Everton, known as the Toffees, are certainly wedged in something brown and sticky. But it’s not very pleasant. They are in a relegation battle in the English Premier League and things could get worse before they get better when they host West Ham United on Wednesday night.
The home team are no better than +140 with green-listed bookmakers like Betfred to take the points, which must rank as one of the worst prices of the season. This is a club which is in crisis, having failed to land its No 1 target to replace the sacked Ronald Koeman and whose horror run of form shows no sign of abating.
It is now one win in seven games under David Unsworth, the man who has been placed in the temporary coach role. He looks certain to be at the helm again for this clash, even if Everton have decided to press on with recruiting Sam Allardyce after Watford told them where to go about pricing Marco Silva.
Allardyce was the appointment they should have made weeks ago. He will no doubt save them from a relegation battle, one which took on an increasingly gloomy air with a 4-1 hammering by Southampton on Sunday.
West Ham are +245 (Blacktype) for victory and we are very happy to take that. The Hammers, who also sacked their manager, have suffered a defeat against Watford and draw against Leicester City in David Moyes’s first match in charge. But they will surely relish taking on an Everton side whose confidence is shot.
It is something of a must-win game for them with their next three matches against Manchester City, Chelsea, and Arsenal. So Moyes will have a plan worked out and his players training hard to implement it.
What that plan won’t include is time spent countering a tricky Everton strikeforce. They just don’t have one. After selling Romelu Lukaku for millions in the summer, they criminally failed to recruit a replacement.
Instead, they invested in Wayne Rooney, whose days are numbered at the top level and didn’t even come off the bench against the Saints, and Gylfi Sigurdsson. Both these two like to operate in the same position, just behind a Lukaku-style player. Dominic Calvert-Lewin, a naif, has often been asked to play this role but as a young man making his way in the game it has been a grossly unfair call.
Previous to the 4-1 loss at St Mary’s came a 5-1 home defeat by Atalanta in the Uefa Cup. They have conceded three or more goals an incredible seven times this season.
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