Everton 1-2 Southampton: Abject

By definition, Everton are a football team. They are a collection of individuals paid to move a sphere around a bit of grass.

In practice, it’s a bit more complicated.

In practice, Everton are abysmal. Their effort comes and goes. The manager waffles between mild genius and utter confusion. Even the summer signings, so good for so long, have now decided that this endeavor isn’t worth their time.

At times, it seems the only players who care are the youngest, least experienced, and lowest paid. Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Ademola Lookman, Tom Davies, and Jonjoe Kenny have the common decency to show a little heart out there, but the same cannot be said for a host of others.

The attack is stagnant, the midfield easily by-passable. The defenders are often stranded on an island after the midfield gets beat like someone who owes Arthur Morgan’s gang money in Red Dead Redemption 2.

In the end, there seems to be no real desire to find the tonic that will cure the club’s lackadaisical approach to these performances. Marco Silva looks lost. Farhad Moshiri doesn’t want to spend this month. If they care so little, why should we care so much?

Everton are stuck in the worst kind of sports purgatory. They’re not fun and they’re not good, but they’re also not bad enough to cause sweeping changes. And so here we are as fans, left to bleed out slowly on the ground, with nobody around to put us out of our misery once and for all.