Source: Liverpool_Echo
Everton FC face more more cold hard truths
Everton FC face more more cold hard truths[LNB]TO death and taxes, add another couple of certainties.[LNB]Everton will lose a player to injury during matches this season, and dead-rubber Europa League ties with precisely nothing at stake will result in dull games.[LNB]Toffees supporters hardy enough to brave the arctic temperatures at Goodison Park last night, were at least given notice by manager David Moyes that they would be watching a sub-reserve side.[LNB]Moyes sent out his kids against BATE safe in the knowledge that he had earned the right, after his senior team had done the hard work of qualifying for the Europa League's last 32 with a game to spare.[LNB]With injuries and circumstances continuing to curtail options, the Scot decided to follow his tried and trusted principle of trusting in youth.[LNB]Indeed Moyes admitted before the game that he had considered fielding players even younger than 16-year-old left-back Jack Bidwell, and then thought better of it.[LNB]This was after all, a BATE team who won the Belarussian League in November and consisted of several internationals.[LNB]But despite their opponent's pedigree Everton's spring chicken line-up, with an average age of 22 years and nine months, rarely seemed troubled.[LNB]Instead they turned out a promisingly professional performance which certainly bodes well for the future.[LNB]But of the present and the inevitable injury per game front, Jack Rodwell - a seasoned veteran by comparison to most of the starting 11 - limped off with a hamstring injury after barely five minutes.[LNB]It was an inauspicious start. Fellow 18-year-old Hope Akpan replaced him as Moyes shook his head in bewilderment and probably wondered what his football club has done to deserve such rotten luck.[LNB]It meant the early balance of the side had to be shifted. Instead of playing 4-1-3-2 with Rodwell sweeping up in front of the back four, Akpan was accommodated with Osman having to sit a little deeper.[LNB]Fortunately the pace of the game in the opening stages was never quick enough to trouble Everton's reshuffled pack.[LNB]Gradually the Blues started to get the better of the play, most of their best work coming when Baxter and Oman swapped passes in central midfield.[LNB]An early free-kick was drifted in by Baxter but cleared convincingly by Bate before more neat interplay from Forshaw and man-of-the-moment Seamus Coleman earned the Blues a corner.[LNB]Bidwell enjoyed an equally encouraging start, refusing to allow a mix-up with Carlo Nash when the youngster headed behind for an unnecessary corner, to unsettle him.[LNB]Chances for either side were in short supply though and Volodko enlivened one slow period with a rocket which Nash, in his first Everton start, did well to handle.[LNB]It sparked a response from Everton. Osman broke and played in the ever willing Agard whose powerful shot was narrowly over. For his part, Osman showed impressive fitness despite a lengthy lay-off with an injured bone in his foot.[LNB]The Everton midfielder clearly seemed glad to be back and dictating his team's play from the central role he prefers.[LNB]On the night that David Moyes equalled Harry Caterick's record of managing 25 European games for Everton, he will have taken solace from the sight of one of his long-term injured senior players returning so convincingly.[LNB]Elsewhere, Yakubu was quiet alongside Agard. The Nigerian striker is undoubtedly a class act for the Blues when it counts, but he perhaps missed an opportunity to sharpen his fitness.
