Well, I got a proper second watching of this one, so I feel as if I have a reasonable grip upon what occurred. First off, I think the play that best represented Everton's effort was Phil Neville's intentional handball/red card/penalty in the 90th minute. The Toffees were feisty, physical, and clearly looking to do whatever they could to gain advantage. Unfortunately, or fortunately by my perspective, they seemed to lack the energy level they had last year when they annihilated us 3-0 at Goodison.
I honestly don't feel either side dominated in the first. The ball went back and forth pretty liberally and neither side appeared to gain any sort of control. For our side, I can't really comfortably point out any player as playing poor, not even Hyypia, but I was somewhat disappointed in Mascherano and Sissoko's efforts. Some of their passing tries were a bit baffling. Stevie-G was clearly on the top of his game though as was Finnan. By the way, if anyone would like to send me clear video evidence of Kuyt being offside in the 17th minute goal he scored, please do, because from all the angles I've seen, it's 50-50 at best.
Moving on to the second half, Gerrard's penalty was the correct call. I don't agree with the red card, but James Hibbert seemed to put up little fight as to the consequences of his actions. He was clearly grabbing Gerrard's jersey and the contact initiated by him was the cause of the fall. Call it a dive or whatever, I don't care, Hibbert wasn't going for the ball and had no chance otherwise. I guess he doesn't have much faith in Howard, which is understandable I suppose.
The rest of the second half actually showed some encouraging signs as one of the issues I have with our side lately has been our inability to either create nor take advantage of shot opportunities just outside of the box. A couple of times our boys decided to blast away from that area, which is much different than what has been happening in recent matches. We still appear to have a serious lack of continuity and communication though, something that will continue to create wasted opportunities until we all get on the same plane.
The 90 minute penalty earned by Lucas on Neville's handball was a no-brainer. In fact, Neville as an England International and Everton captain should be ashamed of himself, but as I alluded earlier, the Toffees appeared to be a side without shame. Further accentuating this point was Lescott theatrics in the box in the closing seconds. I'm not saying it couldn't have been called a penalty, but I thought Clattenburg did the right thing with the no-call.
Anyhow, it's three points not only on the road, but against one of our most formidable opponents. I was certainly happy with the result especially considering who we put on the pitch. I have a feeling we better get used to Gerrard starting on the right and seeing Xabi paired with Mascherano in the middle. I certainly see that as part of our strongest side we could start. At Besitkas on Wednesday for our Champions League lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment