Everton v Leicester City Preview

This post-apocalyptic world we were dreading does feel a little different.

As the new world dawns if you listen carefully you can hear the anguished screams of choking dolphins from the flotilla of discarded plastic, scarves and empty Skol cans now floating in the Mersey. The first light of said new day catching the riverfront beautifully to illuminate the scorch marks on the Liver Building and the whisper of a thousand deflections, twisted nuances and some sublime whataboutism.

There’s still however a big global pandemic thing to contextualise what’s important or not and those who are edgy and subject to living life as a try hard are not suddenly cured when they wake up. They remain edgy try hards, just with a hangover and plans for a new tattoo.

The most peculiar part of this new world is Everton playing average away from home yet coasting to three points, although with a large helping hand from Norwich basically out-shitting us. They’re the best example we’re likely to face of a dead man walking, showing as much resistance to their fate as your drunk mate being wrestled into a headlock by the sexually aggressive farmhand from a Popworld hen party.

Still, getting beyond forty points with 7 games left to play seemed a pipe dream at the beginning of December so credit to the Ancelotti famiglia, although the hard work will now start in earnest of trying to achieve ambitions of Moshiri and co. While the 7 games remaining are being urged for experimentation they are also a platform to stake a claim for the future. It’s probable that the close season will be very much shorter so the momentum between seasons will be a lot more prevalent. Make it yours, Everton, you fucks.

To do that they will have to get past a third placed Leicester arriving to our empty gaff this Wednesday. Should Leicester finish around the place they are now it will crown a very impressive first season for Brendan Rogers – but they’re in the midst of a horrendous sequence of results that when you look at it shows how much the rest of the league are playing catch up to the top 2, well 1 really.

Normally this would be the point where my fingers take over and lurch into Rodgers wildly, insulting him for the purposes of the preview. However it says a lot about Leicester that he’s not entree. For that I’d like to remind you of the pro Tory songbook in full flow when we played Leicester in the League Cup just after the first of the apocalyptic events besmirching this damned season. Great banter lads, whoever thought of that one is a real pioneer – oh hang on it was a load of you in your Cotton Traders and Hush Puppies bringing the very best of lad bible to L4.

You see Leicester is the definition of rugby crowd, the scruffy nondescript festering hive of English over compensation. Where the fuck is Leicester? There’s your problem, they are an unloved moon caught in the gravity of Birmingham with no distinguishable culture of their own to be proud of. A copy and paste dull English civic centre where the only way one can escape is by drinking their own body weight in hooch to make the pavement sparkle a bit on the way home, right before you throw the contents of your intestines onto it and Baz, or Daz, or Chaz, or whatever scruffy twat you loosely call a friend takes a photo for the WhatsApp group the next day to celebrate how fucking mental you all are. Go tell us that tale from the lads jolly to Benidorm for the fourteenth time this year you so briefly disperse the hollow feeling of being chained to a pitiful existence dwelling in the gall bladder of England.

Any social ladder with an aspirational model of getting to middle class so you can sneer at others should be the subject of intense study so we can understand where societies truly break down. Spending your Sundays doing laps of Birmingham in your heavily financed Audi to look down on all the estates with terracing is the hallmark of a vapid personality, more so when you’re stroking that sports clutch wearing Crocs with socks. You’re little more than a cell in a battery that fires up Mrs Johnson’s rabbit, when your hero can’t get it up. Even the single time in your existence in 2016 when the wider world learned your name, half of them couldn’t pronounce it and then had quickly forgotten it. England’s gall bladder, you should be fucking sick at being denied the chance to come visit Liverpool three times in one season you McArthur Glen molesting lizards. And then there’s Ben Chilwell.

Chilwell’s ancestors have long climbed the aforementioned social ladder to the rung where the local foxes are on Valium because of them. The only time the jodhpur stroking prick entertains the left wing is on a football pitch which at the same time is the only time he gets within metres of the working class. Ben Chilwell absolutely fucking reeks of beagle and make no mistake I am willing to forgive any our players’ disappointing Everton player career thus far as long as they introduce him to where the ordinary people sit by way of a robust tackle in this game. If not him, then Vardy please. The fruit bait looking ear cupping scrawny little fucking marsupial. Fucking hurt them Everton, right into these like your lives depend upon it.

Apart from that I’m really fond of all the Leicester folk I meet who seem on the whole quiet decent people, shame they’re from a shit place that holds a parade for digging up a king under a car park but we all have our foibles I suppose.

Onto Everton and give a warm round of applause for your captain Faaaabian DELPH! Joking twitter, although it would probably be a decent idea to create an Everton social media code and gifting it to our players, Managers, architects and erm sponsors, on arrival. This should stop any random comments or likes being turned into an electronic mosh pit of ire. But then again what would we be on twitter for if not?

Our front two are not exactly sparking in the first two games so I wouldn’t be surprised to see a change in personnel or tactics soon from Ancelotti should this continue, it won’t be helped by Kean still struggling to adapt to English football or the club itself.

If Everton’s forward line hasn’t sparked then their midfield is a submerged supermarket trolley. Tom Davies got hooked v Norwich at half time rightfully and was replaced by Sigurdsson who was at least effective. The handsome Portuguese fella next to them both needs to step up a gear or three too, as Everton rely heavily on him to make things happen all across the pitch – and there’s no obvious alternative until he does find form. Bernard was invisible and also hooked so I presume that means another shot of Gordon, that left hand side is looking pretty vacant at the moment so all should be concerned when Bolasie is in the press saying he’s working hard and can’t wait to put the blue shirt on. Some positive news on the other flank though where Alex Iwobi gave a really influential second half display that reminded both players and management that there’s a decent player in there. It will have counted for little unless he follows that up in these games ahead though.

Defence is the positive bit on the back of two clean sheets and not many chances conceded. Holgate has been the revelation of the season and we should refrain from putting further undue pressure on him by comparing a lot of his game to Kevin Ratcliffe in his pomp, whoever said that. Next to him however it’s big Mick Kegger v3.0 who is looking assured and dominant, but let’s see how he handles Mr Vardy before declaring our fallen Beckenbauer back. No sweat on either side from Digne and Coleman, and more pleasingly in our keeper. Famous last words championing Everton’s backline here, I know.

Despite the sketchy form of late Leicester do have a young talented team sat rightfully in third place so this will be a test of Everton and Ancelotti’s mettle. Three points and it’s been a really good restart with attentions quickly turning to Europa League spots. Any other result and motivation or enthusiasm may be troubling the remainder of yet another season festering in the middle.

Seven to go, scream if you want to go faster. Unless, perhaps, you’re a dolphin.