With Everton returning to the Europa League tonight as they take on Swiss side Young Boys, the BBC have published an article on their site highlighting the difficulties of combining a Europa League campaign with a successful season in the Premier League.
The article makes some strong points, but rather than blame the European campaign for Everton failures this season, I think we need to look much closer to home. In fact our poorest run of form has coincided with the winter break from UEFAs second tier competition. It is also worth noting that as poor as Everton’s domestic campaign has been, Spurs, who have also played in the Europa throughout the season have improved and look more than capable of pushing for 4th place in the Premier League.