Everton's strife no laughing matter for Moyes

David Moyes does not need to look at the Premiership table to understand the hole Everton have found themselves in this season.

He just has to keep his ears open. Humour has always been a Scouse way of dealing with adversity and after five straight Premiership defeats and only one league goal so far the jokes are flying.

Such as the one which followed their swift exit from the UEFA Cup last week.

‘Everton today announced Easyjet as their new kit sponsor. The new shirt’s logo? In and out of Europe in a few hours.’

If Evertonians did not laugh they would probably cry after seeing the promise of last season’s achievement evaporate into what is rapidly becoming a potential relegation battle.

It is the cold statistics which give reason to fear the worst, the fact that Everton have taken just 24 points from their last 25 Premiership matches and have lost 15 of their last 23.

That suggests the decline had set in long before the new season had begun.

It suggests the inability to replace the steadying midfield talents of Thomas Gravesen, who joined Real Madrid last January, is a major factor in this season’s struggle.

The really worrying aspect, made worse by the psychological blow of their hasty exit from Europe, is the fact Everton just cannot score. That is the classic ingredient for relegation.

Defensive solidity can often be shored up by an increased work ethic. Midfield frailty might be improved by a change of tactics or formation.

But the inability to put the ball in the net tears at a team’s confidence.

It breeds frustration which can turn to despair.

Yet this is not the time to panic. It is not the time to call for the manager’s head as a dispirited few did on their way out of Eastlands following the weekend defeat against Manchester City.

Moyes has not become a bad manager overnight.

Only four months ago there was sizeable nationwide support proclaiming him as the real manager of the year for his work with Everton on a shoestring, as opposed to Jose Mourinho’s success on a near-unlimited budget at Stamford Bridge.

Indeed, he won the award of his fellow managers even if predictably the higher-profile Barclays Manager of the Year went to Mourinho.

Moyes was also the toast of Merseyside after finishing above Liverpool.

Most of the same players remain at Goodison plus some half-decent summer arrivals, on paper at least, such as Nuno Valente and Matteo Ferrari.

It is the spirit of last season which appears to have gone.

The spirit which saw Australia’s tenacious Tim Cahill worrying opposing defences and Kevin Kilbane proving one of the Premiership’s trickiest performers.

A spirit which saw the whole team playing with a high tempo and a physical presence which was the talk of the Premiership.

Neither Cahill, nor Kilbane have been able to emulate that form.

Duncan Ferguson appears past his Premiership sell-by date, his legs barely able to carry him for even the 20 minutes or so of nuisance value as a perennial substitute.

Injury to Lee Carsley, a gritty midfielder and willing work horse who hit Everton’s winner against Liverpool last season, has not helped but the manager’s biggest disappointment unquestionably is James Beattie.

A club-record £6m (€8.8m) signing from Southampton last January, Beattie was the man on whom Moyes staked his future and yet the striker has stumbled from injury to suspect fitness to lack of form, scoring Everton’s first goal of the season against Villarreal but nothing since.

He might still come good. After all, his 68 goals from 161 starts for Southampton brought him five England caps.

But the signs are not favourable, so much so that men such as Phil Neville must wonder at the wisdom of having moved from Manchester United.

“Talent always comes through and I still think it will,” says Moyes, who has spent £25m (€36.8m) since January and signed a new three-year contract which ties him to Goodison until 2009.

It might, but Everton’s next two matches following the international break are against Tottenham away and Chelsea at home, so there is plenty of scope for the hole to get bigger before the situation improves.

And while chairman Bill Kenwright is Moyes’s staunchest supporter, a manager’s future so often is determined by the speed with which disaffection grows among fans.

The mutterings have begun, the Merseyside humour increasingly derisory.

Another joke goes ‘What do Evertonians do when Everton win the Premiership? They turn off the Playstation.’

It would be ridiculous to write off a man of Moyes’s recent record so early in a new season but the dour Scot has reason to be worried. Very worried.