September 2019 wasn’t the greatest in the history of Everton Football Club as the five games we undertook realised ust two victories, one in the league and one in the Carabao Cup, and three losses, two of which were most definitely in the ‘massively disappointing’ category.
We began with a highly entertaining and enjoyable win over Wolves, the visitors having twice pegged us back, we persevered and took the points with the goal of the game, a fine, well taken header for his second goal of the game by Richarlison.
Following the first international break of the new season, the Blues went south to Bournemouth and despite a late first half equaliser from the head of Dominic Calvert-Lewin, we completely failed to seize the opportunity to climb to the heady heights of third in the table by capitulating and going down 3-1 to Eddie Howe and his Cherries.
Six days later and a largely huff ‘n puff performance against newly-promoted and gritty Sheffield United saw the Tykes head home with a one-shot-on-target 0-2 win. Yerry Mina’s first half OG enhanced by a quick counter attacking second as Mousset got free to nutmeg Jordan Pickford for the Blades second marker.
Very much in need of a result in the Carabao Cup 72 hour later, Everton came out of the traps quickly at Hillsborough, Dominic Calvert-Lewin thoroughly enjoying the return to his hometown with a well taken brace to set the Blues on the road to the last sixteen and a home tie versus Watford.
And so to the visit of the champions, Manchester City. When Gabriel Jesus headed home a peach of a cross from Kevin de Bruyne, many Blues feared the floodgates were about to open, but Everton confounded their critics by rolling up their sleeves and levelling the game by half-time, DCL stooping to ensure a sweet chip from Seamus Coleman that eluded Ederson hit the back of the City net. Disappointingly, Everton failed to seize the second half initiative as City upped their tempo and eventually sealed a 1-3 win on a free kick marker from Mahrez and ex-RS Raheem Sterling seeing a shot cross the line after coming down off the crossbar.
So, just three points from a possible twelve and progression in the Carabao Cup was the reward for September, not what the fan base were expecting or indeed demanding, and once again, the jury on Marco Silva retired to consider the evidence before our eyes.
Nineteen players appeared for Everton during the month, seven appearing in all five games, and four – Jordan Pickford, Fabian Delph, Lucas Digne and Yerry Mina – playing every minute. The five games saw four different Man of the Match winners, as voted for in the GrandOldTeam.com forum polls, Richarlison for the Wolves and Bournemouth games, Fabian Delph for the Sheffield United game, unsurprisingly given his brace of goal, Dominic Calvert-Lewin dominated the Sheffield Wednesday poll while Seamus Coleman with probably his best game of the season to date eased to a comfortable win for the Manchester City game.
Probably due to the lack of any TV coverage of the Carabao Cup game at Hillsborough, and despite the victory and progression, the voting for that game was somewhat lower than the numbers we normally enjoy.
As in the last couple of seasons, we will do our utmost to post match reports and MotM polls as quickly as possible after each game, and we encourage all our forum members and readers to continue to support the effort and vote.
So, if you’re reading this via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or any other social media platform and you’re not a GOT member but want to vote each game, simply register to join the Forum – http://www.grandoldteam.com/forum/ – and cast your vote every game… and join in the myriad of discussions on the award-winning, biggest and best Everton Forum on the internet.
Having dispensed with the ubiquitous plug for GOT, the forum and polls, let’s get to the golden envelope business and on with the top three vote recipients and the PotM result, and in time honoured fashion, here’s the result in ascending order of the votes cast.
In third place and always a popular player is the sixty-grand man… Seamus Coleman
In second place after a solid first full month of first team action is… Fabian Delph
And the congratulations go, with just under 27% of the total votes cast, to the GOT Player of the Month for September…
Richarlison.
