Under the lights, Goodison Park is a magical site. Every feeling is heightened an extra notch, the decibel levels have risen to those of a jet engine during takeoff, and the crowd as a whole is more impassioned.
But Goodison has a nasty monkey on its back that it can’t get rid of. One example is Roberto Martinez, who moved to Merseyside with a head full of hair and left sporting the Lee Carsley style.
Injuries are Everton’s undoing. It started as a coincidence, but now any decent player the gets their hands on is cursed. Their legs become papier-mâché. It’s terrible, wretched, and Blues supporters must be left counting their sins – yet it’s also kind of…laughable at moments.
Let’s examine which unfortunate players have succumbed to the Everton injury curse.
We’ll begin with the most current. Everton signed Ivorian defensive midfielder Idrissa Gana Gueye from Mainz 05 for £22.5 million in August 2019. JPG played 135 minutes before suffering a thigh injury that forced him to miss the rest of the season.
JPG, who was expected to return for the final nine games, recently suffered a non-contact Achilles injury while practising foot-tennis, shutting him out till 2021. So far, that equates to about £167k per minute of football – yikes.
Bernard joined Everton in August 2018, and the curse took a little longer to strike him than it did Gbamin. Bernard suffered knee ligament damage after slipping on the pitch in October.
As your father would say, the sniper got him. He missed the next four games, which isn’t too horrible in the grand scheme of things.
Now, James Vaughan came through as a kid at Everton, so he’s a little different from the other big-money signings. Vaughan did, however, break records on his debut, becoming the Premier League’s youngest scorer and Everton’s youngest top-flight scorer.
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