Oh, Sky. You promised so much, and yet, you gave so little. In a day of fixtures dubbed Red vs. Blue, Premier League fans were left smarting at what could have been.
Chelsea vs. Arsenal threatened to break into something entertaining, but a rare disciplined performance from the Gunners meant the game ended in deadlock. Everton, however, put in a mid-table performance. Tenacious, deep defending, but with a severe lack of ambition.
And yet, it seems almost churlish to criticise Everton. After all, they aren’t the first – and won’t be the last – to be dismantled by a very slick and particularly well balanced United team.
But it’s that word “dismantled” that was most disheartening. Everton were simply outclassed.
In the summer, the footballing public were promised so much. Sure, Lukaku left – costing a paltry £90 million – but the Toffees reinvested the money and then some.
In fact, all in all, Everton accrued some £143 million worth of players, breaking the bank for the likes of Keane, Pickford and Sigurdsson.
Rooney really caught the national headlines and the hopes of the Everton faithful. He is, after all, England and United’s top goalscorer and winner of 12 pieces of major silverware. Rooney is what Everton need more of: winners.
There’s a reason Rooney was let go for ‘free’ by Mourinho, however. The former-England man – now the wrong-side of 30 – has lost his explosive pace, killer instinct and perhaps even some ability. The force that Wayne Rooney once was has rapidly diminished.
The hope for Rooney was that he could adapt. Look at United legend Ryan Giggs, for instance. Giggs went from a goal-scoring winger, to a creative midfielder who helped dictate play from deep.
But this is not something that Rooney can offer – an issue which Mourinho realised very early on.
Though his contribution was once widely lauded, the perennial desire to participate in build-up play leaves Everton – a team used to playing with a more tradition no.9 – without a focal point.
In contrast, Rooney seems to play more as a false-9, similar to Firmino of Liverpool. The idea of a false-9 is that they have the license to roam and with clever movement, the opponent’s backline is disrupted and thus, creating space for team-mates to exploit.
Unlike Liverpool, Everton do not have the quality or pace to take advantage of any gaps. Wayne, it seems, is unsuited to Everton’s play and there seems an inevitability that his involvement comes increasingly from the bench.
The biggest question of the Toffees is where the goals will come from.
One thing clear for the window is that Everton lacked pace. The necessity of such players is becoming imperative in an evermore competitive Premier League. The ability to hit on the counter in away games – something which Everton struggled with against United – and make short, sharp sprints into the box against teams employing a low-block make players with pace and quality all the more important in the England’s top league.
Sigurdsson, Klaasen and Rooney are certainly not the likes able to do such things.
In the famous song ‘Grand Old Team’, the Toffee’s fans sing:
“We don’t care what the Red shite say,
What the fuck do we care?
Because we always know,
That there’s gonna be a show.”
But despite the heavy investment, Everton fans are not putting on a show, with the side creating the least chances in the Premier League, so far.
The future is not, however, without hope.
Calvert-Lewin and Davies are prospects for Everton, both offering the dynamism that Everton desperately need.
Davies in particular has shown flashes of genuine brilliance against the likes of Manchester City last year. And yet Davies, as an 18-year-old, should not be relied upon to get Everton out of their relative pit. Despite being a player with high potential, it’s inevitable that his career will have its peaks and troughs as he becomes a better footballer.
Their new signings also certainly need a period of time to bed in – five major signings will take time to adjust to Koeman’s demands. Keane is not the first player to make the step-up into a more expansive team and struggle with the change, Pickford – amazingly – has performed well despite the amount he has conceded. Reservations surround Sigurdsson, though, as yet again he looked a passenger against high-class opposition.
Despite the recent doom and gloom surrounding the club, every club goes through a patch of poor form in a season, and first few fixtures always threatened to be hellish.
However, after being promised so much, tipped for a top-4 spot, the club must pick themselves up and start churning out results. And quickly.
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