After the disappointment of an appearance on Monday Night Football, that was redeemed only by an excellent retrospective with Duncan Ferguson, Everton grace the UK’s favourite football channel once again as part of Sky’s Super Sunday when they take on Crystal Palace at home this coming weekend.
It’s Part Two of a Hill Dickinson double-header. This should be a great springboard for Everton’s new squad to relish in the progress they are making up the Premier League table.
Instead, it’s an all-too-familiar trigger for worry and anxiety. The Toffees face a Crystal Palace side that is on an incredible 18-game unbeaten run! The latest instalment seeing them secure a splendid last-minute victory over the arch-enemy last weekend, their first of the season.
Still, Everton’s recent modus operandi (otherwise known as Plan A) has been to faff about against inferior opposition and allow them to deny us wins and points, or knock us out of competitions our players and manager have told us are the primary focus this season to finally bring us a long-missed trophy.
After demonstrating resolute Scottish stubbornness in refusing to give his fringe players meaningful involvement in his rapidly crumbling Premier League campaign by making anything like full use of his available subs, David Moyes will be forced to make at least one change to his line-up.
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall picked up his 5th yellow card of the season after a non-tackle on a West Ham player who ran across him and then threw himself theatrically to the ground, drawing a completely unwarranted free-kick.
That came after the 4th and perhaps most bizarre yellow card — for taking a free-kick too quickly — something the referee insists he had been warned about, but that would seem to countermand the Premier League’s claims about them clamping down on time-wasting.
Odds would seem to be on Tyler Dibling finally being given his Premier League full debut at Everton, but that would mean Charly Alcaraz being overlooked yet again, and he seems stuck in a self-perpetuating downward spiral where he can’t get enough playing time to show his value… because he isn’t getting enough playing time to show his value.
The other player Moyes has largely ignored, and whose game has also gone rapidly downhill, is Dwight McNeil — another catalyst for debate about cause and effect in terms of poor performance: the chicken or the egg?
But the clear message reinforced in so many games so far this season is that Moyes does not trust his subs, which means he is reluctant to bring them on, even though the game may be screaming for a change. It’s either that or he’s so inflexible with his starting formation and Plan A that he refuses to countenance change until it is far too late.
The only position he seems ‘happy’ to change — and ‘happy’ is certainly the wrong word — is that of the hapless centre-forward, with Beto and Barry successfully battling it out with each other in the race to be Everton’s worst striker. With no clear winner, many have suggested a change of formation is needed.
This could see the skilful attacking players pushed up as a front three without a totemic target man, and encouraged to make killer interpasses both more quickly and further up the field in an effort to create sharper chances that are sadly going the way of hen’s teeth in the current increasingly stagnant set-up.
Whatever happens, next weekend is yet another instalment in the unenviable lives of Evertonians who stll faithfully follow the misfortunes of our faltering heroes in The Greatest League on Earth