Alas, the new season is nearly upon us. It doesn’t seem 2 minutes since we signed off a desperately underwhelming (and at times, slightly alarming) campaign with an abject 1-0 defeat to Spurs at Goodison.
With last season still fresh in the memory, enthusiasm for the 2015/16 adventure is understandably at a premium amongst Evertonians. This hasn’t been helped with the lack of transfer activity at Goodison over the summer. At the time of writing, Everton currently sit comfortably bottom of the spending table, having only brought in Gerard Deulofeu and Tom Cleverley. Having released Sylvain Distin and Antolin Alcaraz, we face the prospect of beginning the season with only 2 senior centre-backs. And that’s assuming John Stones will still be around.
We look light in several areas, and seeing the likes of Bournemouth splash the cash while we seem to be waiting for football’s equivalent of the January sales, deadline day, before entering the market is a depressing thought.
Are we simply waiting as late as possible so to save on wages? I’m joking, of course… I think…
Anyway, on the pitch, we’ve been handed an opening day home game against newly promoted Watford.
The opposition – Watford
They say stability is the foundation for success, well, I think Watford would beg to differ. Despite having as many managers in the past 12 months as Everton have had in the last 20 years (5 in total), the Hornets have catapulted themselves back into the Premier League after a seven-year absence, finishing second in the Championship, a point behind Bournemouth.
Spaniard Quique Flores is the man currently at the helm (for now), and has the task of keeping them in the top flight. Notable summer incomings include Étienne Capoue, Valon Behrami and José Manuel Jurado.
Troy Deeney is obviously the main man though. He’s hit 24 and 21 goals in the last two seasons respectively, and has the potential to bully most centre-backs, so we’ll have to get a handle on him to prevent any sort of upset on Saturday.
Team news
John Stones and Kevin Mirallas look like they should be fit. Romelu Lukaku looks to have a good chance of playing, and possibly even Gerard Deulofeu as well.
Besic, McGeady, Pienaar, Gibson and Hibbert are all out injured.
What the Managers Say
Roberto Martinez: “The fixture list hasn’t been too kind to us but we are ready to face a strong challenge in the first 10 games – we face seven of the top 10 sides in the league from the last campaign. As a team we have to achieve, be successful and do a lot better in the league than we did in the last campaign.”
“Last season we wanted to win games early on but we never got that momentum. The experiences of last season will help us immensely.”
“I am very excited with the feeling in the dressing room and we know that every game at home we are going to make it a really special place to play our football.”
“We need to use the home support in our favour and enjoy our home environment from the beginning.”
“It has been a positive period and I’m delighted with where we are. We’ve given a lot of youngsters a good opportunity and we were able to stretch the squad with two games back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday.”
“We know exactly where we are and what we need, which is three players to bring into the squad.”
“We want to succeed, we want to play well, we want to win games – and we want to start that in a competitive manner on Saturday.”
Quique Flores: “We are ready, and we are excited to start in the Premier League. We are working hard to focus on this match, so for us this is a perfect moment.”
“I expect a high performance. We are always working hard to make a high performance and the players are working very well, so we have a good and interesting match we can offer the fans.”
“We are going to play against a tough team like Everton, and it is always important to start well, but I have a lot of confidence with the players.”
“I am very happy to lead these players into the Premier League and it will be interesting to see what the response of the team is.”
Previous meetings
As you’ll probably remember, the last time we played Watford at Goodison was also an opening day fixture in 2006. A nervy affair saw new signing Andy Johnson score on his debut to give Everton an early lead. The home crowd though had to wait for the points to be safe, when Mikel Arteta slotted a controversial penalty in the 82nd minute, after the blues had hit the woodwork twice. Watford got one back in injury time but it wasn’t enough as the blues ran out 2-1 winners.
The return fixture at Vicarage Road in February 2007 was much more comfortable for an Everton perspective, as they dispatched Watford 3-0 on their own patch thanks to goals from Manuel Fernandes, Andy Johnson and Leon Osman.
After a pretty turgid preseason, we’re ready to start the real business on Saturday. Let’s be honest, a home game against a promoted team is a game we should be taking all three points from, but when you look at the following fixtures, it’s even more important that we take the maximum on offer against Watford. In the following weeks we face Southampton, Man City, Spurs and Chelsea, so we could do without going into those games on the back foot.
Expected Starting XI: (4-2-3-1) – Howard; Coleman, Stones, Jagielka, Baines; McCarthy, Barry; Mirallas, Barkley, Osman; Lukaku
Enjoyed reading this article? Try our Watford ‘Opposition View’ piece: https://readeverton.com/2015/08/06/opposition-view-watford/
