MARK LAWRENSON: Still a good week for Everton

Oct 9 2007

DEFEAT at Newcastle on Sunday doesn’t prevent this past week being a very good one for Everton.

In fact, if you’d offered a loss at St James’ Park in return for guaranteed progress in the UEFA Cup, secretly David Moyes might just have taken it.

I think only a small percentage of the defeat was due to physical tiredness or fatigue – it’s the emotional side of Thursday that might have had more to do with it.

As I said here last week, it was a season- defining game in Ukraine. And getting through and into the group stages of the UEFA Cup is a massive thing for the club.

They have those guaranteed extra games with a chance to go even further so beating Metalist Kharkiv will have come as a huge relief to the Everton board and supporters alike.

With Newcastle now being a team who look like they can create chances and score goals at home, it was always going to be a very difficult fixture anyway, so after the roller-coaster ride of last week defeat was no great surprise.

In light of everything else, it’s one Everton can accept and one I can’t see them having any problems moving on from.