From beating Chelsea and Arsenal at Goodison Park, to losing without much fight to Fulham on the road, it’s been a weird few weeks for Everton.
The ever-changing wave of form flooding Merseyside, though, is not expected to ease this weekend when we face Manchester United, as top Sky Sports pundit Paul Merson feels we are set for another puzzling weekend.
The Arsenal icon has shared in his weekly predictions for Sky that, even though our attitude of late has been a disaster, he feels we could pull off a favourable result against the Red Devils, who will arrive on the back of Champions League heartache.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side will also need the win on Sunday, if they are to stand a chance of staying in the fight for a top-four finish, as the Old Trafford natives are currently bottom of the pecking list in sixth, albeit two points shy and having played a game fewer than Chelsea.
We, meanwhile, could do with a win to better our chances of finishing seventh and harbouring any hopes of qualifying for the Europa League, as our defeat at Craven Cottage has left us a point behind Leicester and Wolves, with the Molineux outfit also holding a game in hand.
Sadly, if Merson’s prediction comes to fruition, we will need West Ham to beat the Foxes and Brighton to cause an upset in the Black Country just to be level on points.
“Could you get anymore different with Everton?” Merson wrote. “One minute they are ripping apart Arsenal and beating West Ham away, then all of a sudden, against a Fulham side that have not scored two goals in a game since day one, and they cannot keep a clean sheet against them. It is a bad attitude there – you cannot look at the manager, you have to look at the players.
“Man United are a million miles off [where they need to be]. They need to win the game or they are out of the Champions League, but I don’t think they will get it – they are well short at the moment. Some of their results have been very fortunate. For me, the unbeaten run was covering over the cracks.”
Merson predicted a 1-1 draw