Two poor sides going at it, with most of the universe decidedly un-bovvered? One dour manager – the most dour, surely? – a fella who’s failed entirely to build his usual doughty-but-dull-but-‘manly’-resistance within the group versus a bloke who had a tasty season or so at Tottingham in about 1929? Not just unappealing, but irritating: Dyche’s *sole purpose in life* has been to grind out survival. Pochettino has got nowhere near organising his delusionally self-important bunch of poseurs. So who cares? Put some David Attenborough on – he’ll be along any minute. Rather him squeezing out yet another angle from marmoset psychology than some Southern Softie prima donnas v these feeble toffeemen?
Be honest, we felt some of that stuff, pre-game. Then the game, erm, kicked off.
It was hysterical. Pickford was on drugs. Palmer was, as the locals might say, avvin a larf, before fighting (or handbagging, inevitably) with two of his colleagues over who takes the pen for the umpteenth goal. (Madueke and Jackson were the other combatants, further enhancing their claims for Flimsy Flouncer in a Non-supporting Role). It was a romp and a goal-fest; it almost exploded into violence nearly every time a Chelsea player received the ball with his back to an opponent: Everton were all of fizzing and inflamed and supine and weirdly determined to battle.
Mudryk and Caicedo looked like they may once have been or might yet be players. Jackson was 20% unplayable and the rest the usual island of indifference to the team concept. In fact, in that sense he was ver-ry Pochettino Chelsea. Not wildly dysfunctional, but liberated from the traditional understandings around collective responsibility or pattern.
Hang on. I may be over-doing this – or lumping in the view of a couple of seasons. Jackson has been no lousier and no lazier than his ‘team-mates’. Tonight he was good, in patches and the catch and swivel for his goal was undeniably sweet. But the genuinely unseemly scrimmage over the penalty was a horrorshow of antipathies and cheap grudges. Half these players hate each other, have the sensitivity and self-awareness of the average air-raid, and/or are so juvenile they can’t let stuff lie, even when coasting to a thumping win. It was a particularly graceless public stinker: an elite-level stinker of the most galling and embarrassing kind. Something else for the gaffer to get topside of. (Fat chance, given the evidence of the last x months?)
Thank gawd, then, for Gilchrist. His utter and unrestrained joy at scoring for his boyhood faves was the proverbial breath of fresh wotsits. As was Palmer’s serene first half performance, where he both literally and metaphorically megged the opposition towards lumpen bewilderment. Two of his goals were rather special – even if Pickford’s howler assisted the curling lob. England have fabulous attacking midfielders in Foden and Bellingham, but this young man is pressing them hard.
Everton were and have been poor for some time. It makes little sense to ditch Dyche, but he could have no complaints. That one-job thing of his – to smother and sledgehammer a way to safety – has been hopeless. Forget the deductions. Everton were outplayed in the first half last weekend *by Burnley*. They were annihilated here, by a team who may have been momentarily hot but who, like them, have been making the descriptor ‘out of sorts’ an unavoidable option. The Toffees deserve to go down.
bowlingatvincent 