Everton mid-season: awful start progress made

With Everton now finally enjoying a much-needed break for a few weeks after a relentless spell of Premier League games, it’s a good moment to review where the Blues are at this point in the season.

So in this first part of the review let’s briefly recap. After a fairly decent start to the current season, things had quickly begun to go wrong for Everton with results and performances slipping badly.

And by the beginning of December as the Blues faced a tough set of fixtures in the run-up to Christmas and New Year, things looked very bleak indeed.

The Toffees had slipped towards the relegation zone and were playing in a lacklustre way, without enough commitment, intensity or mental strength. The team was wildly inconsistent and extremely frustrating to watch.

Too many players were simply not performing anywhere near the level they should have. While manager Marco Silva was seemingly without a clear idea of how to turn things around. His team selections were erratic and appeared at times almost arbitrary, as if he was going off the cuff without any proper plan or strategy.

In addition Silva struggled to make decisive or effective in-game changes and this compounded some of the team’s poor performances and results.

It was true that the manager had been very unlucky with injuries, especially to his new defensive midfield signing Jean-Philippe Gbamin. The Ivory Coast international had played very little before suffering a serious injury that is actually still keeping him out of the team.

Gbamin’s injury was particularly important. He had been brought in to replace Idrissa Gueye, a key performer in the team who was sold to PSG in the summer.

However it was increasingly obvious that things couldn’t continue as they were as the pressure on Silva mounted, and that Everton needed to consider making a change in manager.

The club though, seemed to be unable to decide how to move forward and there was uncertainty as to whether the Toffees would actually sack Silva this season, regardless of results.

Several weeks had passed and Blues fans were still wondering will they, won’t they as results continued to decline. Everton finally sacked Silva following a disgracefully humiliating derby defeat to Liverpool on 4th December.

Having pulled the trigger, it seemed that the board of directors were still divided and uncertain of how to progress with rumours of David Moyes returning and then an almost endless succession of other managers being linked with the vacant Goodison Park job.

Almost as an afterthought Duncan Ferguson took temporary charge. His impact was immediate with a morale-boosting win over Chelsea and then a hard-fought point at Manchester United.

Then came the news that Carlo Ancelotti had been unexpectedly sacked by Napoli. This seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity as Farhad Moshiri had always admired the Italian.

Suddenly Everton were being linked with a move for Ancelotti. It all seemed a bit unlikely and the recieved wisdom was that he would probably go to Arsenal. But they opted for Mikel Arteta and suddenly Blues fans began to hope that maybe it might happen..?

Then as the Toffees prepared to play Arsenal at Goodison Park, the club announced that Ancelotti had agreed to sign a four and a half-year contract! It was a massive moment for the club and represented a sea-change in the Blues levels of ambition.

This was also an announcement that shocked much of the football world. It was very instructive to see how so many of these so-called experts and commentators responded.

There was the usual attempt to argue that this was a bad fit and wouldn’t work out etc, etc. Many seemed to think it was outrageous that Everton even dare to try to attract a manager of such profile, stature and achievement. How dare the Toffees think they should be able to compete for honours and be successful again?!

Anyway although it’s still early days, there are already plenty of signs this has been a great move for the club and some of those ‘experts’ are starting to reassess their opinions.

Just under a month on into the Ancelotti era, there are clear signals that the three-times Champions League winner is making a real impact.

I have already touched on this before. His stature and winning aura have certainly begun to translate to the team.

The form of several key players has been improved again or ignited by his influence, including in particular Richarlison and Dominic Calvert-Lewin. Although even others who had been very poor like Gylfi Sigurdsson and Morgan Schniederlin have shown signs of real improvement. And the defensive effort was also much-improved.

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Perhaps the most critical change is the mental resilience of the team overall. While the 3-2 win over Watford seemed to confirm this, perhaps the aftermath of the Newcastle match, the week before was even more important.

In that frustrating match, Everton had shown all those traits in letting a two-goal lead slip, that had been so damaging to the team’s prospects all season; defensive lapses from set-plays and unforced individual errors.

However while many Blues fans must have felt that sense of deja-vu about this team, Ancelotti took a measured and calm approach opting instead to focus on the excellent overall display.

This was a very important reaction and gave his players increased self-confidence and belief that they should focus on the positives and could overcome these problems. They immediately bounced back and got that win against the odds at Watford and then followed it up with a difficult, hard-fought victory over Crystal Palace last weekend. So far so good.