Everton showed their lack of depth and need to strengthen at several positions in the team against a more than capable Southampton team.
The Blues currently have eight players in the treatment room, potentially the most damaging being Sylvain Distin who’s absence enforced the starting of 3rd and 4th string centre backs. The experienced French international has partnered John Stones at the heart of the Everton defence and has been there to sweep up after the 19 year-old standout’s rare mistakes throughout the season. I do not blame Stones for the defensive errors today as he is young and still learning his trade whilst showing incredible potential.
Antolin Alcaraz on the other hand is the fourth choice centre back for a reason, he is not good enough and did not possess the necessary speed to cover Stones, or the reading of the game to make up for said lack of pace. For the first goal Alcaraz was solely to blame for poor positioning, strength and decision making. Things didn’t get much better for the Paraguayan who looked shaky throughout, clearly impacting on Stones’ confidence.
The Merseyside outfit as a whole were not at the races today as Ross Barkley, Leighton Baines, Romelu Lukaku and Gareth Barry all seemed jaded. This could be in part due to the run of three games in a week recently played with the addition of the postponed Palace match.
The race for fourth is by no means over as Arsenal still have three games to play and there are no easy matches at this point in the season. This being said, Arsenal will in my opinion more than likely clinch 4th place and Champions League qualification, leaving Everton in a very respectable 5th place considering the lack of investment at Goodison Park.
Most Everton fans including myself will look back at this season as a tremendous success and will have enjoyed the blues playing some of the best football Goodison has ever seen. People scoffed when Roberto Martinez told Bill Kenwright at the beginning of the season “I’ll get you into the Champions League” but he has come mightily close to achieving this mammoth feat with such a small budget compared to the competing teams.
As I suggested in my preview of this game it was Adam Lallana finding space in between the defence and midfield that hurt Everton, the young Saints captain looked dangerous every time he got the ball in and around the box. Another player who performed excellently was the monstrous Kenyan, Victor Wanyama who had absolutely no trouble dispossessing Everton players and even less trouble protecting the ball once he had it. Excluding the own goals, the game was decided in the middle of the park. Jack Cork and Victor Wanyama won almost everything and fed Lallana regularly with ease who was more than happy to exploit the make-shift Blues defence.
The bitter pill to swallow for Evertonians will be the fact that the two goals came from seemingly innocuous crosses that should have been easily dealt with. Following the two own goals, Everton where left chasing the game and were arguably hard done by with a contentious offside decision and simply wrong booking of Leon Osman for a dive, which in fact should have been a penalty. This is no excuse for the performance as Southampton were the better team on the day, but either of these decisions going to the away side could have caused a huge swing in momentum.
Overall, Southampton looked better throughout but their only two goals came from the heads of Everton defenders. This will be a difficult one to take for travelling supporters but they can find solace from the fact that this has been a stunning season for the blue half of Merseyside who have been one of the surprise packages of the season.
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