Arsenal v Everton: what have the opposition been-a-doing of late?

By Billy “the Dog” McGraw.  Senior psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road.

If everything wasn’t going swimmingly for Everton this season, they were at least keeping their head above water… until the last game…

Date	Match	Res	Score	Competition
11 Aug 2018	Wolverhampton W v Everton	D	2-2	Premier League
18 Aug 2018	Everton v Southampton	W	2-1	Premier League
25 Aug 2018	AFC Bournemouth v Everton	D	2-2	Premier League
29 Aug 2018	Everton v Rotherham United	W	3-1	League Cup
01 Sep 2018	Everton v Huddersfield Town	D	1-1	Premier League
16 Sep 2018	Everton v West Ham United	L	1-3	Premier League

Two wins three draws, although when we look at this, one of the wins was against Rotherham and both were at home.   They have just played two away games thus far – both of them draws.

So what went wrong with the most recent of their games against the otherwise hopeless State Aid United?  Everton were two down in half an hour – which makes a comeback that bit harder.

And there is one of those interesting runs of coincidence which not only worked in WHU’s favour but might also help us: Everton have won just one of their last 13 Premier League games played on a Sunday.  They have lost ten.

And they like to change managers too.  David Moyes left for Manchester United, and in came FA Cup winner Roberto Martinez from Wigan.   Then he went to Belgium and in came Ronald Koeman who nipped out and spent £54m in the twinkling of an eye.  And then some more.  And then he spent some more still, until after about nine weeks Everton were looking ready for relegation.  We then beat them, and off went the manager.

Then there was the Allerdyce (surely they were not serious) and now Marco Silva.

In short their history over the last five seasons has not been that of a club seriously challenging for a place at the top table.  5th, 7th, 8th and 11th twice.  Two cup semi-finals.  One player with over 20 goals in the league in a season.

Year	P	W	D	L	GD	Pts	Pos	FAC	LgeC	Europa	Lge scorer
2013/4	38	21	9	8	+22	72	5	R6	R3		Lukaku (15)
2014/5	38	12	11	15	-2	47	11	R3	R3	R of 16	Lukaku (10)
2015/6	38	11	14	13	+4	47	11	SF	SF		Lukaku (18)
2016/7	38	17	10	11	+18	61	7	R3	R3		Lukaku (25)
2017/8	38	13	10	15	-14	49	8	R3	R4	Group	Rooney (10)

And yet despite all this they are building a new stadium with support from their local council (if the deal goes bad the council start helping out.  It’s a good job we are leaving the EU, otherwise that would be frowned upon).  Anyway I am sure local tax payers are very happy with the explanation given.

What made my contemplation of Everton’s problems particularly interesting (to me if not to anyone else) is the fact that when I typed in “What is going wrong with Everton” I found not articles from this season, but from various other seasons.

• What is wrong with the Everton Players – You Tube March 2018
• What went wrong at Everton? – Sportskeeda Feb 2018
• Where has it gone wrong for Everton? Sky Sports  Jan 2018
• Everton: what has gone wrong? – The Telegraph Oct 2017
• What’s going wrong at Koeman’s Everton side this season? – Daily Mail  Oct 2017

Google even has “Images for what is wrong with Everton“

Everton spent a net £68m this summer bringing in

• Richarlison, Winger — from Watford, £40m
• Lucas Digne, Defender — from Barcelona, £18m
• João Virginia, Goalkeeper — from Arsenal, undisclosed
• Bernard, Winger — from Shakhtar Donetsk, free,
• André Gomes, Midfielder — from Barcelona, loan
• Yerry Mina, Defender — from Barcelona, £27m
• Kurt Zouma, Defender — from Chelsea, loan

and this countered by a couple of sales particularly Klaassen who went for £12m to Werder Bremen.

Their last trophy was the FA Cup in 1995, and this might be their problem – the psychological belief that they are a big team, or at least a team that deserves to be seen as big, but without a trophy to show in 23 years.  This compares with Tottenham who won the league cup in 2008.  But if we exclude that cup as being rather a small trophy that doesn’t always involve the first team, Tottenham go back to 1991.  Liverpool won the FA Cup in 2006.  So Everton can take home the thought that in terms of trophies they are not quite as bad as Tottenham in recent years.

But this seems to me to bring a psychological pressure on the club – clubs which used to win things quite a lot not picking up too much of late, but feeling they ought.   At least with Arsenal that expectation is diminished by the media who so persistently call the club’s players woeful and inadequate, while endlessly saying the the club’s manager is buying the wrong players in the first place.  Thus no one in their right mind would expect us to win a thing.  (We won the FA Cup in 2017 for a record 13 times).

So for this one I rather think psychology is on our side.   If recent years are much to go by the pyrotechnics will be on Everton’s side.  Let’s hope the stewards are up to the task of handling the situation.

 

• The interesting story of the construction work at New White Hart Lane
• Vorskla, the road trip: mostly fun except for the road, plus it’s tough breaking the law
• It is sad that journalists don’t have a clue what support is about; but it’s their loss, not ours.