It’s Everton again. We should be used to it by now.
When Everton come to town a few things are certain to be said and most of them have been done to death so we won’t bother. As it is, we’re playing them later in the season than usual this time round so there are a few questions to be answered. Will we have to queue up for less than an hour to get in? Will the ground open on time? Will the toilets have been fixed? Will my seat exist? Life at Villa Park is never without surprise.
Then when the match kicks off we’ll be playing our last-ever game as a club who’ve never been in the Champions League. And we’ll be up against our very own tribute act. Scousers are supposed to be trendsetters so it’s been a surprise to see Everton spending the last few years doing what we were doing a decade earlier. They’ve gone through the manager who used to be at their big rival, selling their best players and replacing them with loose change and just about staying up. Now they’re at the winning two-nil and lose three-two stage; it’ll be three managers in a season next.
Not only have we played them more often than anyone else, we seem to have more players who’ve been with them than any other club. Now we’ve got Lucas Digne, Amadou Onana, Ross Barkley and that lad we loaned out to a non-league outfit. They’ve got Idrissa Gueye, Tim Iroegbunam and the venerable Ashley Young. I think we probably edge that one.
Everton’s motto js Nil Satis Nisi Optimum, which is Latin for “Nothing but the best is good enough”. Trading Standards had a word when they appointed Sean Dyche. Paul Tait is their under-21 coach. No, not that one – Everton might be laughably incompetent but they’re not daft enough to give him a job. We’ll have our usual list of injuries to contend with, and contend with it we will. Three points and off on our travels.
