Slow starting Everton draw at Blackpool

The first pre-season match took place this afternoon and Everton could only manage a draw with lowly Blackpool after going 3-0 down in the first half.

Although it’s true this was a pre-season game and the Toffees always start pre-season badly, it was a really poor effort early on, which underlined yet again just how much work this current Everton team needs to improve it.

Carlo Ancelotti picked a side that included many of the usual suspects from last season, such as Gylfi Sigurdsson, Tom Davies, Alex Iwobi etc. As usual they were awful.

I don’t understand why so many of these players seem to have such a rubbish attitude? They don’t seem to care two hoots about playing for this great club of ours!

We as Everton supporters deserve so much more than this week in, week out. Well searching for any positives, several young players like Lewis Gibson and Niels Nkounkou came on and did OK and at least the new kit looks good!

With so many rumours of new signings, especially in midfield, you might expect a reaction from some of the players at least. It took a League One team taking a three-nil lead in quarter of an hour to make them put the effort in that should have been mandatory from the first whistle.

The defence too was basically the one that lined up at the end of the last campaign and that defence had conceded three goals in the first quarter of the game! That opening ten minutes was simply abysmal and very concerning to see especially as the Premier League campaign starts more or less in three weeks time.

Starting games so slowly has been one of a seemingly endless number of problems with this group of players. It’s so important to come out of the dressing room ready to play as once you go a goal or two down, its very hard to come back and win football matches these days.

And this team is notoriously bad at recovering losing positions, as we all know. Again there is so little urgency and energy displayed.

If that performance is replicated in any way when the Toffees take on Tottenham in their opening Premier League game, God knows what the score will be. Given the effort, or lack of it from so many again today, I’d be tempted to play a team made up of the Under-23’s at Spurs!

Unsurprisingly Jordan Pickford had another erratic game conceding three goals and re-awakening all the fears about his attitude and lack of concentration.

Even those players at the back who had performed well last season, such as Mason Holgate and Jarrad Branthwaite, weren’t at the races early on and Holgate in particular had a very poor match. Hopefully it was just a glitch.

Anyway, finally the Blues seemed to wake up a bit and got into the game, eventually managing to pull the three goals back through a Dominic Calvert-Lewin strike, a penalty and then late on, a Sigurdsson free-kick for the third goal.

I know the manager’s a proven winner, but I’m becoming increasingly concerned with the fact Ancelotti seems to have a blind spot for Sigurdsson. He got two goals today but his performance really wasn’t great. I would bet he will not only still be an Everton player once the new season kicks-off, but might even be in the starting eleven!

Also the tactics being adopted sometimes by the Blues boss, perplex me. Today he played what seemed a sort of 4-5-1 type formation and I don’t think it worked.

Because the Toffees were basically sitting in a static, almost defensive set-up and began so slowly, Blackpool took the game to them and deservedly took that three-goal lead.

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Calvert-Lewin was very isolated in this system, as he was so often earlier last season under Marco Silva. He worked hard, scored one goal, won the penalty for another and was probably the Blues best player, though that’s not saying very much.

Reflecting on this afternoon, the need to replace basically the entire midfield couldn’t have been underlined once again in more graphic detail.

There must be at least two or possibly three midfielders in by the end of the window. Is that realistic, I don’t know.

Another issue is the almost total lack of creativity in the side. This also has to be addressed somehow. It is more of a problem too if the Blues continue to play in defensive formations where the team sit deeper and the emphasis will be on those in midfield to create.

Seriously though, if Ancelotti hasn’t got a massive improvement in quality, especially in the middle when the new season starts, then based on today, the future looks pretty bleak indeed.