The Everton Blame Game

I’m still angry after the events following what happened after 4pm on Saturday. Although i’m still not sure who to be angry at, there was certainly a lot of blaming going on after the final whistle. So who is to blame?

The fans?

Quite a bit has been said in respect of fans and them coming onto the pitch after a ‘winning’ goal vs lower league opposition. I wasn’t there, and i’m absolutely not going to blame the fans who made the nine hour round trip who were. Everyone loves a last minute goal and our fans aren’t the ones who get paid millions of pounds a year to win football matches. at 3-2? I loved the scenes. A local lad celebrating with the die hard supporters on a long away trip, those are the moments you live for as a fan. If the players lost focus because of it, then they failed in what they are paid to do.

The referee?

Should the time of been up? Possibly but we didn’t help ourselves in this regard. A football match isn’t over until the final whistle and the history of any sport is littered with moments like we saw at Dean Court. The players must have believed that the game would be finished once play restarted. The substitution didn’t help, and was a baffling one. Why add time onto the match and disrupt the players on the pitch? Blaming the referee is an easy scapegoat. We should of won regardless.

The players?

For any manager it’s hard to account for individual errors. The whole comeback started because of Deulofeu. Instead of closing down Smith he decided he’d give him space and go up field for a possible counter attack, it’s that kind of dereliction of duty that saw him phased out at Sevilla. He has been electric this year and his pass was sublime but it was a small mistake that led to big consequences. There were worse performances overall and players have to be culpable for their own attitude and responsible for their own actions. We have a lot of young players and the naivety was on show. Instead of closing sown the game they lost composure and it cost us dearly.

The manager?

At 3-2 I thought we didn’t deserve to win. That our 2nd half attitude was appalling. A lot of the blame focused on Bournemouth’s 3rd goal, but how did we let a two goal lead slip in the last 10 minutes? Whatever Martinez’ said at half time was clearly awful. It felt like he said to the players that we’d already won that match and they were almost on the bus home with the three points settled. Bournemouth deserved to be back in the game well before 10 minutes and it was to their credit that they kept going. The team attitude and the baffling substitutions led to what should have been an easy win to, for me, was the most painful result of the season. Above all others, Martinez holds the most blame.

I was just one game however, things have been looking up recently and hopefully this was just a blip. The fans, players and manager have to get ourselves up for by far the biggest game of our season on Tuesday. Many lessons can be taken from Saturday and hopefully the lessons are learnt by our young manager and our young players. Football is a fickle business, on Tuesday night we could be in a cup semi-final. If we are, all we be forgiven. I don’t want to think about if we’re not…