Michael Ball tackles the big issues at Hill Dickinson Stadium following Everton’s 3-1 defeat to Sunderland
Seamus Coleman waved goodbye to Everton fans on Sunday
Seamus Coleman waved goodbye to Everton fans on Sunday
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I feel that at the business end of the season, Everton have failed. This is when you want to pick up points to close in on a European place, and you’ve got to be in form.
Since the three-week break in late March/early April, we haven’t reached the heights that have been needed at all. This was a chance to put a marker down and finish the season on a high, but we’ve let that opportunity go.
We’ve had 18 points to play for and have only picked up three. In that run we’ve conceded two, two, two, three, two and three.
We’re told that football is all about statistics and data now and those numbers don’t lie. That’s far too many to be expected to try and win football games.
All-round the set-up is wrong. The goals we’re conceding are not all great strikes, they’re soft.
You wouldn’t expect that from a David Moyes side. You’d expect them to be more disciplined and difficult to break down but we’re seeing opposition centre-halves drive 30 or 40 yards unchallenged and when you invite that pressure upon you, you’re going to find teams punish you.
You’re at the match and we’re 1-0 up and looking at the other scores, wondering on whether we can capitalise on other teams dropping points and just be in the mix for the last game of the season. Unfortunately, once again, this group of players don’t seem to have the mentality to get over the line and that’s the really disappointing part of the performance.
Once again, it’s an opportunity for Everton Football Club and this group of players to take advantage of a situation and they just don’t. If you want to be successful as a player, you’ve got to find those moments.
We had the tributes for Bradley Lowery and Michael Jones. It should have been a glorious day, but it turned sour pretty quickly because our players could not show their quality at the right moments.
We’re walking away with nothing after leading in the game, and the goals we conceded were really, really sloppy. The players produced an end-of-season ‘flip-flops’ type of performance but there were 52,000 people there with the majority of them wanting to see us get three points.
It was a disappointing performance from start to finish. The first couple of minutes, we started pretty lively but, with what has been the story of our season, we started retreating.
You look at the starting line-up and wonder whether David Moyes could have been a bit braver for the last home game of the season at Hill Dickinson Stadium.
The big talking point for me is the midfield. I think they’ve been some of our great players this season.
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and James Garner have been fantastic while Tim Iroegbunam has done well since he came in. However, I think we’re asking far too much from them given the way we set up as a back four.
We play so deep, we give them so much running around to do and can’t get close. Jimmy is going on the floor too much and we’re not winning second balls plus he was playing so deep he was virtually next to James Tarkowski.
All throughout the game, Granit Xhaka, who is the elder statesman at Sunderland and has had a fantastic season, just walked around the pitch unchallenged. Do you blame David Moyes for not saying to Tim or Jimmy just to mark him?
He was dictating the game and running the show but there was nobody within 10 yards of him. It shows how big the gulf is in the middle of the field with the time and space Sunderland had and it looked like they had extra men on the pitch at times because we were just chasing shadows.
I always go back to Michael Keane and Tarkowski playing so deep, it makes it really difficult for us to get a foothold in the game. We can’t get any passages of play going, we pass the ball backwards, sideways and then hoof it.
I felt for Jake O’Brien. In the first half it looked like he was holding onto his hip, and I don’t know what happened, but he wasn’t himself.
He made a mistake in the build-up to Sunderland’s equaliser, but mistakes happen in football and you depend upon your team-mates to get you out of trouble. I don’t think James Tarkowski and Jordan Pickford did themselves any favours with the way they handled that goal.
I like Jake. I think he’s done as much as he could at right-back but he’s 6ft 6in, it’s not his natural position and you want to see him at centre-back instead alongside Jarrad Branthwaite.
Sunderland’s second and third showed how bad our performance was as you see those kind of goals on the training ground. We just backed off with everyone ball watching and nobody taking accountability.
We wanted this type of season. One where we’d be going into the last day with no concerns about being relegated and they have delivered that.
Unfortunately though, given that other teams like Tottenham Hotspur, Newcastle United and even Chelsea have all underperformed, there was a huge opportunity for us to get a European spot. We’ve complained about all the Monday night games we’ve been given but next season it will probably be even worse now and it really puts a downer on the end to the campaign.
Coleman’s team-mates have let him down
Nobody for Everton could leave the field with their head held high. This group of players have let Seamus Coleman down.
The 1878s would have liked to have prepared a display to mark his send off, but in typical Seamus fashion, he only announced it a couple of days before as he wanted Everton to focus on the result rather than make it all about him. It was a far cry from when John Terry played his last game for Chelsea in 2017 and stopped the game in the 26th minute to match his squad number [a pre-planned arrangement with their opponents, David Moyes’ Sunderland] and was shaking players’ hands as they formed a guard of honour, something that I still can’t believe happened in the Premier League.
Seamus is not that type of character. He’s all about the football club and just wants to get the job done.
He’s had 17 years at Everton, which is longer than most players’ careers – it was longer than mine – and he’s been absolutely tremendous for us, both as a player and as a man. He’s always reminded new faces coming in what it means to be part of Everton Football Club.
He hasn’t been able to play as many games as he’d have wanted to while we’ve been struggling, but he still travels home and away as club captain, doing his own team talks and kicking managers out of dressing rooms to deliver a few home truths to the other players. If it wasn’t for Seamus, Everton could have been in a much worse situation now.
It’s sad to see him go and it’s a difficult time in a player’s career when it comes to these moments. It would have been nice if he’d have been able to say goodbye on the back of three points with more fans having stayed to witness it.
Everton’s long-serving masseur Jimmy Comer is also departing his role and I just want to wish him all the best in his retirement and hope he enjoys it. It was good to know him and he’s a great guy around the club.
I remember the day that Jimmy first walked in and back then, beyond the coaching team, there were only a couple of other staff members. They were bringing the masseurs in as part of a new way of operating in football.
He was quite nervous to start with, but he ended up being a full-time fixture at the football club. When it was his first Merseyside derby, he turned up at Goodison Park wearing an Everton hat and scarf, but he was given a big telling off by the club doctor and told to take them off and be more professional.
I didn’t agree. I was in Jimmy’s corner and wanted him to leave them on.
I know he travels to Everton away games with his son, so I know I’ll see him around at some point in the future. I’ll probably drop him and text and say: “I thought you retired years ago!”