• Match against Sporting moved to avoid Liverpool clash
• ‘I don’t know what sort of atmosphere we are going to get’
Unlike some other Premier League clubs, Everton have embraced the concept of the Europa League but they drew the line at being ordered to kick off at teatime. Everton’s manager, David Moyes, today condemned Uefa for insisting that their tie with Sporting Lisbon start at 5.45pm tomorrow to avoid a clash with Champions League games kicking off two hours later.
Everton and Liverpool had been drawn at home in the round of 32 but Everton were told to move their game from Thursday to Tuesday because of Liverpool’s superior European record.
“I don’t know what sort of atmosphere we are going to get,” Moyes said. “We will be kicking off at teatime when people are still coming home from work. It is something that Uefa have not done very well. They have been really poor in evaluating a competition we want to do well in. I don’t know why they could not have ruled that one of these sides would play the first leg at home and the other would play away. That would have solved everything but Uefa have not done this properly. They have not got it right.”
Everton, who expect a crowd of around 30,000, are, nevertheless, confident that the early kick-off will not see swaths of empty seats at Goodison Park and say there have been no problems recruiting sufficient stewards.
However, while clubs such as Aston Villa and Bolton have found the Uefa Cup an inconvenience and the Fulham manager, Roy Hodgson, wondered if its replacement, the Europa League, was worth the hassle, Moyes said he has been enthused by it. Since Everton have no other silverware to compete for and are now mining a rich seam of form, the Europa League is seen from Goodison as a competition well within their compass.
With virtually a full squad available, their two games against Sporting Lisbon should not produce the chaos and embarrassment of their encounters with Benfica in the group stages. The 5-0 defeat in the Estádio da Luz was their heaviest in European competition while the Portuguese leaders strolled through the return on Merseyside, where Moyes’s bench consisted almost entirely of youth team players.
“They are similar to Benfica in that they have a big history as far as European football is concerned,” Moyes said of Sporting Lisbon who have met English opposition six times in European knockout competitions and won through each time. “However, when we played Benfica, they were in a really good moment and I am not sure that Sporting are.” Sporting trail Benfica by 21 points in the Portuguese league and have failed to win any of their last four games.
And with his leading players back, Moyes is relieved that, finally, the knockout phase of this unwieldy competition has begun. “Knockout football is what everyone has enjoyed about the European game over the years and we have developed our approach to it,” he said. “When we lost to Villarreal a few years ago [in a Champions League qualifier] I thought it was important that we just went out and won, rather than stop the opposition scoring an away goal and judging it over two legs.
“We missed the likes of Mikel Arteta and Steven Pienaar earlier in the competition when we had a very thin squad and struggled to retain possession. Having them back makes you not quite so fearful.”
Everton (probable 4-4-1-1) Howard; Neville, Senderos, Distin, Baines; Donovan, Osman, Arteta, Pienaar; Cahill; Saha.
Sporting Lisbon (probable 4-1-3-2) Rui Patricio; Abel, Carrico, Tonel, Grimi; Mendes; Izmailov, Moutinho, Veloso; Carlos Saleiro, Liedson.
Referee Darko Ceferin (Slovenia)
TV: ESPN kick-off, 5.45pm
EvertonDavid MoyesUefa Europa LeagueTim Richguardian.co.uk
