It’s 48 hours since Everton went down to their latest defeat at Goodison Park as Burnley beat the Toffees 2-1 on Saturday evening five days after Chelsea had defeated them 2-0 at Stamford Bridge. A potentially massive six points lost.
With those two losses and in particular another dreadful, lacklustre home defeat against the Clarets together with other results in and around the top four, this last week might well turn out to be a pivitol one in the outcome of the season for Everton.
Before playing Burnley, the Toffees knew that Chelsea had drawn 0-0 with Leeds giving the Blues an unexpected opportunity to close the gap on the London club just a few days after the Chelsea match.
So a win on Saturday would have done much to wipe out that defeat and put the Toffees just two points behind fourth placed Chelsea, still with a game in hand on them.
But of course Everton couldn’t take that opportunity and as so often on so many occasions in recent years when they’ve had a big game that could prove important to the outcome of a campaign, the Blues failed to deliver.
Then yesterday Arsenal beat Tottenham in the north London derby, which while it prevented Spurs from going above Everton, underscored how much more leeway they would have had on them, had they taken three points against Burnley.
And then Manchester United defeated West Ham 1-0, who therefore stay just two points above the Blues while they could have instead now been a point behind.
All these results gave the Toffees a great chance this weekend to position themselves in an ideal place to make a real stab at the top four and put some potentially important distance between them and their main rivals. Again, that would have been the case had they at least won against Burnley.
With all these outcomes and a win against the Clarets Everton would be fifth and well placed for the season run-in and with a game in hand on all their rivals apart from West Ham. On top of this Liverpool have beaten Wolves tonight and so they now also go above Everton on goal difference.
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There are still nine Premier League matches for the Toffees to play and technically Europa League qualification or even getting into the Champions League places is still possible, if very unlikely, but the defeats at Chelsea and then to Burnley could well prove hugely important.
The Blues still have five home matches to come against Crystal Palace, Spurs, Aston Villa, Sheffield United and Wolves.
But based on Saturday’s events and the preceding defeats to Leeds, West Ham, Newcastle and Fulham this season at the grand old lady, I would not feel confident that the Blues will win any of these upcoming games – would any Evertonian?
Even if the Toffees win say three of those home games and beat Brighton and West Ham away (in a potentially huge fixture), this week’s losses could still prove a bridge to far for the team to secure that all-important European qualification, if other teams like Chelsea, West Ham and Liverpool also keep picking up points.
So at the end of the season we may well look back on this last week’s results as a pivitol one in the eventual outcome of the Blues campaign.