After the tedium of thurs, we move on to the prem against struggling newcomers Burnley. On paper even our shit defence can handle the Clarets poor attack but football isn't played on paper so this could be the day the home side finally discover you need to score goals to win games. We really need to do a lot more in the final third, our attacking is so predictable and Lukaku needs to start justifying his high price tag & work a lot harder. I expect Coleman to come back in for Hibbo (who did well Thurs), Mac to come in for the hapless Besic & this brings us to the problem, Naismith, who has to come in but were is he played now Ross is back? Do we sacrifice his scoring in favour of the more creative Barkley or do we push Barkley out wide, either way McGreedy has to be dropped (from a great height!). If we were in form it should be a easy victory but were not. Will still go for a 1-0 Toffee win though!
The final score was Burnley 1:3 Everton. Burnley is winless. Everton is up to 9th and will move up to 8th on goal differential if Manchester United loses to Chelsea.
Firstly, a win is a win and at least we are moving slowly up the table. Having got the niceties out of the way, as a 3-1 victory, it has to rank as one of the most dullest in living memory. Yes we controlled for large periods but as per a Martinez team, we just kept going round in circles eventually boring Burnley to death. No coincidence his 2 most consistent buys are players who have been there and got the t shirt already. Barry continues to be the rock in the middle while Eto'o is quietly remembering he used to be one of the best forwards in Europe with 2 well taken goals, the 2nd especially. What should have been a comfortable afternoon against a poor team who will undoubtedly go down we somewhere found ourselves looking extremely uncomfortable for large section of the 1st half which is very worrying. 2nd half we controlled the game with out doing much until Eto'o popped up with a great goal. We will have to play a lot better next week to get a result.