Lacklustre Everton limp to draw
New manager Carlo Ancelotti appearing in the directors box at Goodison Park, was the highlight of today’s game against Arsenal as a lacklustre Everton ground out a dull 0-0 draw.
Well the new man will certainly understand the size of the task he is facing to turn things around at Everton after watching this dreadful game!
It was a very poor match between two teams who are really struggling for form and with little confidence, both with new managers having taken over just in the last 24 hours.
This game though showed perhaps why Duncan Ferguson isn’t quite ready yet to take on the managerial job full-time. He picked a team that was lop-sided, too one-paced and lacked creativity, especially when Alex Iwobi went off.
Let’s hope he’s not yet another Blues player who will be joining the seemingly endless list of absentees through injury.
That problem is partly down to the number of injuries of course, but Tom Davies for example, isn’t a wide midfielder he should have been playing centrally with Gylfi Sigurdsson to give a bit of work and energy alongside the lackadaisical Icelander.
Also I thought this would have been a perfect game to give Moise Kean a start up front alongside Dominic Calvert-Lewin. Again though he only got a few minutes late in the match.
The Blues overall looked very tired, which is not surprising given how many matches the side have played over the past few weeks. The players are also apparently suffering from an illness that has been going round at Finch Farm so this too will have affected their ability to perform today and contributed to why they looked so lacklustre.
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Everton had plenty of the ball early on and were probably the better side in the first half although neither team ever seemed to settle. Both teams passing was dreadful at times and if Ancelotti has a big task on his hands then so does Mikel Arteta on this evidence!
Arsenal were very ordinary and given that they have two international calibre strikers who I thought might trouble us, they offered very little in attack either although at least they had a few chances while the Toffees couldn’t muster a single shot on target.
Well there’s not much more to say about that game. The biggest thing that happened today was the announcement of Ancelotti’s arrival. So a new era begins again at Goodison Park and we can now only wait and see what impact our new manager will have going forward.