons in the Premier League, a bunch of players who can do it for one game when they want to, but have absolutely nothing when it comes to the levels required to be a consistent performer in the Premier League. It’s that old thing that I’m always banging on about - how many of our players are capable of a run of three games where they play well at Premier League level? I’d love to know the responses from the players if they looked in the mirror and asked themselves honestly if they were capable of it.
Simon Rusk is in that boat – he did well last week but had another shocker today, I’m afraid. The game plan had to go out of the window as soon as we conceded the first goal but he didn’t do anything until the hour mark, and leaving it that late just highlighted the fact that we went into the game with no attacking plan whatsoever apart from maybe hoping that Sulemana could mis-control the ball in the right direction. Dibling and Fernandes need to be given the ball in the attacking half but they spend all game scrapping for it in the defensive third. Fernandes in particular, finally came down to the level of everyone else today. I forgive him for that because of his consistency so far this season.
Just the one game to go and it’ll be another backs to the wall effort against Arsenal. We’ve laughably been told that we’re not allowed a pitch invasion afterwards. Hilarious. We might get a point but it’s one of those games where I’d rather have a go and lose, than set up with no strikers and no attacking plan. Over to the Rusk / Lallana dream team to try and make it happen. I’m not expecting it.
The name of Will Still has been mentioned a lot of the media over the past couple of days as potentially being our new manager. Because this is all been doom and gloom I will finish with the joke and say that if he is given this group of players, then we will still be shit next year. Thank you very much - I will be here all week.
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