Everton 2-3 Crystal Palace

Everton 2-3 Crystal Palace

(Lukaku 9, Baines (P) 83: Jedinak (P) 30, Campbell 54, Bolasie 69)

37,574

What an abject fucking suicidal humiliation that was. Palace beat us by the same score last season, but they damn well deserved it and played us off the park. This side couldnt be more far removed, managed by that arch cunt Neil Warnock, whose idea of tactics was to carry on playing for a 0-0 when they were losing 1-0. First 30 minutes were great, took an early lead, and made a couple more chances against a side who never had any intention of even trying to attack. We obviously felt it was a bit dull as things stood so decided to give Palace two goals. Shocking decision making from Howard saw him come flying out of goal and take out James McArthur from absolutely nothing, and suddenly Palace had a penalty and a lifeline they didnt deserve. And then all our fun defensive kamikazee of the first 3 games was in full swing, Coleman's injury meaning Distin had wormed his way back into the side. It was Howard to blame again, as a Palace cross was put into the box second half, and it was the easiest of routine catches for Howard under virtually no pressure Campbell. But some reason only God and Tim Howard know, he got nowhere near it, pretty much bottled out of clattering into Campbell and allowed him a basically unchallenged header into an open goal. Martinez then got in on the kamikazee act, making a couple of crazy subs, not so much bringing on Naismith and Mirallas which was much needed, but taking off Stones and completely screwing up and confusing an already fucked up defence. No surprise we gave them another, Osman dwelling on the ball like we had all the time in the world, and finding an unmarked Bolasie to score Palace's 3rd goal from their 3rd and final shot on target of the game. Fucking shameful. 

We had a few chances unsurprisingly, and pulled one back late on through a Baines penalty, but can we seriously expect to win games, even scoring the number of goals we do (that goal kept up our record of scoring at least 2 goals in every game this season) when we defend worse than fucking schoolboys who have never played a game of football in their lives? An absolutely fucking shameful performance, and all the momentum we built from two good performances against West Brom and Wolfsburg are all for shit. We made some very unnecessary changes, never got the shape right with the front 3, which was stupid given we've got a League Cup game on Tuesday, the more ideal game to be making some changes, and have now blown our momentum in the League with Liverpool up next, who are pretty short on momentum themselves. Coleman has already been ruled out of Tuesday night's game, we can only pray he's fit for next week, because I have absolutely zero confidence in that defence when John Stones isnt playing centre half.. 

Everton Man of the Match

I honestly cant pick one. Everyone was fine in that first half hour, the last hour was embarrassing.