In a way this sort of performance was inevitable. Earlier in the season Everton were just calmly dismissing sides like West Ham...in the end we have to be glad of the point.
They'd hit the bar early on but I'd say we'd started brightly with the Yak scoring a great goal and having another wrongly disallowed.
As the game went on it became more and more apparent that the referee, Halsey, was allowing a lot of slack...How Ashton made it to half time without getting booked is a mystery. All Everton got for their dominance was a few mystifying advantages played when we barely had the ball under control and the foul had occured in a dangerous place. That said Howard had already pulled off a miracle save with his legs from a deflected free-kick.
Everton just had an air of tiredness and feeling sorry for themselves which seemed to become more entrenched as the game went on. We really missed Johnson, Cahill and Pienaar. Ultimately it was West Ham who took the game by the scruff of the neck and probably should have won it. Everton can feel pleased with the point expecially with all the teams around us dropping points. It was not the ideal preparation for next week's derby though. That is a make or break game. As it stands we are 2 points behind our lovable neighbours and 7 points clear of the chasing pack. A good position to be in but the last two games have been really disappointing...I think possibly 3 months of playing absolutely flat-out might finally be catching up with us.
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