At what point do you write a season off?

At what point do you write a season off…..when you think the players look like they have? When you start to think Europe is finally beyond your team? When you get knocked out of all cup competitions? For the second time in a week Everton drew 2-2, yet this time they were at home and could consider themselves very lucky to come away with anything at all.

After the derby, the players, manager and fans were justified in feeling a little hard done by after getting their noses in front at Anfield, this weekend though it was a completely different matter. A hard working West Ham team who are propping up the rest of the top flight came to Goodison and made it difficult for anybody not aware of their respective league placings, to decipher which one of the teams was actually bottom of the league before kick off.

David Moyes stuck with the team which had performed valiantly in the derby, in the second half anyway and was rewarded with a limp, flaccid and impotent performance from his team. Note the descriptive words used in that last sentence, very apt I’m sure you’ll agree for the gang of lifeless pricks they did well to impersonate on Saturday afternoon.

Jonathan Spector had put the visitors ahead mid way through the first half, with a smooth attacking break from the edge of Everton’s penalty area. There was a depressing inevitability about it all as the toffee’s snatched and rushed a handful of early opportunities down the other end of the field. The Irons were unfortunate not to double their lead only minutes later when Piquionne hit the post with a header, then he had to watch the ball roll excruciatingly along Tim Howards goal line and out of play. Pull your fu***ng fingers out Blues.

Scott Parker as initially first feared came and dominated a midfield using industry and guile in equal measure. The type of purposeful display you expect from a certain Basque professional football player who has not been seen in L4 for nigh on 6 months now. Worrying really, considering he is the highest paid employee of Everton Football Club.

Ringing the changes in the second half David Moyes brought on Louis Saha for Jermaine Beckford and Bilyaletdinov for the slothful Anichebe. The question needs to be asked that if Saha was fit enough for the bench, would he not have been fit enough to start, then removed once goosed, for a big bully of a player(ha!) like Anichebe, to come on to finish the job? Maybe he was rewarding them collectively for drawing a derby, who knows? The changes seemed to have done the trick however when Fellaini, now playing as the second striker, nodded the ball down for ”that Russian” to web in the equaliser with his weaker right peg.

The big push for the win never really materialised though, when in a bonkers last 15 minutes, West Ham pretty much sauntered up the other end, Scott Parker and Wayne Bridge combining beautifully to whip in a cross, which Piquionne did very well to flick home with not long left on the clock. The big daft get, who’d just been booked for kicking out at Bily a minute earlier, then decided to whip off his shirt and crowd surf with a gang of delirious east enders in the Bullens Road. ”Yaw orf moi san…”.

Using the one man advantage, Everton pushed and probed manically at the visitors box with a flurry of high balls punted up to the imperious big haired Belgian lad. This was our most promising period of play according to Moyes, a record signing, lanky 6ft + midfielder being forced up front to conjure up scraps for his colleagues to feed off. As it was, he ended up doing it all himself, wonder how long he’ll enjoy doing that for? Latching onto one of his own knock downs, he managed to barge past two defenders and swept in a late, late, extremely fortuitous equaliser.

So as we sit here furiously picking the bones out of what constitutes another missed opportunity at home to a team you would expect to get all three points from, and a season which as each game goes by seems to get harder and harder to stomach given the frenzied pre season optimism. Moyes and his merry men are off to Tenerife or Lanzarote  to sun themselves for a week, hopefully for a bit of inspirational Karaoke. Wonder how much that’s costing a club which seemingly cant afford even one loan signing?

Juice_Terry

www.juiceterryjournolism.blogspot.com