With some of the league’s best players and one of its most attractive teams, David Moyes has been struggling to mask his disappointment that Everton again look set to miss out on major honours and Champions League places this year.

Overview

For Everton this season threatens to be a tough realisation.

For years the problem for the Toffees has been a slow start. Often shorn of a star name or two late in the summer transfer window to keep the bills paid and the bank happy the team has frequently struggled in the early months before coming home with a wet sail. David Moyes has become a master at blooding young players and utilising the January transfer window and loan market to produce extraordinary runs of form in the second half of campaigns.

That always leaves Merseysiders of a blue persuasion with a feeling of optimism come May – dreaming of picking up where they left off in August and finally rekindling those glory days of the 1980s. But then the vultures circle again, another player or two is sold, and the whole thing goes back to square one in time for the new season.

This campaign threatened to be different. Everton’s big summer sale was Jack Rodwell and, as Manchester City have since discovered, the young England international is currently one of the most overrated players in the game, rarely threatening to fulfil whatever potential those in the know felt he’d shown during his early days at Goodison. The bills had been paid, and money was available for team strengthening, while Rodwell was scarcely missed at all from a midfield containing far more effective players like Leon Osman and Steven Pienaar. Hell, even Man Utd reject Darron Gibson has looked a far superior player to Rodwell this season at a tenth of the price.

With Leighton Baines and Marouane Fellaini in the form of their respective careers, Victor Anichebe finally maturing into a reasonable Premier League striker, and a solid and experienced spine of the team including international Phil Jagielka and Tim Howard Everton started the campaign strongly. They won 3-1 at Swansea when I saw them in September and it’s no exaggeration at all to say that could have comfortably finished 8-1. Likewise a 2-2 home draw with Newcastle whose players have suffered Baines and Pienaar-themed night terrors ever since. Faced with a favourable run to the FA Cup semi-final that only required home wins against Oldham and Wigan it seemed the time had come for Moyes to finally add silverware to the plaudits for the work he has done during a ten year spell in this part of the world.

However, Everton have stumbled of late. Wigan thrashed them in the cup and the Champions League places look beyond them. Once again they’ve performed well for half a season – this time it was the first bit rather than the business end. The whole thing has left Moyes looking rather forlorn, and undecided over his contract that expires this summer and has yet to be extended. What more can the man do? This is the best Everton team of his time at the club and the likes of Baines and Fellaini are certain to attract suitors this summer. It will surely take several years of book balancing and transfer market juggling to get them back to the level they’re at now and even if he does succeed in it, Everton cannot afford to support the squad depth required to sustain a challenge throughout a season. On the one occasion they have made the Champions League they were unfortunate enough to pull Villarreal in the qualifying round and were eliminated with the help of some dubious refereeing.

Moyes is regularly linked with the big jobs – even tipped by some as a replacement for Alex Ferguson at Manchester United – and this season threatens to be the moment he realises he needs to move to achieve what he’s capable of. Everton must move heaven and earth to keep him. While their lack of a billionaire owner, persistence with one of the country’s most famous and atmospheric homes and sell-to-buy transfer policy makes them a likeable underdog for the neutral, it also means that without a truly exceptional manager like Moyes they face a grim future. At best they’d join that clutch of clubs that aspires to nothing more than seventeenth or higher in the Premier League each season, and at worst they’d become the latest big name to drop down a division and fall on financially hard times – a Leeds United of our time.

Only a hardened Liverpool fan would deny that Moyes and his chairman Bill Kenwright deserve a trophy for keeping Everton competitive at the very highest level of the game using a financial model that’s being increasingly pushed down the divisions by the shakes and oligarchs. Sadly I struggle to shake the feeling that this season was their best chance to get that, and they’ll have to wait a very long time indeed for another clear shot. A hell of a lot longer if Moyes decides his future lies elsewhere.

Scout Report

Everton’s recent home game with Stoke provided an interesting opportunity to have a look at two teams QPR will play in the next few games, but how much use it was as a scouting mission is up for debate. First and foremost, Stoke are like no other side in the Premier League and teams often put special measures in place to deal with the unique challenge they pose. Secondly, Everton were missing both Steven Pienaar and Marouane Fellaini who, whenever I’ve watched them in other games this season, have been absolutely integral to the structure of David Moyes’ team.

The standard Everton set up this season has been lopsided to the left. Pienaar and Baines attack to terrific effect down the left side, with Kevin Mirallas ostensibly named as a right winger but regularly filing inside from that flank to become a third striker or late arrival at the back post onto the regular service from the other flank. Fellaini has played in an advanced midfield role or second striker alongside Jelavic.

Against Stoke, Moyes made up for the lack of Pienaar by switching to a back three. This may well have been with an eye on Stoke’s recent 4-3-3 set up as it allowed a physical trio of Sylvain Distin, Phil Jagielka and Johnny Heitinga to match up man for man against Peter Crouch, Jon Walters and Cameron Jerome. But equally, it also allowed Baines to play in a more advanced role down the left, so he could still provide the same attacking threat he usually does even without the support of Pienaar. It worked a treat – Baines was exceptional.

Without Fellaini, Moyes paired Jelavic with Victor Anichebe and added Mirallas as support in a central role behind the pair of them. That too worked very well, and the Belgian scored a superb only goal of the game. Seamus Coleman had the legs and energy to bomb up and down the right side from wing back to cover for the lack of help ahead of him – although given how narrow and one dimensional Stoke were the threat to Everton in wide areas was almost non-existent. Darron Gibson and Leon Osman held the whole thing together centrally, with Osman filing in behind Baines as defensive cover whenever he stormed forward on the attack.

Whether we’ll see something similar this weekend is open to debate, but it was clear even before Pienaar and Fellaini dropped out that Everton’s system that had worked so wonderfully in the first half of the season was starting to look a little tired and jaded. In a recent away game at Southampton the home team was able to nullify the Pienaar and Baines combination by using a 4-2-3-1 formation that not only had a right back and right sided attacker to track the pair, but also allowed Morgan Schneiderlin or Jack Cork to slide across from the deep-lying midfield positions and add a third body that closed down any space Everton might have liked to work in. Throw in the poor form of Jelavic, and the distance between him and Fellaini as the fuzzy-haired giant dropped deep looking for possession, and Everton simply didn’t function as an attacking unit for the majority of the game. Having watched Jelavic and Fellaini in sumptuous form as a partnership on the opening Monday night of the season against Man Utd it was hard to believe they were the same two players.

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HordleHoop added 22:47 - Apr 12 Interesting piece, makes you wonder if we actually have anyone from the club that scouts the opposition. Think we have players that can cause them problems. That said I like Distin & Jagielka a lot.
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