Fans Comment
Seb Gordon

We Won't Score In A...
03/04/05

Tommy G: midfield goalscorer and provider

Finish that one off for yourselves. There are two glaring problems staring us all in the face at the moment: 1) Everton simply can’t score goals and don’t look like scoring goals 2) Our previously water-tight defence is looking increasingly like the proverbial sieve.

Since Thomas Gravesen left on 14th January, Everton have scored 11 goals in 11 games. Prior to him leaving, we had scored 35 in 26. That’s an extra .35 goals a game. Over 11 games, that’s nearly 4 goals more we could reasonably expect to have scored. Continue with me into the hypothetical here and put those extra points anywhere you where you like. Whichever way you look at it, I think we’d be a minimum of 4 points better off.

I’m not going to go over old ground here, Gravesen might’ve gone totally off the boil if we’d forced him to stay. At the end of the day, he’s gone. End of story. However, the fact remains that without him, we are a much weaker team and his absence has put added pressure on the rest of the team, hence the recent problems with our defence.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is no way on this earth that Everton are going to finish 4th this season. If people haven’t already accepted it, then they must, following the dismal performance we just witnessed against West Brom, one of the worst teams in the league (say what you like about them fighting for their lives, but they’re down there for a reason - they’re rubbish).

We can’t score goals and we’re letting too many in and there is nothing to suggest that this trend won’t continue until the end of the season.

I’m not naïve enough to blame the downturn in our fortunes entirely on Thomas Gravesen leaving. The players understandably look increasingly tired and, for whatever reason, are simply not doing the things that made us so successful earlier in the season; namely taking the game to our opponents, believing for 90 minutes that we can win and playing with a dogged determination whatever the situation.

I don’t really know that this article has a point to it, other than to be incredibly negative and point out the fact that the wheels have not only fallen off our season, but that we have continued to skid head first into a big ditch. It just depresses me beyond belief that another fantastic opportunity has slipped through our grasp. There will rarely be a season when it will be so ‘easy’ to get into the Champions League.

Of course we have to look to the future and ‘think long term’. I believe that our final placing this season, and the rewards that might have gone with that, will make little difference to David Moyes’ long term blue-print for the club, other than to perhaps shave a year or two off the time scale for his ultimate ambition.

Ultimately, as a life-long Everton fan, I really believed that, for the first time in a decade, we might have something to celebrate this season. I was really excited and looking forward to it. Today, I realised that I won’t have anything to celebrate (No, I’m not going to celebrate getting into the UEFA Cup, assuming we do. It’s pants) and it’s made me very down. Still, I suppose there’s always next season….

Seb  Gordon

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