You’d be remissed for thinking there was no Premier League action this weekend, with only four games gracing the top tier of English Football. The other twelve teams will play next weekend as the Premier League enforces a winter break.
Instead of just giving all the teams a week off at the same time, the Premier League decided to break it up and have eight teams play this week and the remaining twelve next week. I’ll give you a clue why. It begins with ‘M’ ends in ‘Y’ and has ‘ONE’ word in the middle.
Despite the lack of fixtures there was one result that caught the eye as Saturday came to a close and that was Everton 3-1 Crystal Palace.
At the beginning of the season you’d have expected nothing less from this encounter, but for Everton this was their tenth win in eleven games and sees them pushing for a Champions League qualification place rather than fighting a relegation battle like they were just a few months ago.
After a 5-2 thumping at the hands of champions elect Liverpool on December 4th, the Everton board finally made the decision to relieve Marco Silva of his duties. At the time Everton were 18th with four wins in fifteen games and despite spending nearly $130 million in the summer were staring the possibility of relegation in the face.
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Two months later they sit 7th, five points off Chelsea in the coveted fourth spot.
Funnily enough not one of those players signed in the summer made the starting eleven for Saturday’s 3-1 win over Palace.
Duncan Ferguson took the reigns as Interim manager and started the rejuvenation with a 3-1 win over Chelsea, a 1-1 draw away at Manchester United and a 0-0 draw against Arsenal before Carlo Ancelotti stepped in and continued the resurgence with five wins in their last eight games.
There have been blips along the way, like losing a two goal lead in injury time to Newcastle, but the fact seven points separate 19th place Watford and 10th place Arsenal tells you everything you need to know about this year’s relegation battle. And Everton aren’t completely out of it yet.
Twelve points should be enough of a gap to stop them looking over their shoulder, but the next four games will define Everton’s season as they travel to London to play both Arsenal and Chelsea, while they host Manchester United and Liverpool in the other two. Lose all four and Everton could find themselves dragged back in to that bottom half.
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In case you haven’t already, mark that last game in your diaries, March 16th 2020, as it could possibly be the day Liverpool mathematically win the league, if they beat their Merseyside rivals. Everton will be doing everything in their power to make sure that doesn’t happen, but more importantly for Carlo Ancelotti’s men they will be looking for the three points to keep their own dreams of Champions League football alive for the first time since 2005. Maybe then they can stop looking over their shoulder.
