Source: Liverpool_Echo
Barry Horne: Everton FC's Good, Bad and Ugly of 2010
EVERTON'S year just gone can be split into three very different parts. January to May was a good time to be an Evertonian. The desperately disappointing Cup exits could not totally tarnish the terrific league form of the second half of the season.[LNB]There was some scintillating football, much of it coming from my joint players of the year, Leighton Baines and Steven Pienaar.[LNB]Then there was the summer hiatus with, disappointingly, no Everton representation in the England squad at the World Cup.[LNB]For me the South African experience was pretty much as expected, with the FIFA publicity, or should we say propaganda machine, going fully into overdrive to proclaim the event an unqualified success.[LNB] Which clearly it wasn't.[LNB]Evertonians did spend the summer, however, confidently predicting a wonderful season.[LNB]But as the old Evertonian joke goes 'Don't worry you can always rely on Everton . . . to let you down.' And so it proved.[LNB]The one word to describe Everton's season so far has been inconsistent.[LNB]There have been good performances, very poor performances but ultimately too many draws as a result of an inability to find the back of the net.[LNB]The result is that we are all several steps behind in our expect- ations of where we hoped to be.[LNB]Our ambitions for 2011 are more down to earth than those lofty thoughts we harboured for a possible Champions League place and a good FA Cup run, after being unceremoniously dumped out of the other domestic.
