For the first time in a long while Everton are playing on a Friday night this week as they travel to the Midlands to take on newly promoted Aston Villa.
Villa have had a tough baptism to life back in the Premier League, and they’ve lost both their first two matches. So Everton will feel quietly confident as they head to Villa Park on Friday.
It’s good to have clubs like Villa back in the top flight, as like the Blues, they are one of the originals and founder members of the old Football League way back in the 1880’s.
But back to today. Everton managed a tight, tense 1-0 win over Watford last weekend to get their season off the ground.
But although they got the points it wasn’t a totally convincing performance from the Toffees and there is certainly room for improvement.
Everton started brightly and dominated the early moments but after the Toffees took the lead, Watford came into the match and had several good chances to equalise in the game.
The Blues were grateful for the excellence of central defenders Michael Keane and Yerry Mina as well as Jordan Pickford in goal.
Still its early days in the season, there are a lot of new players settling in and in truth in these first few matches the most important thing is to get as many points on the board as possible.
As usual, the main questions for manager Marco Silva regarding Friday’s team, are in attack and specifically who will start up front.
Apart from last weekend’s goal scorer Bernard, none of the other starters can be certain of their places.
Richarlison has yet to find his form from the start of last season and still looks short of fitness and sharpness. Giylfi Sigurdsson is also very much out of sorts and Dominic Calvert-Lewin still doesn’t convince that he can add goals to his otherwise hard-working all round play.
So there may be opportunities to see more of the club’s summer signings, particularly Moise Kean and possibly also Alex Iwobi.
Kean came on for a short cameo of about 20 minutes last Saturday and impressed with his pace, strength and direct play. However, although he had two decent chances, he missed them both.
It will be an interesting and a big call for Silva as to whether he will chance giving Kean a starting place in the team.
As for the others I think despite his indifferent performances it’s worth sticking with Richarlison on the right as I feel that match fitness will help him rediscover his form. And in truth Everton have no other obvious options anyway as Theo Walcott doesn’t seem the answer.
Will Blues fans see Iwobi on Friday? He obviously signed right at the death of the transfer window and since then he’s been working hard to get into the swing of things at Goodison Park so it might still be a bit early.
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It’s likely that if he does get any game time it will be as a substitute. He might get 20-30 minutes or so depending how the match goes.
The only other major selection headache is whether Lucas Digne will be fit to play tomorrow? He has apparently been training again so might just make it. Let’s hope so as the Blues really need their talismanic French full-back.
Everton should be approaching this game confidently, although Villa might well see this as a game they can win, given the Blues indifferent away form. So the Toffees need to be wary but must look for all three points.