INERTIA

THERE WAS a strange old feeling while watching our grand old team on Sunday.
We all knew the high stakes, were aware of Derby's awfulness, and knew our crowd was healthy and first-team strong.
But despite that, inertia hung over the Goodison crowd like the swollen rain clouds which soon added to the gloom.

I’ve said before that Goodison can be an eccentric and contrary place, and that’s one of the many reasons I love it.
But sometimes it can be part of the malaise when Everton aren't playing well.
David Moyes felt the time was right afterwards to question the part we played in Sunday’s pitiful performance (our worst at home this season for me, on par with Oldham).
To an extent he is right. We’ve currently got a demoralised and emotionally bruised squad playing under pressure at the high-stakes business end of the season.
There was none of the confidence and exuberance of earlier performances this term.
Instead, we laboured past the finish line against a team who look like a mid-table Championship outfit at best.
It was like the team’s hand-wringing mindset was, ‘Derby are terrible but they’ve just been relegated so can relax. That means we might get beat and to lose now - and to Derby - would be our season over'.
It’s like Charlie Brown in those old Peanuts cartoons, approaching the mound full of self-doubt. He was always struck out immediately.
So while Moyes and Co may privately feel that the Fiorentina failure has hurt them and damaged their belief and form - they should recognise that its the same for the crowd. Except we don’t get paid handsomely to get over it.
Everyone in Goodison invested a lot of emotion and energy into the Fiorentina game.
It undoubtedly helped the team who were, despite an excellent performance, ultimately unable to score their penalties. It happens.
But it’s difficult to get passionately behind a team when they’re playing as poorly as they did against Derby.
Fulham was one of those things. West Ham? Poor, but understandable. But Derby proved that the players haven’t rediscovered their mental strength.
Now is the time for the team AND the fans to move on.
We’re all looking to Birmingham as our only certainly winnable remaining fixture. But why should it be?
Who cares if Chelsea and Arsenal are still in the title race? Newcastle’s late late renaissance? So what.
When we turned over Spurs and City earlier this season, and pushed United very close twice, we were playing without fear.
The likes of Arteta, Pienaar and Osman had a confidence and swagger which infected their team-mates and built the base for our impressive league standing.
The player’s keep insisting we are still in the face for fourth. It’s very unlikely but not impossible.
They need to believe their own rhetoric and we need to get behind them for the remainder, so Everton can make life as uncomfortable as possible for the side currently in fourth.
We’re better than Pompey, even without Cahill, so let them worry about keeping up with us and not vice versa.

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