The games are coming thick and fast at the moment and whereas just a couple of weeks ago I wouldn’t have seen it as a problem, now it seems very unhelpful because of Everton’s ever-escalating injury situation. Apart from the obvious loss of Mikel Arteta having a big impact on the way we play, we are pretty much struggling to field an even partially fit starting eleven full stop.
Fortunately for us against West Brom on Saturday, they couldn’t finish off some of their decent football with goals and pretty much against the run of play, we got two goals and the vital 3 points. Playing with injuries on Saturday were Fellaini, Pienaar, Osman and Saha – and those are the ones we know about. We also lost Tony Hibbert in the first half to a thigh strain and Rodwell was still out along with Anichebe from the Newcastle game. This whole season has been one calamity after another and I’m amazed that we are currently in such a good league position, and in the quarter finals of the FA cup. Pretty amazing for a squad this size even if most of them were fit, which they are definitely not. Just to get this in perspective, by my count we have 11 or 12 senior outfield players (which includes Gosling and the fringe players like VDM and Jacobson) who are pretty much fit as far as we know and a few more just coming back from injuries who may be in contention for Wed.
Although I was disappointed with the game itself on Saturday, the result was hugely important, especially in the light of other results over the weekend. We now sit just 2 points off 5th place and probably have the least intimidating run-in of all the teams around us before the end of the season. But this is Everton, and I have learnt the hard way to take nothing for granted with this club. However, even without Arteta and most of the strikers and midfielders, we still have enough talent, in my opinion, with which to battle over 90 minutes. And a battle I think it will now be. We have been blessed as Evertonians to see our team play some excellent football in spells over the last few seasons, but I think now is the time to just get the job done and it may not be so pretty.
David Moyes spoke to the media about learning during the West Brom game what it was he needed to do in order to play without Mikel. I hope he is right as we have another tough challenge on Wednesday night as we face Blackburn at Ewood Park. In the reverse fixture as we were probably at our weakest point – on the opening day of the season, they came to Goodison and beat us quite soundly. The score ended 2-3 but we were poor and they were better. Fortunately for us, our form picked up eventually and theirs did the opposite, so now we meet this time at different ends of the league table. If we are serious about challenging Arsenal and possibly Villa in the league placings then we must really be looking for 3 points on Wednesday and although our play hasn’t been the best recently, one thing which is solid is our defence. With the likes of Cahill on the pitch, we are always in with a very good chance of nicking a goal or two and not conceding needs to be a priority. We know we can play good football and we know that we can battle it out and hopefully we will see some of both at Ewood Park.
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