Might be a strange thing to say, but I was always a bit ‘meh’ about us signing an ageing Samuel Eto’o, but seeing him knock the ball out wide and race into the box to find space and nudge in an equalizer made me moist about this signing for the first time.
It might be the last goal he scores for us. He might retire and get himself a bus pass before the game against United on Sunday. But he’s the most decorated African player of all time. He scored over 100 goals for Barcelona and he’s won the CL with two different teams and scored in both finals. And now he plays for us. Thinking abut it that’s quite cool. Seeing as how we’re not in a glamorous location or rolling in Arab money.
Anyway, enough of that. He’ll be rubbish from now on no doubt and I’ll probably delete all that gushing soon enough.
So – the game v Krasnodar. What should we say? Well, another late equalizer has papered over the cracks for me. Poor passing, poor decision-making in the final third and a lack of concentration and fitness by certain players for the second game running saw us nick something that could easily have been a heavy defeat.
We really need to pull ourselves together, but it may not happen whilst we have injuries to key players such as Barkley and now Miralles (who was weirdly rested for two games and then played 22 minutes against Liverpool being pulling a muscle). The players also have to play better though! Some of the passing on Thursday was inexcusable, especially from players such as McGeady, who passed the ball to no-one in particular on a number of occasions.
Catsu is in danger of being known as a complete waste of time too as his skipping runs down the wing continuously ended with him passing the ball into space. Space where no players were standing unfortunately.
Lukaku came on in the second half and showed some okay glimpses on the wing, but that is the main problem for me. We’ll never get the best out of him if we don’t play him up top and play to his strengths (over the top as opposed to passing to him with his back to goal) but after he played out wide and got a couple of goals I fear Martinez has chosen that as his very public secret weapon!
Krasnodar were okay as a team and attacked Everton continuously, and they will take points off the other teams in the group so this should be known as a decent point for us. They were missing their two best players up front though remember, and when they come to Goodison I’d expect them to throw everything at the Toffees again. Could be a long night that one.
In other news, Everton have announced that they are going to give every Everton fan that travelled to the Russian game a free ticket for the Lille match, which is a nice touch. If you want to go, like. If you can’t afford the train ticket I bet you’ll be a bit annoyed. OH THANKS EVERTON GET ME INTO DEBT WHY DONTCHA ANG ON ME PHONES GOIN…