Stoke (at Goodison) Preview and Spurs review

Goodison Park Saturday 30th of October, 15:00 GMT

After beating the potters both home and away in their return season of 08/09, the least two meetings  has ended with no winners. You have to go back to 1982 to find the last Everton defeat, 1-0 at Victoria ground.  Current league form suggest a home win, Everton are starting to look strong at Goodison, while Stoke doesn't take many points away from Britannia.
They got the potential to surprise, and their style of play is simple but effective. Even though United was too strong for them in the last round, they must be taken seriously. Kenwyne Jones is an attack in his own, and will be dangerous, even if our center backs should be able to deal with whatever Delap throws at them.

Team news, injuries and such, according to Stoke and Evertons official sites:

Stoke: Jermaine Pennant (winger) , and Kenwyne Jones (striker) are possibly out due to a virus, and Danny Collins (defender), and Ricardo Fuller (forwarder) are doubtful, Winger Matthew Etherington may return.

Everton: Rodwell, Fellaini, Osman and Anichebe out, Arteta is doubtful.

My Prediction this time is a hard fought 2-1 win for the Toffees.

discuss my prediction and other stuff to do with this match in the match thread.

The review part

Spurs v Everton 1-1.
The game was all in all what you'd expect. Spurs are a very tough team to beat at White Hart Lane, and even with a European game just ahead of our game they did look like the strongest team.
Not by much though, and even though Spurs looked very strong in the second half, we were never outplayed. It was definitely a game of two halves though, like every game.
We were the best in the first half, and they took over more in the second.
A fair result when you look at the match overall, and one we have to be happy with.

- MF

Spurs away preview, Liverpool and October so far review

White heart lane, October 23d, 12:45 (GMT)

The games against Spurs are always hard. The stats say also show that, and we haven't won at WHL since 2008. Last season our away game against Tottenham finished 2-1 to Spurs. Their goals was scored by Pavlyuchenko and Modric, ours by Yakubu.
Yakubu will be hoping to score again tomorrow, something that many thinks will result in further goals from our striker. I will take goals from midfielders, defenders and goalkeepers personally, so to me it doesn't matter if our strikers can't score but it must be weighing on their minds.

Both teams has injuries going into this one, distributed just about evenly between the teams both in severity and amount. Spurs are returning from another one of those tough European matches, and might be slightly deflated by not having their effort rewarded with even a point. Gareth Bale will be encouraged by his amazing performance.

Discuss in the match thread.

Redknapp is one of the smartest tacticians out there, and he will know his own team as well as having a plan for how to deal with us. Moyes won a tactical victory over another such clever manager recently though, Hodgson had no answer for Moyes' tactical dispositions in the Derby. Which brings me to the review part of this entry:

The review part

Liverpool supporters was still celebrating the arrival of their new owner, and wanted to continue that celebration with a turn-around on the pitch at Goodison. Well, that didn't happen.
Everton controlled the game completely, and despite Hodgson insisting that Liverpool should have gotten points, or even won based on their second half ball possession Liverpool was never really dangerous.
I do like to toot my own horn, even if I don't do so often. Here goes; I predicted a 2-0 win days before the game, and it came through. Yay me, I know stuff seemingly. Toot.
I can't remember having enjoyed a derby game that much before either.

As for the month so far, having played two games. Against Birmingham away and Liverpool at home, from which I predicted 2 points, we got 6.
In fact I predicted 5 points in total from the 4 rounds in October, admittedly that was a conservative prediction. Still, we are far ahead of schedule and our turnaround has begun.

-MF