“Stand Or Fall” – were The Fixx Trashbirds supporters?

Everton, aren’t we??

https://theathletic.com/2429827/2021/03/06/everton-top-four-football-premier-league/?source=weeklyemail

Everton back in top-four contention but better placed now than under Martinez

By Greg O’Keeffe Mar 5, 2021

It’s been seven years since Everton were genuinely in the conversation for the top four with less than half of the season remaining.
That in itself is cause for an outbreak of optimism on the blue half of Merseyside. Then consider how this timely three-game winning run started with them ending a 21-year wait for victory at Anfield, and even the most ardently pessimistic Evertonian may feel a stirring.
You must cast your mind back to Roberto Martinez’s 2013-14 debut season at Goodison; all brown brogues, glowing adjectives and swashbuckling football, for the last time Everton came close to repeating David Moyes’ 2004-05 feat.
That memorable campaign featured some compelling moments; a first triumph at Old Trafford since 1992, convincing home wins over Arsenal and Manchester United and a Goodison derby when Everton fought fire with fire against Brendan Rodgers’ title contenders and nearly came out on top before conceding in the 89th minute to draw 3-3.
There were lows too, though. A humiliating 4-0 loss at Anfield, a 4-1 FA Cup quarter-final thumping by Arsenal and, crucially, a 3-2 defeat at Goodison to relegation candidates Crystal Palace.
That Wednesday night in April proved to be the moment they fell terminally behind Arsenal in the race for fourth. Everton had beaten Arsene Wenger’s men 3-0 just 10 days prior, but the visit of Tony Pulis’ south Londoners led Martinez and his team to a fatal moment of self-doubt.
A gifted but inexperienced young manager, unused to being in such a race, buckled. The Catalan overthought things; decided against starting with James McCarthy, who had just returned from injury and left his defence exposed to the pace of a peak Yannick Bolasie, Jason Puncheon and Cameron Jerome. He tinkered with a formula that had been working, moving Ross Barkley into a deeper midfield role to which he was ill-suited, and paid the price. Goodison was already edgy and by the end of the night, it was beginning to see the writing on the wall.
Arsenal had a one-point advantage and didn’t drop another on the rest of the run-in. Wily old Wenger guided them to fourth with 79 points. Everton finished fifth with seven less, but that would have earned you a Champions League place in three of the previous four seasons. Not that one, though. Rotten luck.
“I still think that anything above 70 points will be enough for a Champions League spot,” Martinez had said a few months beforehand. “I’m optimistic but I’m also realistic enough to know that the clubs already in the top four positions are teams with incredible experience of how to win games.”
Roberto Martinez enjoyed a successful first season with Everton in 2013-14 (Photo: Chris Brunskill/Getty Images)
He was right on both counts.
But in 2020-21, under a significantly more experienced leader, is their luck starting to change? And are they making their own luck along the way too?
Carlo Ancelotti has also found himself talking about Europe’s elite club competition a lot lately. His team are hot on the heels of fourth-placed Chelsea. They are one point behind the west Londoners, who they visit on Monday night, with a game in hand. They are only five off Manchester United in second, who have also played one more match.
It’s a funny old season and Everton, for once, are taking advantage of circumstances instead of being hostage to them.
They are not as expansive or potent in attack as Martinez’s unit from seven years ago, who finished that campaign with a goal difference of plus-22 (they are currently on plus-six).
While Martinez relied solely on the goals of Romelu Lukaku, who scored 16 in the league that season with nobody else reaching double figures, this time around they have two in-form forwards. Dominic Calvert-Lewin has bagged 18 in all competitions, while after a flurry of six in his last six Richarlison is up to 12.
Martinez had also inherited a miserly defence from Moyes, and they conceded only 39 times in their 38 league games. But Ancelotti too has set about focusing on a defensive stability which has seen Everton keep clean sheets against two of the four teams above them in the table.
He has smashed one unwanted record already, that Anfield hoodoo gone, and if he were to repeat the trick at his old Stamford Bridge stomping ground then supporters may really start to believe. Everton have not beaten Chelsea there in the league since 1994. Their extraordinary run of disappointments across Stanley Park pales in comparison.
However, Ancelotti has one win over his previous English club already, in December’s reverse fixture. With hopes that Tom Davies and James Rodriguez could be fit to give him a near clean bill of health on Monday night, Everton’s hopes of maintaining their top-four charge remain in their own hands.
It’s a nice place to be. In a season when long waits have started to end, finishing fourth and the prospect of being in the group stage of the Champions League for the first time ever, feels like fantasy land for many. Not for the Everton manager, though. He is used to it. He has been here before.
With each pragmatic team selection and ground-out victory, there is a sense that famous arched eyebrow may stay on the ascent until the end of a topsy-turvy season.
The pundits, such as Sky Sports’ Chelsea old boy Ashley Cole on Thursday, aren’t really taking Everton seriously as top-four contenders right now.
Ancelotti won’t mind that.
This is the time when the elite managers hold their nerve and earn their crust.

Good heavenly fook, if Saints go down it might just restore my faith in humanity.