, Fellaini, Rodwell, Heitinga, Cahill
, Yakubu
Eh if it does not rain it pours. Three defeats on the bounce, still upwards of ten players out, knocked out of the Carling Cup, but we still battle on. Moyesy still has to do without the services of Ossie, Billy, Bainsey, Nuts and Joey, as well as long termers Phil, The Jag and Mikky. We are at the barest of bare bones, and even the biggest squad would find it hard to cope with that level of quality out. We face Villa, and it is anyone's guess who Moyesy put out on the field tomorrow, but it looks likely that Lucas Neill will make his Goodison bow in the home clash against the Midlanders.
The Blues will be glad to see the back of October, which ironically was a month we looked at pre season, and thought a good points tally was coming our way. Defeats, home draws, Cup exit and a bashing in Europe all came in October. Now we face Villa on the last day of the month, a team who apart form our Cup win at Goodison last season, we have not done well against lately. This is the most played fixture in English football, with Villa ahead with 71 wins to our 70 with 47 draws.
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Moyesy says: "A couple of people have been accusing me of whinging about injuries. I would hate to think that I've done that. I think in fact that I've done the opposite. We've got injured players just like every one else. But I'm sure that we'll get eleven players out there to play against Aston Villa. Jagielka is getting very close to a return. Phil Neville won't be too far away from return either. They are both really important players who have been missed and they really play a big part in two of things at this club; resilience and spirit." The Jag says: "The last couple of seasons we've not started as we would have liked for one reason or another. We'd definitely like to win the game on Saturday to give us a springboard this time rather than lose it! We need to go on a decent run now. We have lost a couple of games recently, but the morale in the camp is still quite high. It just takes one good result, which will hopefully be on Saturday, to turn things around, and we have been known to go on these long unbeaten runs when we don't lose many games - if any. But that's what we've got to do. We've got to win on Saturday and then climb up the table to where we feel that we belong. I'm not sure why the games between us are so exciting, although I helped in that first game at Goodison by gifting them a couple of goals. Obviously they like to play attacking football and have a couple of good wide players and forwards, and at the time obviously we had a couple of our more influential creative players like Mikel Arteta and Steven Pienaar playing really well. We're struggling without those sort of players in the team at the moment. We've not had as much creativity as, we'd like - and while it would be good to see a 4-3 or a 3-2 again, I think we'd settle for a boring 1-0 win and walk off the pitch with three points." (30/10/09) Everton From: Howard, Nash, Hibbert, Heitinga, Neill, Distin, Cahill, Fellaini, Rodwell, Gosling, Coleman, Jo, Yakubu, Saha, Baxter, Wallace, Akpan, Agard, Duffy. Lavo's Staring XI: Howard, Hibbert, Distin, Heitinga, Neill, Rodwell, Fellaini, Cahill, Gosling, Yakubu, Saha |
