We should have really had fourth as good as sown up by now. Arsenal have been terrible, as have the RS, the fact that we haven't pulled away from them despite playing well is worrying. Mind you, it beats floating around 16th waiting for the 1st of January to kick start our season.

Maybe the trend of strong second half finishes will continue; if we do what we did last year, we'll certainly be in with a shout. Champions League contention seemed light-years off this time last year so perhaps we should just enjoy it whilst it lasts.... even though I know we'll probably cock it up and help crown King Brendan.

This is a great season for several clubs to make the leap into that 'elite' club. Only the two Manchester clubs look nailed on to finish in the Champions League places. Arsenal, Chelsea, RS and Spurs all look distinctly wobbly and have coaches under major pressure. If we don't take 4th or even 3rd this year then we may live to regret it for years to come if those clubs give themselves a good kick up the arse this summer.

Hate to piss on your chips but have you taken a real hard look at that Premier League Table?

Four points cover NINE teams including us... A couple of bad results and we could be right down in the bottom half, with someone else in 4th place.

Keep it real: 4th does not become a Champions League place until the very last day of the season.

Hope Chelsea get pulled back into the scramble but they have some very good players and looked pretty tasty in demolishing the Mexican champions Monterrey today.

Otherwise 4th is up for grabs. Spurs and Arsenal will be thereabouts and dare I say the RS are sitting high in the form table. Stating the obvious here but we really need to stay in the hunt, turn a few of those draws into wins and stay hard to beat. Long way to go yet.

Actually Michael, I'd go further and say 4th doesn't become a Champions League place until successfully negotiating the qualification play off the following season.

Pedantic? Maybe, but having finished fourth and then bounced out of both European competitions in quick succession in 2005-06, we got the square root of fuck all out of it financially.

If Arsenal finish outside the top 4 and win the Champions League the whole thing is irrelevant. Stranger things have happened...

Michael is right, its too tight at this stage and I just wouldn't write off Liverpool, they are stringing some good results and performances together and have had a tougher set of fixtures than us to date.

Also Spurs played well last Saturday and dominated play for some time in the 2nd half – also without Bale.

Arsenal seemed to be doomed... I can't find a supportive word for their season to date.

You make a worthy point about the bastard offspring upstarts from across the park, Mike. I was convinced they had been creeping up on us in stealth mode and was really surprised to find that the four-point gap has been pretty consistent since early in the season. I think it grew to six at one stage but I thought it must have been at least 10 and was a tad disappointed to see that we'd never left them in the dust, so to speak.

Not that I care a jot, of course...

As Michael has already pointed out, the reason for despondency is that we are merely in 4th place, while sat precariously on top of a large group of teams on similar points. Were it not for a catalogue of injustices (to which no impartial observer could disagree upon suitable investigation) we would possibly be holding back Man City as we sat in second!

Were we in that position, I don't think any Evertonian would realistically expect the season to finish that way. However, they would gladly take a slip of a place or two should we go on a poor run. Right now we are holding on to that last spot by the skin of our teeth with no room for manoeuvre and I only see one direction for us to move by a place or two unless 'things even themselves out over a season' [deliberate sarcasm]...

Fortunately, a drop in our standards has still kept up a good points ratio where many competitors are playing beyond their potential. This bodes well as we have more room for improvement.

Quite frankly I'm worried Liverpool are not the joke we were hoping for this season. They may not be much in playing talent but with so much history (or expectation bordering on delusion) bleeding from the walls of Anfield will transcend itself to the players.

We're always told Alex Ferguson is a Great, but who the hell are most of their players? Johnny Evans et al are quite average but success breeds success. We were obviously lacking in the mentality stakes at kick off against the RS and we'll remain that way until something, anything, is lofted high.

What is good, is that even with our best players missing we have been just about able to cover, even if the result was too many draws.
Oviedo, Naismith, Coleman, Hitzlegerman, even Neville in for Gibson, have covered well enough and January should see some quality come in.

Will be a kick to the nuts if we're on channel 5 next season as it may well take another 7 years to mount a 4th spot challenge.

I wasn't expecting Everton to be in 4th at the start of the season and would have settled for top half, but playing attractive football.

I'm sure we are capable of achieving a top 4 place and possibly higher, although I agree that Chelsea have started to improve. But the main worry is the Dark Side, they never ever seem to be more than 2 games away from the top 4 no matter how badly they are playing in any given season.

I want those results against Arsenal and Spurs to benefit Everton and get us into the CL places and that is why those results against Fulham, Reading and Norwich are so painful

If we are to fail to qualify in 4th I hope some other team Spurs , Arsenal or WBA go on a run and ensure that the DS don't get anywhere near it.

COYB you can do it!

The tightest season for 4th spot in the PL I can remember. I can't see Arsenal & the RS having another poor season together in the near future. Spurs will be in the mix, and possibly a surprise package such as Swansea or WBA.

This maybe our best chance to gatecrash the CL gravy train, but as Matt points out, we could face an extremely difficult qualifying stage opponent.

Isn't modern day football shite when we are all dreaming of 4th?

If you think this feel strange, you don't remember '85.

I don't think Champions League will bring us massive spending money, even if we do make the league stage. We don't have the facilities to capitalise financially like others do. £10 - 20 milion perhaps? Enough to fund 2 or 3 players of the calibre needed to give us a chance.

All I want, because repetitive qualification will be beyond a club with our fiscal might, is just one season where we play great European sides and maybe a trip to the Bernabau. Just once.

I wrote this melodramatic nonsense back in '09.

http://www.toffeeweb.com/season/08-09/comment/fan/10624.html

Perhaps we're better than we think we are, rather than expecting Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham to get better as we get worse, perhaps we all are really at this level. If anything it is us and Arsenal that have a history of good second half form whilst Liverpool and Tottenham are prone to a collapse.

Liverpool have played top teams but haven't won against any of them and most of them have been at home. Anything could happen between now and the end, Suarez could get injured, Gibson could again, Dembele could, who knows who will buy what in January? Lets just be thankful for once we're in (actually at the head) of the jostling pack.

P R E M A T U R E

All this taddle about 4th place - why 4th.?

There is half a season to go and look where we've been up-down- up -??

Stoke are up next then Wigan and then I think we play Chelsea - after that we'll see about $ place . Fingers crossed!!

i would say let's just enjoy how our season has been for the few months it has run so far .. it's a long way till May... and to Wembley (he hopes).

The fact that we are 4th at the moment puts us in a position to improve. Who is bothered with any other team's performances... it's our results that matter – not the RS or anybody else...

And Bob, I think we have West Ham in between the Stoke and Wigan games....

I don't bother watching other teams on Sky or MotD too much, but I watch all of our games either at the match or live on telly. The best team I've seen this season is Everton. We should set about winning the League and treat 4th place as a very poor consolation prize rather than a target.

Keiron, I am hoping you are a lot younger than me but my expectations were that we would always be there or there a bouts. Then the dreaded Premier League was formed and although our club was instrumental in it's conception we where not ready for it. Then Abramovich came and upset the applecart.

Even in the dreaded late 70s early 80s we were still considered to be top six. By the way Man Utd struggled to be there then. So take it from me, you are part of something big and you have to earn in life what you get back.

Its probably because we are not used to looking down on the RS that we worry too much.
They are no different to us in that they depend on just a few match winners.
I do not wish ill luck on anyone but injury or a drop in form can hit them harder than it would us.

@Peter Mills #921 -
Easy now Peter that's not how things are done on this forum!

Touché, Lewis!

Paul @938, I'm 38. Old enough to be aware of what the 80's were about but just too young to have really enjoyed them.

I wrote the piece yesterday a little bit tongue in cheek. If I'm being serious, I think we should be happy to still be in fourth, considering the results and missed opportunities. James @ 916 is right. Perhaps we should think that we aren't as bad as we fear and that the other teams aren't that good. We have a fully fit squad just as we come into the busy Christmas period and some of the teams around us are sure to be playing each other. I think they will drop points and we will continue to pick up points.

Part of what makes big clubs tick is that the history and winning mentality gets absorbed by the players, this helps to make the suqad greater than the sum of it's parts. Utd's squad is piss poor by their standards in recent years yet look how well they did in the league last year. They are six points clear at the moment. The same with Liverpool. As much as it galls me, what the club thinks it stands for in terms of history and tradition will be absorbed by the players. This season their squad is piss poor, yet they are not as far off the pace as anybody expected or we would have hoped for. If you look at City, it is something the club and the squad seems to be badly missing, dispite their squad of galacticos. Maybe this is something that needs to be developed at Everton. I spoke about fans not nbeing as confident as we should be this season. Maybe this is something we should all look to develop. We are Everton, with a proud and distinguished history.

The gamechanger is not Everton finishing 4th and what we do with it in 2013/4, but our finish keeping Arsenal, RS or even Chelsea out of CL, setting them on a slippery slope downwards financially. That's what will even things up and give us a chance longer term.

Michael #982, Arsenal have £135m cash-at-hand, Chelsea won't struggle financially. I think RS would, as much of their much-vaunted commercial deals have substantial portions of the revenue tied up with "success" (being CL qualification, with the increased brand exposure etc.).

Of course what could make a difference is if Arsenal fail to qualify for CL, their annual exodus of 1-2 players would become a stampede.

To be honest, part of me thinks if we finished 4th, and even got into the group stages, the only thing we'd do is ensure another decade of this board as their selling price would increase beyond the ludicrous.

Michael 982 - spot on. Not getting CL hits the clubs that depend on its pocket and status. If Arsenal don't get it they might not just lose a few players they could lose the best manger in their history, bar probably Chapman. The longer LFC stay out of it the more unstable they'll become and the same would be for Man Utd, City or Chelsea. If we can keep any of them out of it the better our prospects get.

How long will Mike Ashley keep pumping money into Newcastle if there is no CL money coming in? The same would go for Spurs. They spent big over the last couple of seasons and when they did not make the CL for this season, a number of their better players were let go to other clubs. The Liverpool Board are the same. While they have a decent transfer budget, you get the impression that the manager will still be expected to sell to raise funds. For us, this is another positive spin off from us qualifying for the CL.

As much as it is painful to say, our fate really is tied up with Liverpools.

If Chelsea miss out on CL then so what they just go and buy who they like and most top players will realise they may only be out of it for on season. Similarly with Arsenal they have so much cash at hand and players like Wilshere would probably stay for a season or two even without it.

For Liverpool, and to a lesser extent Tottenham, the longer they are out of it the harder it is for them to get back in and the more chances we will have to do it. Suarez will not stick around without CL. Their owners won't keep investing without CL. Eventually Gerrard will retire and they will find themselves as nothing more than a decent midtable team very soon. If they get back in however, then in one season the money will be there for top players who want to play for them. We'll then have to wait for another decline before we ever get another shot. It really has to be this year we get it.

If we want to qualify for the Champions League we need to improve in two areas:

1. We need to be putting average teams like Stoke at the weekend to the sword; and
2. We need to be scoring in games when we have the upper hand.

The biggest problem seems to be a lack of scoring when we are on top. No teams dominate for all of 90 minutes, even when we've been playing very well and should 3 up, we normally only have a 1 goal advantage and the opposition are often nicking one.

Is this bad luck, or a lack of finishing? One of the pundits recently said Everton were likely to give a team a right hiding soon, but it hasn't happened.

Mike is dead right, the league below Man Utd is very tight and only a couple of wins or defeats away from totally changing the situation. We have drawn (not lost) for ages and if we can change a couple of draws into victories then we will be in the top four melting pot.

None of the teams above us are playing that well, even Man Utd are scrambling wins rather than playing teams off the field. The league title is being gifted to Man Utd at the moment due to the inadequacies of the challengers.

I've just seen that Mirallas is out for weeks and Hibbo needs an operation on his calf injury. Our squad is really stretched to almost breaking point which makes it a matter of priority to let Moyesie have some real dosh to be able to sustain our challenge.

Staying in the PL this season will be off greater importance than ever before because of the amount of revenue from TV deals each club will receive. I believe one of the reasons for staying in the league is that many teams are setting themselves up just to not get beat and pick up a point hence the reason why there have been so many draws than ever before. I can't remember a season where, so far there have been this many draws. It must be a first in the PL campaign.

I still believe Arsenal have the capabilities to go on a run of 5/6 games and win, assuming they spend heavily in Jan, I still think they will finish in the top 4. I don't predict we will lose many games between now and the end of the season but I think we will end up drawing about 15/16 games in total which I don't believe will be good enough to finish 4th. Top 6 still represents a good season.

Watching todays games was like watching paint dry. Spurs and Swansea played really slowly and carefully. West Ham and West Brom was rubbish to watch. Only Man Utd don't draw, they either win or lose. They have actually lost more games than we have, but they are adventurous and put teams under pressure.

It really does appear to me that the priority of the vast majority of teams is staying in the league. Ambition is left to just two or three teams. We are becoming as bad as the SFA and its diminishing the league title as a genuine competition.

Something should be done to make the playing fields more equal as its a foregone conclusion that the title will remain in Manchester. The old first division was much harder to win and the title was shared by teams without huge money as an advantage.

I agree with you Trevor.
The current crop of teams in the Prem. are quite happy to survive because they know that's where the big revenue is.
Sadly the quality of entertainment has declined because of most teams playing this 4-5-1 or 3-5-2 formation even at home. To this end I would say the quality of the teams in the Prem.has also declined. I turned the Spurs game off as it was so boring.
Watching 30-40 passes from a team in their own half is not eye-catching.
The pressure on the teams and managers near the bottom must be tremendous as dropping down would be a financial disaster.
As mentioned the points difference between 4th and lower down is not much and any team that can get on a winning run of 3 or 4 games can be really in the hunt for European places.
Would be nice if that team was Everton but it seems unlikely at the moment.

Can't be much of an Everton fan if you don't know what position we're in!