Local journalist hits back at ‘lazy’ Everton claim, drops ‘brutal’ verdict
Liverpool Echo journalist Joe Thomas thinks pundits and commentators need to stop with the idea that Everton are in a good run of form in response to a “brutal” 10-point deduction.
In an Echo piece titled “Lazy Everton points deduction claim does Sean Dyche and his players a disservice – and potentially much worse” (December 16), Thomas thinks the Toffees’ reply to the punishment – dished out for a breach of profit and sustainability rules – has been “extraordinary”.
However, he added that Everton – who have won three straight Premier League games to put a four-point buffer to the bottom three – had been playing well long before this run and the idea their upturn in results is in response to their punishment is a false and unfair narrative.
“Everton’s impressive form is not the result of the brutal 10-point deduction handed to the club. Let us get that straight,” he wrote.
“The reaction of the players and those around them has been extraordinary but what has been impressive is their professional ability to sustain what they were already doing. Performances have not been galvanised by the adversity – they have continued in the face of it. This is important for several reasons.
“One of them is that it would be wrong for a narrative to develop outside of Everton that the potentially crippling sanction ended up being a positive for the club. We need to be clear – 10 points will likely slow progress, hold it back, cost millions in merit payments and mean it has to work even harder to become financially sustainable, which is supposed to be what the profit and sustainability rules are designed to encourage.”
False narrative
This, this, this, and this again. Thomas could not be more right in what he has written about the response to the Toffees’ upturn in results over the past few weeks.
Under Dyche, especially this season, the performance levels have been on an upward trajectory even if results did not always yield the amount of points the team deserved for their efforts.
What has happened in recent games, is that Everton have earned those rewards, mixing good displays with better finishing, more attentive defending, and ultimately getting their just rewards that they did not always get earlier in the campaign.
To says the team has been galvanised by the points deduction is to do a disservice to what Dyche and the team have been doing. Has their been a uniting factor because of it? Yeah, of course, the crowd for one has been sensational since the punishment was administered and backed the players on the pitch in terrific fashion.
But to solely put the upturn in results down to it is, frankly, absurd.
In other Everton news, one 777 chief has detailed what happened in a lengthy meeting with Dyche at Finch Farm.