COMMENT: Everton need fifth – but they should still be in their element

May 5 2008 by Nick Smith, Liverpool Daily Post

IT’S fair to say Everton were overdue a favour – they’ve had precious few off anyone during this campaign.

They still await their first league penalty of the season with one game to go. David Moyes has rarely, if ever, had everybody available to him in a squad already low on numbers. And even a highest points total in the Premier League era with two games to spare hasn’t been enough to avoid a scrap just for UEFA Cup qualification in these closing weeks of the campaign.

And they haven’t managed to do themselves the courtesy of a favour or two in recent times. In the eight games since they went out of the UEFA Cup, Derby are the only side they have beaten, with fatal lapses of concentration costing them the points they have needed to put safe distance between themselves and the chasing pack.

But nobody can begrudge Everton the huge helping hand towards another European campaign they were given by Wigan’s victory at Villa on Saturday.

The script was supposed to be the Midlanders and the Merseysiders level on points going into the final game, with inferior goal difference requiring Moyes’s men to better the result of their rivals.

Unfortunately, Everton stuck to their lines yesterday – but they still only need a point at home to Newcastle on Sunday.

The fact that they seemed well on course to get their required draw a week early at the Emirates before Nicklas Bendtner’s intervention will only inspire confidence.

It was much more like the Everton of the first two-thirds of the season, stifling and subduing a side with the incentive of runners-up spot and the sidestepping of extra Champions League qualifying rounds in their sights.

Going to London knowing that whatever the result – and with Arsenal having a better Premier League record against Everton than any other club, the omens weren’t great – their destiny would still be in their own hands, was a huge boost to receive at this most troubled time of a gruelling campaign.

So Steve Bruce deserves a bottle of red wrapped in a thank-you note from Moyes, just as he did from Sir Alex Ferguson for holding Chelsea to a draw at Stamford Bridge last month.

But make no mistake. The scenario facing Everton on the final day is all about their own achievements and the heights they have managed to scale without getting a leg-up from Wigan or anyone else.

Maybe it shouldn’t have come to this, but would anyone seriously have been gutted about this final-day scenario if presented with it last summer?

It was at this time that Phil Neville outlined his determination to build on the achievements of last year. The Everton captain reasoned that this one would be the big campaign that would really establish the club’s identity, by following up with improvement, visible progress and a maintaining of their status.

To follow those signs yet not arrive at the final destination would be a cruel, crushing way to end the season.

The worst Everton can do now is end up in sixth, so they can’t be any lower than they were in the league this time last year, when another heroic performance in London, that time against Chelsea, was on that occasion good enough for the point to secure European football.

But merely being in the top six this year won’t be. Therefore, rising just that one place would perfectly represent the message Neville was trying to get across as he looked ahead to the past nine months.

Firstly, another UEFA Cup campaign is essential, with regular participation in European competition a must-have accessory for any side stepping out with ideas of being any kind of major force.

And as this season’s final will be between Rangers and a Zenit St Petersburg side Everton left for dead in the group phase, it’s safe to say Moyes has unfinished business in the competition. He could have won it.

Secondly, fifth place is effectively Everton winning their league. Yes, they have broken into the top four elite before and made a decent fist of it this time round too, but that task is just becoming more and more difficult every year.

The gap is growing and so is the standard of opposition. You now have to see off the richest in the world and the best in Europe as well as the best in England to get anywhere near the achievements of 2005 again. So heartening for everyone else.

But that scenario means fifth place represents a season worthy of considerable celebration. And the fact that so many clubs – Spurs, Villa, Manchester City, Blackburn, Portsmouth, West Ham – had designs on it at the start of the season, Everton did well to even get to the final bend out in front.

The finishing line is now in sight and it’s a dip over it in the lead that they need against Newcastle now – not a continuation of the dip in form that has threatened to unravel all that superb work.