Everton 0-2 Norwich City: Appalling

This is the song that never ends

It just goes on and on my friends

Royal Blue Mersey readers are bright, beautiful people, so please don’t think I’m insulting your intelligence when I state the painfully obvious: Everton are a bad, bad football team.

You could, if you wanted, point to the absences of the club’s three best central midfielders, or even the departure of Idrissa Gueye. Those would be fair points. They wouldn’t be an excuse for meekly lying down and losing to the worst team in the Premier League. At home.

The numbers tell us that this club is better than they are, and that things should turn around at some point. I believe that. I understand that the statistics tell a story. At some point, though, someone here has to reckon with the inability to execute and the inability to find new ideas.

Most of the players seem unbothered. The manager certainly does, and you couldn’t be blamed if you thought that the malaise was contagious from the top down. Something is rotten at the core of this club, and something needs to change. Then again, this has been the state of things since the latter days of Roberto Martinez. It is simply the new normal, and we are expected to tolerate it.

I don’t have a lot to say about the match itself. I’ve seen it before. You’ve seen it before. Strange subs, ill-suited tactics based on opponent, conceding after a dominant stretch of play. The usual.

What I will say is that I recommend devoting more of your emotional efforts towards supporting the Everton women.

At least they can beat Liverpool.