Everton 2-3 VILLA

By: Chris | December 8th, 2008

Firstly, apologies for not bothering to preview this match. Up until yesterday morning I was still fuming about the loss to Žilina. It’s not that I spent a bloody fortune to watch it and took the day off work, it’s that we had a golden opportunity to seal a decent finish in the group without needing to beat Hamburg and we…sorry, Martin O’Neill…blew it.

Still, by the time it came to settling down for kick off at Goodison I was kind of over it. 31 seconds later, I was completely over it. Luke Young played a ball into James Milner on the edge of the Everton penalty area and our record signing touched it off to Steve Sidwell, who thundered home the fastest Premier League goal of the season for 1-0 Villa.

From then on, we were frankly a bit crap. Everton battered us and battered us for 90 minutes, equalising before half time through Joleon Lescott. We still can’t deal with that ball across the six yard box.

The onslaught continued for the rest of the first half and O’Neill will have been relieved to get the boys in and give them a bit of a shoeing. It didn’t seem to work, and Everton continued to press – without looking overly impressive themselves, it must be said.

But not long into the second half, Everton centre back Phil Jagielka donned a blue and white Santa hat and turned a routine backpass into a perfect through ball for Ashley Young. The Villa man confidently took the shot first time to put Villa back in the lead.

After fighting valiantly and being consistently second best, Villa finally conceded the equaliser in stoppage time and it was Lescott again. Villa again failed to defend adequately and Lescott twisted well to fire in an acrobatic volley.

Equally athletic was his celebration, ignoring his own supporters and running at the Villa fans instead, removing his shirt and pretending to throw it into the crowd. Whatever happened to getting booked for incitement?

Still, justice was done. Ashley Young was played in by an otherwise anonymous Gabby Agbonlahor, and skinned (you hear that Joleon…SKINNED!) Lescott before firing past a helpless Tim Howard. 3-2 to the Villa, totally undeserved but how good did it feel seeing Lescott’s mug after the whistle?

If you enjoy being smug about wiping the piss-taking smiles off the mouthy scallies, you can now watch the absolutely hilarious Fanzone highlights from Evil Sky. Trust me, it’s worth the click.

But let’s not get carried away. The last two matches have shown us a few things we should be concerned about:

Martin O’Neill has some serious flaws in his make-up, and not in a Jodie Marsh way
Isaiah Osbourne is not a professional footballer
We’re not taking the UEFA Cup as seriously as we should be
We can’t defend against strong aerial players like Lescott and Marouane Fellaini
We’re not going to finish in the top 5

Still, a win’s a win, and sometimes you have to win ugly. I just hope that isn’t the game of our season.