Michael Ball tackles the big issues at Hill Dickinson Stadium following Everton’s 3-1 defeat to Sunderland
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Iliman Ndiaye has struggled in recent weeks
Iliman Ndiaye has struggled in recent weeks
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After Everton’s 3-1 defeat to Sunderland I was chewing the fat with other supporters and talking about how to go forward, and it reminds me of back in my day at Manchester City. We had the Brazilian players like Elano, Geovanni and Robinho – they were the match-winners, the ones who would make things happen.
At the start of the season, we were flying high and in the European spots. But these players had never played in the Premier League before.
They were used to having a winter break and they’d never played through the Christmas period before. After the turn of the calendar year, we starting falling down the table.
Elano was flying to Brazil, coming back on the Friday morning and then driving to Southampton where we were expecting him to be 10 out of 10. It wasn’t like he was awful, he’d drop to a six or a seven out of 10, but the rest of us weren’t good enough to carry him.
That’s what I saw with Everton. Our star players like James Garner, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Iliman Ndiaye have been the ones making things happen and making us tick, but they seem to be very flat.
David Moyes has used the fewest number of players in the Premier League and when it’s come down to the business end of the season, we’re showing huge signs of fatigue.
So many players were just off form. Garner has probably been our player of the season, but he’s been struggling and fatigue might have struck him.
Ndiaye is our bright spark, but he couldn’t get into the game. We weren’t giving the ball to him and when he did get opportunities, he showed poor decision making and I wonder whether playing in the Africa Cup of Nations has finally hit him?
The quality among the rest of the squad is not there as they can’t get us over the line. It’s like when we had Romelu Lukaku and if he played poorly, we knew we weren’t going to win.
It’s a stark reminder to the transfer committee and to David Moyes, about what we need. We know we need full-backs and hopefully that’s the last we’re going to see of square pegs in round holes because it’s not working.
You can put a plaster over a problem for a couple of games or so when you’ve got injuries or suspensions, but to keep playing people out of position is not helpful. Jake O’Brien will do a job wherever the manager tells him to go, but ultimately he doesn’t want to play right-back.
While David Moyes is sticking to what he knows, the players are not delivering. We were just going through the motions.
David Moyes has said he wants Everton to be back in Europe, but can he get the personnel he needs to do that? He admitted he was struggling to do that last summer because the team weren’t competing near the top of the table but he’s going to have similar conversations again.
Yes, we’ve improved and we’ve been a mid-table side, but it’s going to be difficult as a lot of big teams are going to be spending lots of money. You’d expect Newcastle and Spurs – if they stay up – to have a big push, so they’ll be back in the mix.
Some of our recent last day trips to London have not been a good watch. I remember the 5-1 at Arsenal in 2022 after we’d got ourselves safe against Crystal Palace was not a good watch and the players could have been more professional.
They’ve been in holiday mode before now, but they’ve got to remember that those travelling Evertonians will have a full allocation again, spending lots of money to go down to the capital on a Bank Holiday weekend to support the team for the final time this season. The players have got to react and try and end the season on a high.
It doesn’t matter if Spurs are still playing for survival or not, we’ve got to look after ourselves and pay the fans back. We keep seeing the same line-up and same results, week after week, and something has got to give.
Key decisions have gone against us. We’ve had several head-scratching VAR calls and we could have enjoyed a huge win over Manchester City and the derby could have gone differently, but it just hasn’t happened.
You can’t just feel sorry for yourselves, you have to move on and make sure you put a performance in. Let’s not be the soft touch against Tottenham, let’s put a marker down and have players show David Moyes that they want to be here next season and prove what they can bring to the table.