A delayed report on the defeat at Goodison Park due to the journey back from the game as Saints put up a good show but ultimately just lacked that little something.
It has to be said that this game in many respects mirrored most of our away fixtures this season, plenty of possession 55%, plenty of shots on goal 9, again being more than the home side, but sadly fewer on target than the opposition 2 as opposed to 4and of course the most important stat being against us and thats goals scored.
Saints put up a decent show as they have done in most away games, but the fact was that most of the shots didnt trouble the keeper and for most of the game Everton were content to let us pass it about on the half way line and wait for us to come on and when we did they usually dealt with it quite easily.
But they were ready to break quickly when the chance arose and against the run of play they opened the scoring with 9 minutes gone, Seamus Coleman ripped us apart on the left side in way that would have had effigys of Danny Fox being burned in the away section if he had been the culprit and unleashed a shot into the far corner, yes a superb goal but one that should have been defended, likewise the winner that again saw us lacking a little bit of concentration in the build up.
In between though we dominated large swathes and although there will be those that claim we should have had at least one penalty and I would concur the ref did us no favours throughout the game, but we have to get over that and realise that an under strength Everton side dealt with most things easily, yes we played some pretty football but again it lacked a cutting edge, there is too much interchanging and although some would say that is the way we play, the harsh fact is that it isnt working enough times as results in the past 8 games prove with only five points having been garnered from those 8 games.
Yes at the half way point 27 points from 19 games is more than we would have expected, but the medium term trend is downward, 5 points from the last 24 is not acceptable and if repeated in the next 8 could see us looking nervously over our shoulder, if we want to take a little longer view and look at the 10 game points total, it is a little better with 9 points from 10, but the warning signs are there, that is ovver half our games this season and not even a point a game average over the last 10.
So once again it is an honourable defeat on our travels with the opposition saying nice things about us but having the satisfaction of three points in the bag,some would claim it is something to be proud of I would call it patronising.
Perhaps the most worrying thing is the most overlooked, once again we tinkered, it took Gazzaniga a few games to get his confidence up, but just as he did he is droppd for kelvin Davis, Kelvin did nothing wrong, but you had the feeling that Gazzaniga would have fared no worse, Gazza is the future, Kelvin is the past, as I have said in the past we need to get real competition for places, by dropping Gazza after a great display at Cardiff it can send out the wrong message and dent the confidence of some of our youngsters.
Again we ended the match with three central forwards on the pitch, with none of the trio looking like they quite knew where they should be as we continued with our pretty passing in the final minutes as Everton sat back and wondered when the late flurry was going to start.