The footballing gods are smiling on Everton

Sport has a funny way of dictating itself to mood and momentum, a mysterious force that carries teams that are doing well and punishes teams that aren’t. Everton vs Stoke at Goodison Park is a prime example of this.

At the end of December 2015, we had one of the most thrilling matches of the Premier League season when we lost 4-3 to Stoke, after being in the lead going into the last ten minutes. Things weren’t going well for Martinez at that point, with many questioning whether he should be the manager. There was at that point however, still time for him to turn it around, and he wouldn’t be sacked for another five months. That Stoke match though felt like the beginning of the end, we weren’t getting the results, and we weren’t getting any luck. That match was also the start of John Stones’ horrific run of bad form, which may have been started by him giving away a penalty.

I’m still not sure it was a penalty, but if it was, it was a soft decision. The exact same thing could be said of the penalty that Ashley Williams won on Saturday, the big difference of course is that one went for us, and the other one didn’t. I’m not a believer that luck evens itself out over the course of the season as some moments are much bigger than others, such as the ball going out of play before Man City’s goal in the League Cup semi-final for example, but every team gets its fair share of good or bad decisions.

The big difference with these decisions always seems to be that when things are going badly for you, they seem to go against you more often. Everton are in a good place at the moment, we have a new manager, and money, and the season has started well. When things are going well, then decisions seem to run for you. Like Leicester City last season, every team needs a bit of luck, and it’s good to see Everton get it. We dominated the match in terms of shots and possession, they exact type of statistics that meant nothing last season when we’d scored less than the opposition. A lot of times under Martinez it felt like he deserved to win, but didn’t. So far under Koeman, when we’ve deserved to win, we have. Why is that? There seems to be an x-factor in sport that when everyone is happy and playing well, it just clicks and things start going right. It’s up to a manger to build an environment where players can play their best football and get results, and that’s exactly what Koeman is doing.

You get the feeling that under Martinez, Leighton Baines penalty hits the post, rebounds off Shay Given and deflects away from danger and it remains 0-0. Instead though, it went in the back of the net and we claimed the three points. It’s a great sign that things like this are going our way, we have a lot to improve on but are getting results in the meantime. Everything is getting a bit brighter at Goodison Park, the players are happy and the fans are back smiling, it looks like the footballing gods are smiling for us now as well.