Michael Ball condemns Everton performance v Aston Villa
Former Everton defender Michael Ball has condemned Carlo Ancelotti’s squad following their loss against Aston Villa on Saturday.
The Toffees were second best throughout the evening clash at Goodison Park, with Villa deservedly claiming a 2-1 victory on Merseyside.
Everton had the chance to move above Liverpool and become level with West Ham with their game in hand, however now they’ve put their chances of qualifying for Europe at risk.
Speaking on the A View from the Bullens Podcast after the game, Ball was critical of the attitude of the Everton players, demanding that they do more than simply turn up.
Ball said: “It’s just again another one of those games where we played lower opposition, we feel that because we’ve got the blue shirt on we just need to turn up and our class will shine through.
“You’ve got to do the hard work, you’ve got to put in the hard yards and you’ve got to earn the right to win football games in the Premier League. There’s no easy games, it is what it is.
“These players have no excuses. There’s no knocking on doors saying ‘I should play a football game’ because they’ve had these opportunities so many times this season and they’ve failed.”
Not enough care
Michael Ball is correct to criticise Everton for seemingly having adopted this laissez-faire attitude when playing bottom half clubs this season, and their failings in that regard will ultimately cost the club Europe.
Everton have beaten Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham, Leicester and Arsenal twice this season, yet all of those results mean nothing if points can’t be secured against beatable teams that the Blues should be able to comfortably dispatch.
The Toffees were missing Abdoulaye Doucoure and James Rodriguez, but that shouldn’t excuse a performance which never seemed stable from the beginning. Everton don’t have enough squad depth, however the starting line-up against Villa was talented enough to at the very least avoid losing.
Carlo Ancelotti must be drawing up serious plans ahead of the summer transfer window because he won’t be pleased with his side over the second half of the season, and he’ll want to make quick remedies where he can.
We need to do a lot of business this summer, and hopefully that won’t prove to be too difficult of a task for the club.
In other Everton news, Everton want to sign ‘world class’ record-breaker and they’re ready to pay a big signing-on fee.
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