Do you remember those optical illusion books that used to send you temporarily cross-eyed but occasionally after about 30 seconds worked so that you seen a geometric dinosaur appear? Well, watching Everton this season so far has been like that except you have to stare at it for 90 minutes and at the end a huge grey image of a fetid turd appears to pop out of the TV. The only difference is that this is no illusion.

An away trip to Newcastle when they have made a strong start to the season looked unlikely to change this pattern. And so it seemed to be as they made much the stronger start and had us pinned back in our own half for the opening 10 minutes. That said, Seamus Coleman did have a half-chance from the right corner of the Newcastle penalty box but he dragged his shot wide. After that, it seemed inevitable that Newcastle would score sooner rather than later as they looked far more threatening going forward. Amazingly they didn’t have to do it themselves as one of our defenders scored for them. Johnny ‘I’m one of the best 10 defenders in the world me’ Heitinga met a decent cross from Danny Simpson but instead of twatting the ball into the stratosphere stuck a casual leg out and the ball bounced off the bottom of his boot and past the stranded Howard. I didn’t even bother tutting.

Saha and Osman both had decent chances to level after this early set back but it was Newcastle who would score again next to open up a two goal lead. A headed clearance by Rodwell could only fall to Ryan Taylor (a red shite fan, naturally) who lashed the ball in from outside the box over Howard’s desperate dive. It must be noted that while it was sweetly struck no-one from our team could be arsed closing him down.

Everton almost responded quickly when Saha finally managed a shot that didn’t sail wide or trickle harmlessly through to the goalkeeper but his shot came back off the inside of the post. With half-time beckoning Everton pulled a goal back when Rodwell powerfully headed home Drenthe’s curling corner.

That seemed to give us some impetus heading into the second half and were unlucky early on when Saha’s shot struck the outstretched hand of Dan ‘mostly shite’ Gosling. The referee didn’t see it and Newcastle got away with it. We went on to control possession in the second half but in truth never really recovered from a disastrous opening half an hour and didn’t really test their goalkeeper enough to justify a point in my opinion. It will be interesting to see how Newcastle United fare in their next few games against opponents near the top of the league.

For Everton there is an international break to, well I don’t really know. I just hope we can pick up some points starting against Wolves at home in a fortnight. I realise we have had some tough fixtures but 5 defeats in the last 6 games is horrendous form in any league. If we cant start to pick points up against other teams this could be a very, very long season.