F365 Features

With two teams in pretty rotten form, Sunday's Merseyside derby could be car crash viewing. One manager is certainly under pressure, but how long before questions are asked about the other one...?

David Moyes
Here's a quandary; Just how bad will Everton's season have to get before people start asking questions about the Moyesiah?

Moyes has built up such massive amount of goodwill that surely only a serious relegation scrap will lead to people questioning his position, but the trouble is that is not as ludicrous as it may have sounded even a few weeks ago.

They currently sit in 14th place, four points above the bottom three and have only won once in the last seven games.

It seems ridiculous to suggest that Everton, one of the candidates to push the top four back in August, are in any danger of relegation, but Moyes himself conceded after their calamitous performance at Hull on Wednesday night that it "could be" a danger.

Sunday's Merseyside derby could be car crash viewing. Liverpool's problems have been dissected at length, but not many seem to have noticed that Everton's situation is similarly poor. The Toffees might be in a better position in their European table, but the domestic troubles are just as bad.

Moyes can point to a lengthy injury list, and the fact that arguably his best two players (Phil Jagielka and Mikel Arteta) have been unavailable for the whole season, but Tim Cahill has been ever-present, Sylvain Distin is a more than capable (some may argue superior) replacement for Joleon Lescott and he's even got ten starts out of Louis Saha.

While the number of injuries has been disruptive, one suspects that the key men left standing (Cahill, Marouane Fellaini, Joseph Yobo) simply aren't performing to the required standard. Indeed, without Saha's eight goals they would be in serious trouble - only Diniyar Bilyaletdinov has bagged more than once, and (to use crude and inexact logic) they would have six fewer points without Saha, putting them above only Portsmouth.

For years, Everton have lived in Liverpool's shadow. At the moment that shadow is obscuring their worst season since 2005/6. That campaign they recovered to finish 11th, but even that would be a disappointment given the expectation.

Liverpool
Someone wrote into the Mailbox after Liverpool beat Manchester United last month and speculated if they were becoming like the Manchester City of old. That is to say that they can get excited about big local rivalries and derbies, but fade into obscurity for the rest of the season.

That might be a little hasty, but it's a conclusion that is easy to reach.

After the Champions League was added to the Premier League title in the 'Not this year chaps' bin, Rafa Benitez himself conceded that fourth place is the summit of their ambitions this season. And with Spurs looking quite good, Manchester City lurking and Aston Villa always a threat (despite their slightly ropey recent form), even that won't be easy.

Recent history and the current poor form of both sides suggests the winner at Goodison is anyone's guess. If Fernando Torres is fit then the scales of favouritism will tilt slightly in Liverpool's favour, but frankly anything could happen.

Arsenal
Arsene Wenger is not a man prone to easy criticism of his team, so looking at his post-match comments you know he wasn't happy with their efforts against Sunderland.

"We lost a game and we can only fault ourselves because we didn't score," said Wenger.

"Some players were not at their best and we gave a goal away on the only situation where Sunderland could score one today, a set-piece, and that sums it up well."

One gets the feeling that this season may turn out to be an opportunity missed for several clubs, none more so than Arsenal. They are without question the best team to watch in the division, and arguably the most talented.

Sunday will be the first time they have faced a genuine title challenger since they handed three points to Manchester United in August, and if they are to mark themselves as real contenders then at least a point is required, and it wouldn't be a massive overreaction to call it a must win.

Stewart Downing
Two injured players were purchased for big money in the summer, and they are both making their tentative steps towards first team action at around the same time.

However, while Alberto Aquilani's every gym session and light jog have been monitored by increasingly desperate Liverpool fans, Downing has largely been allowed to recuperate in peace.

So with him showing his face for half an hour against Burnley, and playing 75 minutes for the Villa reserves in the week, the question of where he will play arises.

The Villa manager has a number of options. He can deploy Downing in the middle alongside either Stiliyan Petrov or Nigel Reo Coker, with an increasing number of fans calling for the former to be dropped. Downing could play on the left with James Milner pushed inside and Ashley Young shifted to the left. Villa could revert to a three-man midfield with Downing on the left of those three, or indeed on the flank.

Another option might be to opt for a 4-2-3-1 formation, with Downing on the left and Young given the sort of free role that one suspects he is more suited to.

Some - including this website - questioned why Villa spent £12million on an injured left-winger in the summer, but the sheer number of options he gives them shows that, if he recovers sufficiently, that could be money well spent.

Wigan
It's been mentioned in this column before, but when Wigan fail, they do it pretty bloody spectacularly.

They outdid themselves last weekend with a truly disastrous defensive display. Sure, it needed a crack finisher and a decent slice of bad luck to make the defeat that bad, but even so - conceding nine goals takes some effort.

The good news for Wigan is that they're at home (where they haven't lost since August) to Sunderland, whose away record is nothing to get excited about, and who have problems putting away the smaller fish in the Premier League. Seven points taken from Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal can be balanced against eight lost to Burnley, Birmingham and West Ham.

The problem for Wigan is that their inconsistency has become more than a quirk, more than a bit of 'What will they do next?' japery, but a genuine concern about their place in the division. They're 16th now, three points off the relegation zone and the tonking at Spurs has given them the worst defensive record in the division.

Roberto Martinez not only needs a win this weekend, but a few after that to convince that he belongs at this level.

Gary Megson
How long does the Ginger Mourinho have left? Surely not an awful lot longer if they continue their current form.

Their three losses on the spin have been against tricky opposition (well, two of the three were), but even the least optimistic Trotter might have expected more than an 11-1 aggregate scoreline, and abject performances in each encounter.

Add to that admissions from the man himself that sections of the Bolton squad are kicking up a fuss behind the scenes, it's tricky not to paint the picture of a man no longer in control of his team.

There may well be some trouble makers in the Bolton ranks, but Megson pulled this sort of thing while at Nottingham Forest. It seems designed to detract from his abject management, allowing Megson to shrug and say 'What am I supposed to do with this lot?' when it all goes badly wrong, thus absolving him of at least some blame.

When teams are winning, most fans put up with his particular brand of anti-football, but when results aren't going so well then support drains away pretty quickly, as Megson is discovering.

This weekend they face a Fulham side with a couple of days less rest under their belts. If they don't take at least a point from Craven Cottage, the Megson may quickly follow Paul Hart to the Premier League job centre.

Wolves
Mick McCarthy admitted last weekend that Wolves looked like a relegation side after Chelsea ambled to their 4-0 win, and he wasn't kidding.

No wins since the middle of September now, and they have taken just three points from the last available 21. That's relegation form, so they absolutely must start collecting points this weekend.

On paper it's a very winnable game at home against a side who have only one away win this season, but that team is Birmingham. It's not the biggest and fiercest local derby in the world, but a local derby it is, with all the passions and unpredictability that goes with it.

Nick Miller