Daily Archives: Thursday, December 20, 2012

The Everton manager David Moyes has expressed his displeasure at the way the referee Michael Oliver turned down a number of good shouts for a penalty in the recent 1-1 draw with Arsenal.

Everton were playing against Arsenal in a fixture that has been extremely tough for them in recent years. However, they managed to get a credible draw from the match after a late goal from Marouane Fellaini equalised the match after Arsenal had taken the lead through Theo Walcott early in the match. Despite this point from a difficult fixture, Moyes was extremely unhappy with the performance of the referee.

Everton could have been easily given a second-half penalty after the midfielder Steven Pienaar was found by the former Everton midfielder Mikel Arteta in the box. However, the Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger decided to disagree because he felt that it was not a penalty. Theo Walcott managed to open the lead for Arsenal after just 52 seconds. However, Arsenal were unable to hold on to the lead much longer after Marouane Fellaini, who scored his fifth goal of the season, scored with a great shot after just 28 min. The draw leaves Everton just one point above Arsenal in the table.

“We should have had a penalty. The players had to earn everything because we weren’t getting a jot. I thought we played really well against a good Arsenal team and a lot of games are decided by decisions referees make or don’t make. We got nothing tonight. I wasn’t going to play Jelavic yesterday but he said he felt better and could play. I thought he was much better in this game as well. I was a lot happier with him,” said Moyes. Everton will face the Premier league champions Manchester City at the Etihad stadium this weekend.

The Barclays Premier League match between Everton and West Ham is scheduled for the 22nd December at West Ham’s stadium.

Currently Everton are enjoying a reasonably successful season and are sitting just below fourth in the Premier League and looking to cement a place in the Champions League. This will be no easy ride though with the race looking to be as exciting as the title race itself – at time of writing Arsenal, Everton and WBA are all on 27 points just behind Tottenham in 4th, equal on Chelsea with 29.

Looking at the kinds of betting odds that are being offered by the bookmakers, a win for West Ham is priced around 11/4, while an Everton win is priced at 11/8 with a draw at 19/4; so a bet on either club could be worthwhile.

Delving back into previous matches between the two sides is quite revealing. In the 2010/2011 season both of their Premier League matches resulted in draws and in the 2009/2010 season, at Everton the game was drawn 2-2 and at West Ham the game was won by Everton 2-1.

In all the games that they have ever played at West Ham (63 in total) 40% were won by the home club, 36% by Everton, and 24% were drawn. However such long term statistical data is about as meaningless as using past roulette numbers to predict future spins at an online casino (have a look here River Belle’s new football themed games and many sports themed games reviews on the best Canadian casino game – a safe place to be hedging your bets if the super tight race for fourth is not where you feel comfortable investing your money.

Any football match result is to some extent influenced by the fans, and one of the more influential bunches of fans are the Everton ones. If you think that this will have a significant effect on the result of the oncoming match, then a bet on Everton could be a winning one.