FAN VIEW: Everton wasted chance in race for fourth

Mar 24 2008

THE result at Old Trafford yesterday actually makes it more frustrating that we didn’t beat West Ham on Saturday.

We should be going into next weekend’s derby match at Anfield level on points with Liverpool but a failure to overcome the Hammers leaves us two points adrift.

After a bright start, our performance against Alan Curbishley’s side soon started to fall apart at the seams and in the end we were grateful just to avoid defeat.

Tim Cahill’s early exit – barely 10 minutes into his return – was a particularly harsh blow, not only because we were shorn of the services of the talismanic Australian for the remainder of the game and possibly longer but also because the injury inflicted 80 minutes of Manuel Fernandes on us.

The club swallowed a lot of pride in bringing the Portuguese player back to Goodison in January after he’d turned his back on us last summer but Fernandes has yet to repay our faith or even come close to reproducing the hot and cold displays he produced a year ago.

The Valencia man is always trying to pull off something spectacular when a simple pass will do and invariably gives the opposition the chance to counter. Also, any of the bite that he showed in the tackle 12 months ago seems to have disappeared and he seemed to duck out of several tackles against the Londoners.

Even without Yakubu’s perfectly good second goal – if decisions even themselves out over the season we’re in line for a big chunk of good fortune over these last two months – we should have done enough to overcome a mid- table outfit with nothing to play for.