Everton v West Ham United: match preview
Preview was captured. Even though he claimed to have a toothache and was heading to fetch some medicinal brandy, Percy was genuinely grinning as he made his way home from Monday night’s victory over Brentford. It seems like he gets “toothaches” a lot. Here’s his assessment of the trip up to Everton on Saturday in the interim. That way, he won’t be eating the toffees.
We then travel to Liverpool, where Everton will be our hosts. Kick-off is at 3pm, and from what I can see, there won’t be any noteworthy engineering tasks. So it’s simply the same old bad service to deal with.
So Everton then. Well if we hadn’t been playing them they would have featured in the wild and wacky world of association football section anyway, with the appeal against their 10-point deduction for breaches of PSR.
The net upshot of it all was that they were handed back four of the points, something which amusingly saw Brentford drop a place before kick-off the other night. Of course they have another hearing for further breaches to contend with so perhaps they shouldn’t get too attached to those four points.
Current form is interesting. Everton haven’t won any of the games played since 16 December, when they beat Burnley 2-0 at Turf Moor. That game finished off their best spell of the season when they won four in a row. The following nine games saw them lose four and draw five.
The defeats came home and away to Man City and away at Wolves and Spurs. The draws came at home to Villa, Spurs and Palace and away at Fulham and Brighton. Factoring in the points deduction all of that has left them in 15th spot with 25 from 25, their -6 goal difference keeping them above Brentford who currently sit on -11.
Of course below that are Forest on 24 points and they too are up before the beak, so who knows where everyone will be in a few weeks’ time.
Everton’s current position with their finances and points meant that it would have been a bad look for them to have gone and splashed out the cash on what would have been some much-needed reinforcements. Daisy scoured the nether regions of the internet and could only find the arrival of Ghanaian winger Kingsford Boakye listed for the latest window.
Boakye spent four months in AC Milan’s youth system but has been without a club since July. So the zero transfer fee won’t have troubled the accountants any and, since the kid has gone straight into the Under 21 squad, he won’t be on big wages. He also won’t be part of the first team set up any time soon.
Abdoulaye Doucoure, who has scored six goals in all competitions, is their leading scorer. In actuality, he has scored goals in the league every time. Calvert-Lewin, who also has one in the league cup, is two behind Doucoure. Therefore, it would seem that a large portion of their issues are caused by a lack of objectives.
They have 28 goals in the 26 games they have played, which supports that hypothesis when you take a closer look at the table.
They have two ruled out and four more doubtfuls in the squad at the time of writing. On the definitely out list are Danjuma (ankle) and Dele Ali (groin). Gueye (groin) and Onana are rated no better than 50-50 whilst Gomes and Dobbin are both even longer odds to return.
And on we move to the wild and wacky world of association football and to Turin, where it transpires that some of Paul Pogba’s Opta stats may have been the subject of some unusual and somewhat illegal enhancement thanks to some artificial enhancement to his testosterone levels.
The four-year ban that’s just been announced will effectively end his career unless his proposed appeal to CAS is successful. Now I guess there’s a chance that his defence of “I took whatever it was accidentally” may work. However, call me cynical but isn’t that what everyone says on these occasions? We shall see.
Meanwhile the prize for football’s most pointless punishment must go to the Saudi FA. Ronaldo was there, being given stick by opposition supporters who were taunting him with chants of “Messi, Messi” and, given the high pressure cauldron that comes with an average gate of, er, 19,000, Ronaldo reacted with the traditional Allardyce cupped ear and another, unspecified gesture which offended local sensibilities.
Now when you see the words “Saudi” and “punishment” in the same sentence, all sorts of things come to mind. Certainly something a bit more draconian than the £6,300 fine they actually came up with.
Read more on https://sportupdates.co.uk/
Leave a Reply