Games with Liverpool have often been a candle-snuffer when it comes to Evertonian hopes but the leaders are resurgentIt’s the hope that kills you, as every Evertonian knows. Some scouse wag posted a comment here last week suggesting the reason Carlo Ancelotti’s side are riding so high is because performing in empty stadiums means the players are no longer jinxed by the waves of negativity and fatalism emanating from bluenoses on the terraces.This theory simply does not hold water – there were no fans in grounds at the end of last season and Everton were terrible – though the word fatalism does ring true of a generation of supporters, actually make that several generations, brought up on more or less...
The allure of players allowed to leave by the elite proves too great for a stepping-stone club but the Colombian’s reunion with Carlo Ancelotti may be a gamble worth takingPotential can be a curse. Show too much too early and it will define you, so you are measured not by what you have done but against the future that once seemed within your grasp. And when age finally takes its toll, when the world stops waiting for you to become what it seemed you once could be, when you are written off with a dismissive shrug as a could-have-been then, in England at least, there are really only two places you can go: West Ham or Everton.They are populated by...
Everton have not won at Anfield since 1999 but new manager hopes his record will tell against Liverpool in third-round tieCarlo Ancelotti has a much better record in the FA Cup than Jürgen Klopp, despite spending only two seasons in England to the Liverpool manager’s four. Chelsea went all the way in Ancelotti’s first season at Stamford Bridge, winning at Wembley to leave the Italian newcomer with an impressive league and Cup Double, and, though they were knocked out by Everton in the fourth round the following year, they had already completed a 7-0 rout of Ipswich in the third.It is fair to say that Klopp’s FA Cup career thus far has never hit any of those heights. His Liverpool...
Everton and Arsenal’s goalless draw at Goodison Park illustrated to their new managers the size of the task they each face in lifting their clubs out of the gloomTwo households, both alike in timidity. For both Everton and Arsenal the shake ups start on Sunday but there must have been times when their respective new managers, both perched in the directors’ box, wished they could include mind over matter in the list of skills for which they had been recruited. Carlo Ancelotti and Mikel Arteta inherit teams that need pretty much everything knocking into them: common sense, confidence, patterns of play, how not to miscontrol a five-yard pass into touch. They could not do that from up high and instead...
Mikel Arteta may make a success of Arsenal. Carlo Ancelotti could triumph at Everton. Even a laughably reactive recruitment strategy tells the right time once a decadeAncelotti to Everton. Arteta of Arsenal-via-Everton back to Arsenal. Transfer assurances. Major squad cull. Paradigm shift. Culture change. New projects. Sticking a hat on a dog. Who knows, really, about any of this? But it is without doubt an exciting time, a time of extremes; and a time, as ever, of what is basically corporate guesswork.Mikel Arteta’s appointment at Arsenal is almost complete. There is also a fair chance Everton will make Carlo Ancelotti their fourth sober, balanced, carefully-weighted managerial appointment in the last three-and-a-half years. Related: Mikel Arteta has earned Arsenal role after...