Everton were miles off the pace against Brentford on Sunday afternoon as they were thumped 4-2 on their own patch.
Leon Osman was really dissapointed with Tim Iroegbunam’s midfield display and Vitalii Mykolenko was heavily criticised, too.
Merlin Rohl also had a dreadful cameo appearance as he gave the ball away countless times, with one leading to a goal.
Is that the worst individual performance from an Everton player this season? 😬
Shay Given thinks Everton are struggling to play at home, perhaps because they have to take the game to the opposition.
Now, Jake O’Brien has just come out and pinpointed exactly why he thinks Everton were so poor yesterday.
Jake O’Brien puts Everton’s loss vs Brentford down to tiredness
Speaking to Everton’s website, O’Brien admitted it was a ‘terrible’ performance against Brentford and reckons tiredness played a big factor.
“Very disappointing,” the Toffees defender said.
“I think we’ve come away from a good result a few days ago and then today just looked like a terrible performance and we didn’t take our chances. At this level when you don’t take them, you get punished.
“It’s hard to say (why), but it just didn’t click. It was tired legs – it looked like from everyone – and that just wasn’t the performance we usually put in. We weren’t together and that showed.”
If you were forced to pick a MOTM vs Brentford, who would you go for?
In fairness, that was Everton’s third game in eight days, and they’re down to the bare bones with injuries and AFCON absences.
It was probably the first match of the season where the Toffees really missed Jarrad Branthwaite, as James Tarkowski and Michael Keane were so sloppy.
Everton return to action against Wolves
It’s a very quick turnaround for Everton as they return to action against Wolverhampton Wanderers on Wednesday evening.
The Toffees will be heavy favourites to win that clash, as Wolves are almost nailed on to suffer relegation this term.
In fact, the Opta supercomputer reckons Moyes’ side have a 62.6% chance of winning, with a draw 19.8% and a Wolves victory just 17.6%.
Everton are playing at the Hill Dickinson Stadium, so the onus will be on them to attack the game and put Wolves on the backfoot.
It’ll be fascinating to see what changes Moyes makes and whether he goes for Thierno Barry and Beto up top in a front two.
That worked quite well towards the end against Brentford.
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