not another post about Wayne

By: 21 | October 24th, 2008

The backdrop to this match, like so many now is the arrival of Wayne Rooney to Goodison and the awkward reminders of his changing colours. Now the press has milked it even a bit more as the claim that the local-boy would delight in scoring his one-hundreth Premier League goal at a place he called “home.” That of course is stuff for the media and fans and has little to do with Manchester United’s visit to Goodison Park tomorrow because quiet obviously the defending champions are heavy favoured.

However beyond the drama, whether a media creation or not, Man Utd is looking like it is waking up from its early season nap. Sitting oddly fifth in the table six points behind Chelsea, they are starting to look confident and much of the credit is due to Wayne Rooney production and the signs that Dimitar Berbatov is starting to fit-in as well of course Cristiano Ronaldo’s return to form.

For the Toffees last weeks performance against Arsenal provided a reasonable amount of optimism in a miserable start to the season, for which they would be in the relegation zone if Derby County, err I mean, Tottenham wasn’t so appalling.

David Moyes commented on the Arsenal match:

“I thought there were periods in the game where they played quite well the lads, so that’s important. We are looking for small positives to build on and there were bits in the first half especially which were good.”

“I think its very difficult when you’ve got two games of the level we’ve got. But that’s what happens and you have to play everybody twice. How they fall can sometimes be good or bad for you – who knows. But as I said you have to play them both home and away.”

“That is exactly what we want to try and do. But the talk’s cheap and we have to try and do it. For 45 minutes against Arsenal they did, they did well and we need to get back to being tough and harder to beat, and a bit more resilient than we’ve been. But there were parts of the first half where the football was good.”

Statistically Man Utd has won eleven of the last thirteen trips to Merseyside so you might say the punters are expecting the Reds to take this again. I won’t be any easier for the men in blue as Tim Cahill is still on suspension but they are hopeful that Victor Anichebe, Segundo Castillo and Joseph Yobo will pass match-fitness tests. Everton will need big time performances from skipper and ex-Man Utd men Phil Neville and Louis Saha and I’m hopeful that academy product Jack Rodwell will figure large after such a splendid outing last week. Marouane Fellaini needs to show some of the same abilities that he did at Standard Liège and play more as a cohesive unit with Leon Osman, Mikel Arteta and Leon Osman. For Everton to be successful and stop this seven match winless streak they will need to not only command the pitch for a full ninety minutes but do so with a solid defensive backdrop. Defending has been painfully bad and the American ‘keeper Tim Howard is shell-shocked with facing so many shots.