Our Current Situation

There's no shortage of things to choose from when it comes to what is currently going on at Everton Football Club. We are currently sitting in sixteen in the Premier League, not great, but obviously could be worse.

 

My opinion on our current league position is that we should be higher, but then every fan of every club that isn’t first in their league will say that. I would absolutely love for Everton to be first, but I don’t mean to say we deserve to be there; not at all. I would say we should be at least a few places further up than we currently are, having created as many chances as teams currently occupying the top six, but ultimately, and very obviously not putting scoring said chances.

 

I don’t put this absence of goals down to a lack of application, however; from what I’ve seen the lads are clearly trying. I put the goose egg we bagged in August down to the simple fact that we didn’t have at least a decent quality striker in those early games against Fulham, Aston Villa and Wolves. The Fulham and Wolves games in particular were games in which we created boat loads of chances, but could not convert, while out opposition took what chances they got.

 

The Aston Villa game is an outlier as we just did not seem to get anything right in our approach and we were punished by a very good team looking for blood after getting a spanking themselves the previous week.

 

There have been signs of improvement since then, a point against Sheffield United in a game that could have gone either way, given the two teams’ form up to that point, a freak own-goal and a striker who had only been in the country maybe a week making his debut are two things from this game that immediately come to mind.

 

Not getting battered by Arsenal at home at this stage in the season would also be a massive plus I think we could all agree. Back-to-back wins in the League and Cup against Brentford and Aston Villa (a small measure of revenge) are things to be happy about. But in typical Everton fashion we did also give Luton Town their first ever Premier League win, at Goodison. Bloody silly lads…

 

But the good news is I get to end on a positive, as we go into an international break with a 3-0 win at home to Bournemouth, who before the game were seemingly quite bullish and confident of their own success before they’d even begun the three hundred and something mile, five-and-a-half hour trip up to glorious Merseyside.

 

That’s it as far as on-field is concerned. We’re improving and we look a bit more like an Everton team should again. Dominic Calvert-Lewin has recently said that he wears our fabled number nine with such great pride and feels like he’s back to his goal-hungry, powerful self again and I can’t wait for it. That is a subject I shall visit at more length on another occasion I’m sure.

 

Right… time to talk about off-field events. Christ where to start…

 

Well firstly I am utterly enthralled by any little bits of progress made on the new stadium at Bramley Moore Dock, I’ve been to see it in person albeit from the roadside and not actually had to don a hardhat. But it’s bloody massive and fills me with joy to see it really taking shape.

 

Obviously I cannot avoid the financial situation and the impending hearing that we have been thrown into by the Premier League around our finances. I’m taking everything at face value with that as I am not an economist and I won’t pretend to know anything about running a football club or any of it. I just have to hope we can get through it. It makes sense though as we did spend stupid amounts of money on frankly bang average players early on in Farhard Moshiri’s reign as owner; all but two of those early signings are now long gone. It was typical of a football club so starved of the same level of funding as most of our competitors; we were like a kid in a sweet shop with fifty quid. Now that we’ve gorged ourselves on a few record transfers and we’ve ended up with the inevitable stomach ache and sugar crash. Bad recruitment and crap negotiations are probably the root cause for a lot of it.

 

Now Farhad wants to sell up and he’s opened the house up to 777 Partners. A lot has been said about this lot, how they’re not really as flush as they say they are, how they’re shady as hell and not fit for purpose. They do own other European clubs as well, with mixed opinion on all fronts there as well. I might be being absolutely bland and beige as hell here but once again I really don’t know what to think. Every week there’s a “777 Partners are devils and Everton should steer clear because of that” article on any number of sports sites, so the deck seems to be stacked against them before they’ve even begun.

 

I was at least pleased to see that Everton’s new stadium will host some games at the 2028 European Championship, so that’ll be nice.