The Vitality Stadium is the venue for the Blues’ next Premier League game. A trip to the South Coast awaits Sean Dyche and his side.
Bournemouth are standing in the way of Everton as they aim to get their season back on track. The Blues last tasted victory in the top-flight back on December 16.
Questions are starting to be asked, and frustrations among supporters are starting to grow. It is almost like November 2022 all over again.
Granted, things are not as bad as the second time Everton visited the Vitality in the space of a week more than a year ago, but Saturday’s game is one Dyche and his side cannot afford to lose.
Back on November 12, 2022, the Blues arrived at the Vitality just days after crashing out of the Carabao Cup at the hands of the Cherries. Then boss Frank Lampard made 11 changes from the side beaten by Leicester City for the cup tie.
The hammering made it two defeats on the bounce for the Blues, who, to put it bluntly, never recovered from the embarrassing 4-1 loss. A 3-0 defeat then followed in the league game on an afternoon when ugly scenes followed the full-time whistle.
From that moment on, Everton lost all but one of their fixtures under Lampard. The only point they picked up was away against Manchester City on New Year’s Eve.
As supporters left the Vitality for the second time in a matter of days, doubts all of a sudden emerged over Lampard being the right man for the job, while some supporters were rightly still angry over the fact that a chance of winning a trophy, for the first time since May 1995, had been tossed away just days earlier.
All the momentum and good will Lampard had built up since his arrival started to feel like it was drifting away, and from that moment on, neither he nor his side recovered.
Lampard, like so many before him, ultimately ended up learning that boom is forever followed by bust at modern-day Everton.
Not for a minute is anyone suspecting that a defeat on the South Coast could leave Dyche fighting to keep his job, let alone be in danger of the sack, but another loss would only raise more questions about the Everton boss.
Defeat at Old Trafford against Manchester United last time out continued an awful run for Everton, who have now picked up just five points from 11 games. They sit four points above the drop zone, but that is aided by Nottingham Forest’s recent points deduction.
Granted, if it had not been for a points deduction of their own, the Blues would be six points better off, but the fact is they are not. Instead, they are in a third straight battle to avoid relegation to the Sky Bet Championship.
So as the Blues prepare to return to action, Dyche and his side must produce a performance and claim a result that ensures supporters are not heading home on Saturday evening with doubts in their minds, like they did on their last visit to the Vitality.
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