Another relentlessly grim Everton season might be about to get even worse
We fear for Everton, we really do.
It did look like they might have sorted themselves out after that catastrophic start in which they not only lost all the games but did it by conceding all of the goals as well.
Now it’s all turned a bit grim again, hasn’t it?
Sure, they’ve stopped conceding all of the goals, but this has come at a high price; they’ve stopped scoring any of the goals. They’ve drawn three and lost once in a four-game run since the win at Ipswich that really, really, really needed to deliver more.
Just on a basic level, you don’t really want to go around taking three points from four games against Fulham, Southampton, West Ham and Brentford. It’s not really good enough at any time.
But for Everton that profligacy could look far more damning by the time the Christmas decorations come down. The Toffees have had, on paper – and we reckon on grass too – the easiest start of anyone in the Premier League
They started – disastrously – against Brighton and Tottenham but since then have faced only Villa and Newcastle among what might be considered the Barclays’ bigger beasts. They really, desperately needed more than 11 points to show for these 12 games if they wanted to avoid another season of arse-nipping relegation-baiting unpleasantness.
Because having failed to make hay in the sunshine, they now face a deeply traumatic winter. We’re honestly not sure we’ve ever seen a worse month of league fixtures than Everton’s December. Strap in.
It starts on December 1 with a trip to Manchester United. This is one of the easier tasks the month has in store, because at least they’re catching them while players and manager are still very much in the early stages of working each other out.
Then comes a six-pointer against resurgent Wolves, who have taken eight points from their last four games. And then, deep breath, it’s Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City. And all that only takes us to Boxing Day. There’s still Nottingham Forest to think about before 2025 kicks in.
Oh, and Everton fans can’t relax just because the new year is here either. After kicking off their 2025 against Bournemouth, January then brings a back-to-back-to-back run of Villa, Tottenham, Brighton.
We really do marvel at just what their situation might look like by then. Football being football – and thus irredeemably silly – they might well win half-a-dozen of those matches and we will wonder what all that fuss was about.
At present speed and course, though, it seems much more likely they are by that stage firmly in some very deep sh*t.
And if that wasn’t a bad enough prospect, Everton also have the wonderful prospect of Liverpool and their new manager disappearing into the sunset and winning the league.
Given all that, it’s no wonder the fanbase has been broken to the point that they now pine for David Moyes.
Now we’ve had our fun with David Moyes over the years, but we do respect the guy. He’s a perfectly capable manager who has done a few perfectly capable jobs, and it’s not really his fault that the media have decided for some reason that a manager who got to be Manchester United manager for a bit despite having zero trophies to his name at that time has been horribly harshly treated.
And a lot of his very best work obviously came at Everton. There’s no mystery as to why they might think fondly of him.
But wishing for Moyes in big 2024 is a cry for help. Football fans only do this when they are in great distress.
Maybe it’s just the fact we really want to see West Ham go full Serie A and bring back Moyes for a third spell that puts us off. If in doubt, seek out the funniest outcome and that is probably funnier than Moyes returning to Everton.
Still, though. At least West Ham fans would be a bit arsey about it. Everton fans, and of course we’re generalising massively here, seem to have reached a point where they’d welcome it just for a reminder that it hasn’t always been this relentlessly grim.
Certainly, the case for change at Everton is a profound one. Sean Dyche really does seem to have lost his way. It’s not clear really what he’s even trying to do with this squad beyond desperately trying to avoid any repeat of those early-season thrashings.
Yes, they have become far harder to beat but it’s come at the expense of failing to win any of a series of winnable games before the terrain becomes far, far tougher.
Dyche did far more with far less on a regular basis with Burnley. He has not managed anything like the same alchemy with the more promising materials at his disposal here.
But we come back again to that fixture list. Even if you think Everton should pull the plug on Dyche, when do they do it? The prospects of capitalising on a new-manager bounce appear pretty bleak until a point where it genuinely might already be too late.
The Toffees may be stuck. It does not look like being a very merry Christmas.
