Rate your club's first half season 21-22

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Which club?

Everton

Expected league finish at the begin of the season?

Target was to compete for the European spots but realistically around 8th-10th

League spot right now?

15th

Best performance?

Everton 2-1 Arsenal - a proper old-school defiant Goodison under the lights performance topped off by a goal of the season contender from Demarai Gray. One of the only times this season I've felt a bit of pride watching my team but the fact that we were completely unable to build on it, going down 3-1 in a meek performance at Crystal Palace the following weekend sums up how pointless it feels at the moment even getting a bit excited about the rare positives the club offers the fanbase.

Worst performance?

So many to choose from. It's tempting to go with the 1-4 defeat to Liverpool as that's where things turned significantly more toxic but we were at least vaguely competitive for patches of that game. Honourable mentions go to Everton 2-5 Watford, Crystal Palace 3-1 Everton, Brentford 1-0 Everton but I'm giving this to Wolves 2-1 Everton. An absolute joke of a first half performance and Iwobi's toeyed goal was our only shot on target. To be honest, though, the lack of creativity or plan in attack coupled with a bad defensive setup and individuals making far too many mistakes, is a common theme of all of these performances and why a change should have been made in the dugout weeks ago.

Best player, so far?

Demarai Gray pretty comfortably, although lengthy injuries to Doucoure, Calvert-Lewin and Richarlison have rendered it pretty much a one-horse race. He must have mixed feelings about this season so far, happy that his Premier League career has finally been revitalised but gutted that he's surrounded by such utter shite.

Best young player?

Anthony Gordon continues to show steady improvement. There isn't much competition here to be honest. Tyler Onyango, Ellis Simms and Lewis Dobbin have made their debuts and Jarrad Branthwaite was impressive in his single performance against Chelsea, but Gordon is the only one who's established himself in the first team, and to be honest is the first young player to do so since Tom Davies and Dominic Calvert-Lewin - it's about time. New signings Patterson and Mykolenko may provide some competition between now and the end of the season if we revisit this question.

Player, who disappointed?

I didn't expect much of Rondon but he has proven to be an absolutely awful acquisition. Nothing against the bloke but bringing him back to the Premier League after he'd been put out to pasture in China has been a terrible misjudgement and it rubs salt in the wound seeing Josh King, who was released on a free after barely being given an opportunity last season, doing a decent job for Watford. Lucas Digne, as much as I back him over the manager in their spat that appears to be leading to his exit from the club, was also performing drastically below expectations before he was dropped.

Overall mark?

2.5/10 - An absolutely terrible season so far held up slightly by a honeymoon period which saw us defeat the behemoths of Southampton, Burnley, Brighton and Norwich, four wins in the opening two months of the season that still account for over half of our points. Getting knocked out of the League Cup to QPR also needs mentioning as something that shouldn't have happened. Teams like us that probably won't get relegated but are also not playing for much at the other end of the table, but can also be half-decent on our day, should be looking to the cups and at least demanding that we don't get knocked out before facing a team that's legitimately better than us.

Outlook on the season's second half and expected league finish now?

My overriding feeling is that I can't be arsed even making a judgement on it. The manager will probably keep his job unless we look like going down which remains a remote possibility due to the awful standard of the bottom four teams in the league. The season is a write-off because there's no chance we're getting into Europe and even if we can scrape our way up to about 10th, which I think is very unlikely but shouldn't be with the players we've got if we get some better luck with injuries, it doesn't really matter. My concern at the moment is how much control Benitez is being given over the club and how out of touch his ideas and priorities are with making a club successful in modern football. The signings of Mykolenko and Patterson in this transfer window, who were both targets identified by Marcel Brands and his team by all accounts, reassures me to some extent that Benitez won't be given full licence to stack the squad with a bunch of Sean Longstaffs. However, it does beg the question why all of those people left the club if their targets are still on the club's radar, and why their targets were so often overlooked in favour of manager favourites like Allan, Rodriguez, Townsend, Rondon, etc. when they were actually at the club, but now that they've left, we actually listen to them. Everton, that.