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Radio City's Alan Irwin

Posts: 61

Alan Irwin is the Voice of Everton for Liverpool's Radio City 96.7. An experienced radio journalist, Alan commentates on all of the Blues' matches and is well placed to provide insightful blogs on the progress of the team.

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It is one of the most annoying aspects of our football calendar that we just get the season underway and three games in have to break for International football! And only 4 more weekends until we have to break again!!!

I know there are many on Merseyside whose love of the game doesn't extend to the National Team (I am not one of them) and missing their domestic football leaves them rather irate.

No doubt though that David Moyes will feel equally frustrated as some of those fans this week. The one hope he will have had is that any player called up for International duty returns unscathed. To lose one of his new acquisitions through injury is a major blow, just when the picture was looking rosier with the likes of Cahill, Pienaar and Hibbert returning to training and closer to full fitness level. As I said last week I suppose as Blues we almost come to expect some good news to be followed by bad.

However, with or without Jacobsen the boss knows what he has in terms of resources and knows that we must defend so much better at Stoke than we did at Goodison last time out. Hopefully Joleon Lescott's confidence will have been boosted by his selection for England at centre back even if if the opposition was only Andorra. Whether he continues to partner Joseph Yobo at the back for the Blues is down to Moyes but conceeding 7 goals in 3 games is not the way forward for us. I suspect there may be positional changes for Sunday's trip.

Stoke were everyone's favourites for relegation at the start of the season and I'm not sure one victory over Aston Villa has done much to change my mind. What it did show though was their willingness for the long battle ahead, although as it was their first home game back in the top flight I think you're entitled to expect that. Everton will be ready for them I'm sure.

I feel i'm in danger of repeating myself following our first away trip of the campaign to West Brom, but these are exactly the sort of games we should be winning.....have a look at their team sheet and tell me what frightens you.........there's even a chance Salif Diao could start for them on Sunday! There, that says it all !!!

Come on you Blues, 3 points is a must ahead of some tricky fixtures ahead. And 3 points will put us in exactly the right frame of mind for European football on Thursday. Can't wait!