Everton 2 - West Bromwich Albion 1

Summary:

Once again Albion gave themselves a major task to come back from two goals behind, and this time it proved too much against Everton at Goodison Park - but they came close to earning a point when Graham Dorrans hit the woodwork from a free kick.

Leighton Baines put Everton ahead after half an hour with a superb strike and doubled their lead from the penalty spot just before the break when Victor Anichebe was fouled in the box by Claudio Yacob, a first half substitute three minutes previously after George Thorne was stretchered off.

A more successful substitution was the replacement of James Morrison by Shane Long, who marked his return from injury with a true poacher's goal after a mistake by John Heitinga gave him an easy close-range header. Unfortunately, the rest of the action was pretty much entirely from the hosts with Albion having a few lucky escapes in front of goal.

Albion have now slipped down to ninth following Swansea's point at Sunderland.

Paul Gainham:

Make no mistake, Clarke lost us the game last night - we sat way too deep in the first half against a really poor Everton team and invited pressure on us which duly came. Yes we rallied in the second half and could have snatched a point if Dorrans free kick that hit the bar had been a couple of inches lower, but by then we were yet again chasing a deficit.

It was obvious to me that Clarke told them to sit back, Morrison had one of his poorest games for some time hardly venturing into their half in the first 45. If this had been against Man U or Man C I could almost understand that but it was against bloody Everton, who, take it from me, were and are a poor team. And then in the 2nd half he takes Thomas off to be replaced with Rosenberg who if he touched the ball twice during his 20 mins on the pitch, that was probably it. In that piece of tactical genius, he moved Lukaku out wide left, WTF???? What was really interesting to me was that when Long came on, our game lifted and we went at them, when Rosenberg came on, suddenly that stopped and Everton came back at us - read into that what you will.....

It's becoming clearer to me now and I have been an advocate of Clarke's that he is losing it in the same way Di Matteo lost it - he is entering games without any plan - it looks like we go out on the park and are told to sit back and see what the opposition does and then we will react, by which time of course its typically too late.

Of course we will hear the usual BS that's trotted out after games like this something else that really pisses me off.

My faith in Clarke is really on the wane now, it's really difficult to see where our next win is going to come from at present, all I can hope is that Mulumbu acts as our 2013 version of Richard Sneekes and saves this season from becoming a real f*** up.

The only European tour our fans will be doing this year will be the normal summer holidays.