It’s clear who’s to blame for EFC decline but now it’s payback time for players

It’s clear who’s to blame for EFC decline but now it’s payback time for players

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Yerry Mina of Everton celebrates with team-mate Abdoulaye Doucoure (Image: 2023 Chris Brunskill/Fantasista)

For all the bad fortune Everton have had, we’ve still somehow got this opportunity to win the last game of the season to stay in the Premier League so someone might be shining down on us a little bit and that’s something that the players have got to hold on to and make sure we achieve that.

You’ve got to give Sean Dyche credit because Everton were joint bottom of the table when he was appointed and we knew we had to play everybody again plus Arsenal twice and wondered where we start picking up points from. We’ve picked up points in unlikely places such as Arsenal and Brighton but have sometimes let points slip away at the likes of Nottingham Forest and Leicester City after going ahead.

I think a lot of us would have taken the opportunity to win at Goodison Park on the final day of the season to guarantee survival and at least it’s in our own hands now. Dyche has somehow got these players here but it’s going to be a very difficult game.

We owe Bournemouth one massively, back in November they embarrassed us twice in one week, 7-1 on aggregate over the two games. At the end of the day, Bournemouth shouldn’t be embarrassing Everton Football Club and if you’re one of those Everton players who was involved in those games, it’s payback time in front of your own fans.

Everybody knows that for Evertonians this is our lives but as a player, while the occasion is huge, you’ve got to remain calm and be cool. On the one hand you have to show bravery but you can’t be hyped up in the moment or concerned about making a mistake as if you start playing within yourself, your opponents will sense that.

We need to keep the energy really high throughout to keep the fans going as they’ll be backing the players as loudly as possible but the players have to show them determination and grit. Show passion but show it by screaming for the ball and winning, not by making silly challenges.

As a player you’ve got to keep your head, show accountability and show for the ball. These players can do it because they’ve done it before, they just haven’t done it consistently.

Who is going to be our saviour? Somebody needs to step forward.

Last year we were pinning our hopes on Richarlison but Dwight McNeil seems to have taken on that role since Sean Dyche came in and it shows just what a sad state we’re in that we had to play our top goalscorer at left-back at Wolves.

It might be difficult but try and communicate properly with your team-mates. We’ve let ourselves down in moments of games like when Yerry Mina headed the ball over at Wolves because if Dominic Calvert-Lewin had screamed at him it would have been an easy header for the striker to put us ahead and if we’d had taken the lead I think we’d have gone on and won the game.

Our set-pieces are getting slightly better but I think we need to mix it up a bit more. Wolves were following James Tarkowski when he went to the back post and it’s obvious that we’re doing that as we’re doing it every game so look to others, too, and we can do that as we’ve got height in other areas with the likes of Yerry Mina, Abdoulaye Doucoure and Michael Keane.

When we stayed up in the penultimate match last year we said as a fanbase it should never happen again but we’re here and we can all chew the fat after the season is over on how this club needs to move forward.

Starting a Premier League season without a striker was just baffling and we’ve been paying the price ever since. You hear a lot of stories about what might go on but the recruitment team can only do so much and then the decisions go to those who sign the cheques and if they can’t get deals over the line, what else can you do?

We were told they were going to bring in people in January to help us get out of the situation but that never happened. The players who are there don’t want to be the ones who relegate Everton Football Club.

Will they get the blame? Possibly so but I don’t think it’s all their fault.

They haven’t played as well or as consistently as we’d have liked them to but it’s because of the failures upstairs that we’re in this situation and it’s not a shock that we find ourselves in this position. It shows how far we’ve fallen as a football club since Farhad Moshiri took over.

Fans’ expectations were high when he arrived and they hoped for the best but we’ve declined and have become disjointed both on and off the field. We’ve got a lifeline though and it’s Goodison Park and the atmosphere it will generate.

Relief over Wolves finish but one moment was alarming

I was at Wolverhampton Wanderers and it was such a relief leaving the stadium and probably better that it happened that way rather than the other way round, seeing a win taken away from us. After that we knew it was going to feel like a very long weekend though and a roller-coaster ride for Evertonians with Leeds United going to West Ham United and then Leicester City up at Newcastle United.

Our away form this season has been awful but since Sean Dyche came to the football club, we have started to pick up a few points. We’ve just got to be difficult in these situations and hope we can come away with a point and in a roundabout way we did that.

I thought we started brightly over the first half an hour or so and Wolves weren’t causing us any problems. We looked like the team who had a plan and we were exercising it pretty well.

Our bad luck continued though with injuries to both Nathan Patterson and Dominic Calvert-Lewin and there seems to be these awful moments in games that make them more difficult for us. That seemed to stop us in our tracks somewhat as we had to change our system.

Somehow we kept going to get a point because after those two injuries I thought we were all over the place. The players were working hard and trying but there was no sort of pattern or fluidity, it was like lower division football, we didn’t know what to do.

At first Michael Keane came on at right-back and there were question marks over whether we should have gone to a back three straight away. And then putting Keane and Neal Maupay up front seemed to give Wolves a bit of a lift because we panicked. Jordan Pickford made a great save near the end to stop it from being 2-0 and while I don’t really want to talk about negatives, I’ve watched that back a few times now and there are a few Everton players whose recovery runs are very alarming.

I’m sure Sean Dyche will spot that and probably have a word with these players of how they should react because it wasn’t good enough. That’s what I call out in my column because I’ve been a player myself and I know when they’re hiding.

I know it’s difficult when you get bad press and people are being negative about your performances from the outside but you need to work hard, show accountability and change that mind-set. Unfortunately some players are still running away from responsibility.

We kept battling though and their keeper made a couple of mistakes, which we were able to punish. You’ve got to give credit to the three Everton defenders involved in the equaliser with James Tarkowski winning the header, Michael Keane showing composure at the right time and Yerry Mina putting it in the back of the net.