Is Newcastle game make or break for Everton season

Following a truly demoralising 1-0 defeat to Wolves last Sunday, Everton host Newcastle United tomorrow night in what seems a make or break match.

Lose tomorrow evening and it feels like Everton will be basically done and dusted as far as relegation goes.

Yes in theory there would still enough games to play and points to be won to avoid the drop, but defeat to Newcastle on top of the Wolves result would make it very hard to see how this team can survive.

Sunday’s loss was a really depressing one as for the first time since Frank Lampard took over there was no real Goodison Park bounce and the side he put out surrended meekly to Wolves.

We had come to expect this pathetic group of players to go away from home and then almost as if to a script, lie down and die at the first sign of any adversity.

But, the performances at home (bar a lacklustre first half effort against Boreham Wood) had been good, even if positive results hadn’t always come. That at least gave us slender hope that there might still be a chance of avoiding relegation if they could win enough home matches.

Now though, that also seems to be in serious question and without those Goodison performances it seems impossible for this team to secure enough points in the remaining games given how atrocious their away form is.

So, it’s with that sense of almost certain doom that I’m writing this match preview. It doesn’t seem to really matter any longer what side Lampard picks or how he sets them up to play, nothing appears to make a difference anymore.

Before Lampard took over I floated the idea that perhaps given the dire situation this Toffees’ team found itself in, maybe it was necessary to consider bringing Sam Allardyce back just to get them out of the hole.

It really would have been a last-ditch choice to turn to Allardyce again but perhaps he might have found away to develop some backbone in this team.

Although I think long-term Everton need to play with more urgency and on the front foot, given the terrrible defensive record of this team so far the manager needs to somewho find a way to shore up that awful, porus defence as his first priority.

I wrote in the match review of the Wolves game that it seemed to me the players had finally thrown in the towel and had basically given up the fight.

If that is the case then in a sense the season is already effectively over. When you’re facing a fight like this you have to have the determination and resiliance to battle for every point and get a few of those points even when you’re not playing well.

This Everton team has shown precious little of those qualities in recent seasons never mind this one. And, now it looks like even the lift and boost of a passionate home crowd, fans who have done everything they can to life this side, isn’t going to be enough.

With how dreadful so many of the senior players have been maybe it’s worth just giving as many young players as he can like Nathan Patterson and maybe even Lewis Dobbin.

Well, whoever runs out onto the pitch tomorrow night has the huge responsibility to find a way to win this match somehow as nothing less than three points is required.