There were a lot of reasons I was pissed off about us losing at home to Forest, and while most of them are related to us and the potentially huge implications a result like that could have on our season, I’ll be honest and admit that a big part of why I was pissed off is that it stopped me from enjoying what happened to Everton.
Even now, days later, I’m not getting any joy from what happened to them at Villa. Thankfully we’ve both played since then, and while we were winning in the San Siro they were being knocked out of the League Cup by Southampton. We haven’t even entered that competition yet and they’re already out. Ashley Old missed the decisive pen, after a fan behind the goal yelled out “Come on Ashley Young you idiot” as he began his run up. If that had been my boy Maupay I’d wonder if he missed it deliberately to get his own back.
Young is actually a good dead ball specialist and it was a surprisingly shit penalty from him, so maybe he was put off by hearing that from one of their own fans. On the bright side, at least they didn’t go 2-0 up before losing this game.
I don’t think anyone expected them to get anything at Villa Park and even the most optimistic of Blues (is there even such a thing anymore?) will have been bracing themselves for another defeat. Then they went 2-0 up quite early. Even then I doubt there will have been too much expectation given what happened to them in their last game.
When I saw the scoreline I wondered just what the fuck Villa must have been doing, but as soon as they got a goal back I think we all knew how this was going to end.
I don’t think the Blues are as bad as their current record suggests though. Obviously they’re bad, but they were bad last season and still picked up plenty of points and I expect they’ll do the same again. They went 2-0 up against Bournemouth and it should have been a lot more, and they went 2-0 up at Villa which is not an easy thing to do.
Of course they shit the bed both times, but the point is if they were THAT terrible they wouldn’t have got themselves into those positions in the first place.
McNeil fired them ahead against Villa and it was all his own work. He robbed his former team-mate Onana and then drove forward and beat Martinez with a low shot across goal. It’s good from McNeil but it’s shite from Onana and it’s not great from Martinez either.
Credit to McNeil for his awareness though, he played with Onana long enough to know he’s just a big donkey who is much better without the ball than with it, and so he closed him down quickly and got his reward. I’ve taken the piss out of McNeil for years in these round ups and I stand by every word of it. What I will say is that other than Branthwaite and Pickford, he might be Everton’s best player. That says more about the rest of them than it does him, as he’s barely Premier League standard.
Calvert-Lewin got the second and I probably should have included him in the list of players better than McNeil, as he’s a good player. He’s just easy to forget because he misses two thirds of every season due to being a crock. If he wasn’t a crock he wouldn’t still be there though.
Olly Watkins finally remembered where the goal is and headed Villa back into it when he rose above the hapless Michael Keane. Everton fans have been hating on Keane for years but he still seems to find his way onto the pitch every week. When the world ends it’ll just be him and the cockroaches.
The funny thing is, the way Evertonians feel about Michael Keane is the way everyone else feels about Everton. Both turds that just won’t flush.
The Blues should have restored their two goal cushion when Calvert-Lewin ran clear but took an absolute age to make his mind up and was robbed by Konsa. That miss basically killed Everton as soon after Watkins bagged his second when he tapped in after a mistake by Harrison. They blamed Keane for that one too. Presumably his presence on the pitch caused Harrison to fuck up.
Watkins missed a sitter as Villa piled on the pressure but super sub Jhon Duran thumped one past Pickford from 30 yards to win it, although Calvert-Lewin had another great chance to equalise and rattled the underside of the bar to ensure the Blues remain bottom.
The pressure is building on Dyche, especially after their midweek cup exit, but I’ll keep saying this - they’re fucking mental if they sack him. I wouldn’t blame him if he walked though, why would you want to deal with the abuse and ridicule. One of them called him a “Scotch egg twat” this week, which while uncannily accurate and funny as fuck, seems a bit ungrateful towards a man who has kept them up two years in a row when the odds were well and truly against it.
Recommended Comments