Oh Everton, I was hoping against hope I’d be writing an upbeat and positive report on our trip to the Emirates.
Instead, I feel like I could have written the same report for 90% of our matches this season.
I’m afraid I can’t sugar coat this, we are well and truly in the brown stuff.
Arsenal 2 Everton 0: Blues Malaise Continues At The Emirates
By @Markthablue
Lots of possession is OK but absolutely pointless if you’re just going to knock it between midfield and defence. We may as well have had 10% possession and have been positive than this turgid football which has sadly been a feature all season long.
Two shots on target is poor for any team, one win in 11 is asking for trouble and that is what we are going to get if our manager continues down this extremely negative path.
I also think the players need a spine or two if we are to avoid the unthinkable in May.
This path is only leading one way currently and it may well result in the football league show doing somersaults about our impending arrival next season. We have got to show more pride, this is Everton Football Club!!
I’m sick to death of us going down without a fight. We barely laid a glove on a below par Arsenal side in a game we never believed we could win. The Everton who turned on a Barcelona-esq performance at the Emirates last season have long since vanished. We are unrecognisable and the players and the manager deservedly take most of the blame.
Six wins in 27 games is atrocious. It’s form that is now propelling us head first into a relegation battle. What exactly do we have to combat this?
A manager who has not learned from his mistakes all season and players who, for want of a better word, need a backbone. Combine this, along with the continued lack of drive and a plan B in the boardroom, and we have a club fast heading in the wrong direction.
How many more times have I got to say this? We have got to start winning games. We look like a team who has had all its confidence shaken from us like a bully has held us up by our legs in the playground. Just where is the Europa league form when you need it?
The blues might have looked OK in the first half but the lack of ambition in our play was startling. The point of possession football is to pull teams apart and exploit space and get shots off. Not just to solely stop the opposition.
The manager has lost his balls and reverted into some horrendous morph of Walter Smith and Mike Walker. And the players don’t  have the courage anymore. If this showing is anything to go by, alarm bells are ringing. May is getting closer and we are getting nearer to the drop zone
I’m getting Wimbledon ’94 blue coffin flashbacks, and Coventry ’98. Evertonians will never forget those days and I find it unforgivable that a repeat of the situation could become a very real possibility in the very near future
I would much rather laugh it off and say it’s just a blip, we’ll be fine, but something is massively wrong at Goodison Park.
It has been since Martinez went on a jolly to Brazil without so much as a pre-season planned.
With the fitness staff all but disbanded over the summer, I’m afraid the die was cast long before a ball was kicked. But what has happened since in the league is something Roberto and the players need to be hugely ashamed off. I can’t recall one 90 minute performance from Everton all season.
Everton’s ‘stop Arsenal from attacking’ philosophy, by keeping the ball without the intent to attack, went out of the window in the 39th minute when Giroud got in front of Stones to sweep home with his right foot with Howard in a familiar pose rooted to the spot. No defenders on the post, another basic mistake that has cost us dearly.
Once Howard tipped Cazorla’s drive over the bar, that was that. First half was over. One Lukaku barnstorming run was about it for us. If we’re going to go down Blues, can we at least go down fighting, not whimpering while asking the opponents not to hit our face.
The second half started slightly better with Garbutt showing his talent with a couple of great balls in which Ospina just about dealt with before Barry blazed over.
Garbutt has been scandalously underused this season, he’s rarely let us down, has a great turn of pace, and Hinchcliffe-esq quality in putting crosses in. If we end up losing him in the summer, we only have ourselves to blame.
Despite the bright start to the second half, Everton were struggling to change their mindset. This is the issue, we set out so negatively today it’s impossible for a team whose confidence is lower than whale faeces just to flick a switch and go attacking. Especially against an effective counter attacking Arsenal side.
Why didn’t we have a go from the start? We’re flirting outrageously with relegation, it’s not the time for safety first.
Arsenal regained control soon after with Ozil blazing over and Giroud also clearing the bar. Everton looked to respond and it took a great save from Ospina to deny Lukaku’s instinctive shot on 65 minutes. But we couldn’t build on this momentum despite the increased volume from the ever fantastic away support.
Yet again we didn’t believe enough. Ospina also denied Lennon as the blues tried to restore parity but we couldn’t get any real sustained pressure going and Arsenal were happy to play counter attack.
Rosicky sealed Everton’s fate with a goal that summed up our season. His low shot would have been saved, if that isn’t taking too much of a leap of faith, but instead it deflected off Jagielka and hopped over the diving Howard into the back of the net.
Howard’s and Jagielka’s post goal faces pretty much summed up how every Evertonian has been feeling this season. Utter dejection. It’s worrying to see our situation getting worse rather than better as season end is getting nearer.
We look rudderless with a manager seemingly incapable of flexible thought and who has clearly lost his nerve.
Remember Deulofeu coming on for an injured Baines in the derby last season? Substitutions like that showed his bravery. Lennon on for Mirallas showed his lack of bottle.
What now? In practical terms it is Stoke away and a must win for the umpteenth time this season. In personal terms, it’s flashbacks of Wimbledon, Kopites with blue coffins down Scotland Road and Coventry City. The most frightening of times for any Blue and now we’re heading head first into an infamous time. Somebody has got to take responsibility here. We simply can’t sleepwalk into the championship.
The players are playing for Everton FC! Show some pride, and if Martinez needs telling straight on tactics then do it. We need leaders not sulking half-baked players who just want to feel sorry for themselves. So please grow a pair and get us out of this dangerous malaise. Whatever it takes!
It’s time to be ugly. The School of Science has seemingly been closed since Hull away on the last game of 2013-14. It is time to get ugly to save it from being totally destroyed. A drop into the Championship would be a total disaster given our almost complete reliance on TV money and a board synonymous with failure.
EFC is in massive danger and now everyone from Martinez to the players has got to grasp the reality of the situation and do something, anything. Before it’s too late.
No doubt for me the panic has set in. We’ve won SIX games all season. SIX! There is nothing reassuring about that fact.
Some fan sites are calling it hysteria over nothing…..hmmm
It is utterly ridiculous. We’re well and truly in the brown stuff and it needs acknowledging now. Not buried under ‘we’ll be alright’ rhetoric. We are not alright. We haven’t been for a long time long now.
I’m truly sorry this has ended up being a rant but I, like all Blues, live and breathe for our wonderful club and it’s heartbreaking to see it in this way. From the board, manager and down to the players, as fans we’ve been let down massively this season and if we get out of it in one piece, things have to change so we never have this again.
The club needs an injection of forward planning and ambitious intent off the pitch. We’re never going to get it under this current board. Along with the squad, a overhaul at boardroom level can’t come soon enough.
Stagnate FC is going nowhere fast.
I realise the players are only playing the way the manager wants them too but there does seem an apparent lack of heart in the way we’re performing. I’m not trying to tell Martinez what to do but SIX wins all season says he’s got it massively wrong and he simply has to change.
Get players in their natural positions doing what they do best. It really isn’t rocket science.
I’m fed up with walking round with a face on. Fed up with avoiding Match of the Day or Football First. Fed up with clinging onto the next game for the next potential ray of sunshine…..but this has been the life of a blue since Chris Wood equalised in the dying embers at the King Power stadium in August.
It’s been a miserable campaign and it must get better before the unthinkable happens in May. It’s entirely possible. They said the Titanic wouldn’t sink, well, Everton Football Club is taking on water with no one looking to change things.
Roberto has to change it now. Swallow your pride and your principles, retrieve your backbone from last season and get us out of this mess. Lose at Stoke and I believe his position will become untenable. We can’t keep drifting. Decisive action is needed one way or another.
Iv’e tried to not slag Martinez off as much as others. In the hope he’d turn it around. I got totally carried away with the guy last season – no shame in that given the way we were playing – but I’m now seriously doubting whether he is the right man for us anymore. He has to learn from his mistakes, his stubbornness is sending us into the Championship.
It would be appreciated if the players played with the intensity and desire to drag us out of this as well.
“We have 11 games to try to get as many points as we can and the best position possible in the table.†Roberto Martinez
The previous 27 have been a complete write off. Let’s hope the next eleven stop Everton from sinking into obscurity.
All hands on deck now!
Con Miedo
Mark Ellis
