No Silva lining for under-fire Everton boss
SOAKED through and staring into space, Marco Silva looked a broken man by the end. The great unknown is whether he will get enough time to piece himself and his team back together again.
It will not be an easy repair job. Their loss at Brighton will have stung far more than most because of circumstances that had Everton winning 2-1 on 80 minutes and losing 3-2 at the whistle via a desperately soft penalty given by VAR and a stoppage-time own goal.
Gut punch doesn’t quite cover it. Not when Silva’s future was already a matter for debate and even if he could point to a performance that deserved more. Sadly for Everton and managers of any club, what you deserve usually counts for diddly squat when set against the cold currency of points.
And on that front, after a fifth defeat in six, Everton and Silva have precious little in hand. They are two points above the bottom three and really, that is all. Nothing else matters so much.
They can talk about recent progress, about Brighton having only one shot on goal until their 80th-minute equaliser from the spot. They can talk about the weird VAR decision that made said equaliser, with Michael Keane penalised retrospectively for stepping on Aaron Connolly’s ankle while they jostled for a high ball.
They can talk about their own shout for a penalty that wasn’t given when Richarlison and Martin Montoya came together early in the second half and they can talk about scoring two goals in an away game for the first time this season. They can talk about those things and they did. It changes nothing.
The only meaningful facts are that they trailed to a Pascal Gross free-kick, led through the combination of an Adam Webster own goal and a Dominic CalvertLewin finish, then were trodden into the muck by Neal Maupay’s penalty and Lucas Digne’s 94thminute own goal. Brutal.
Silva, who left Seamus
Coleman on the bench throughout put a dignified face on it, saying: ‘It’s difficult for us to understand how some things happened today. We have to keep working even if there are some things you can’t understand.
‘We were in control at that moment (of the penalty awarded by VAR) and that moment completely changed the game. We should have controlled the game differently but that decision and why that decision happened was very difficult for us to understand. We should have had a clear penalty too’
Watford are one of the four teams below Everton, but they did at least add a fifth point of the season after a 0-0 draw at home to Bournemouth.
You have to go back to April 20, when they won 2-1 at relegationbound Huddersfield Town, to find their last Premier League victory. And for the Vicarage Road regulars it’s been an even longer purgatory. April 2 was the Hornets’ last home league success, a 4-1 win over Fulham.
The hosts were grateful to keeper Ben Foster, who made crucial saves to deny Philip Billing, Diego Rico, Arnaut Danjuma and Ryan Fraser to leave Bournemouth frustrated.