Right...what did I miss?

Sometimes being dragged away by work can have it´s advantages - like when Everton decide to give up on scoring goals.

Remember Bill Murray and Groundhog Day?? The same drab, inevitable 24 hours, played out again and again? Well Everton like doing that with the starts of their seasons.

Once again the good work of pre-season and the slip ups of our rivals (including those of our Red neighbours across the park) has been completely wasted as we stumbled through our opening fixtures and now prop up the entire division.

Goalscoring is the obvious problem. A much improved performance against Fulham saw us pepper the goal, but we just couldn´t turn our pressure into goals. The same with the Brentford game, with each missed opportunity boosting the oppositions confidence until the all but inveýable penalty shoot out defeat.

But we still scored three against Man United two weeks ago? And why could we not even fashion a shot on goal against Newcastle until injury time?

The whole thing is mystifying as we don´t have an injury crisis to hide behind this year. Some of the blame has to go to Moyes as he shapes the squad and prepares the players yet they have once again started slowly.

Chairman Bill Kenwright has taken a lot of stick to for not providing Moyes with the money to buy that much needed striker. But like a broken record he keeps telling us he is skint but wants to find investment from somewhere. The news this week that he is talking to potential investors is welcome, but I am not getting my hopes up.

The players must also take some of the blame, this is the same lot who went on that marvellous unbeaten run at the end of last season and despite our striker crisis we should be able to beat the likes of Blackburn, Wolves and Newcastle.

Already our European qualification hopes rest on us embarking on another unbeaten run akin to last year, definitely do-able but it makes life harder than it should be for the players.

Birmingham are up next, a team unbeaten at home and high on confidence. Normally I would say a point is a good result, but given our start we have to get the win, otherwise our season´s ambitions could be permanently hamstrung.