A shocking week for the injury hit blues who were given a good hiding at the Stadium of Light by a very good Benfica side, then beaten right at the death by Bolton with yet another player going off injured.

Back-to-back home draws with Stoke City and Wolves have brought Everton back down to earth after a good run, and left us praying for the return of Pienaar and Arteta.

Having scored eleven goals in a week without reply, Everton had to work hard to to earn a hard fought 1-0 win over Portsmouth. The difference was a moment of class from Louis Saha and a top drawer performance from Tim Howard, who repelled everything Pompey threw at him to keep a fourth consecutive clean sheet.

Everton finally put a bad premier league start behind them by following up Thursday night's 4-0 demolition of AEK Athens with a 3-0 victory over Blackburn Rovers on sunday. Seven goals, clean sheets, new players on show and an indication that the early season blip is behind us.

After the win over Wigan and with new players finally onboard, the feel good factor looked like returning to Everton and there was optimism that our season could finally get going. That feel good factor evaportated though after another poor display and a defeat at Fulham which also saw us lose captain Phil Neville for what looks like most of the season.

For so long it looked like three points would elude the Blues here, who were undoubtedly the better team but by no means firing on all cylinders. But persistence, determination and a bit of quality coming off the bench proved to be the difference as Everton finally wore Wigan down and can breathe a huge sigh of relief to be off the mark in the league. The season starts now and there's plenty to be optimistic about.

David Moyes handed a debut to Sylvain Distin and Fellaini dropped to the bench to accommodate Phil Neville back into midfield. Other than that it was the same team that's been starting all season so far, with Saha preferred upfront to Jo.

Without Fellaini on the bench, Cahill was given the chance to play his more accustomed role behind the striker and really push forward more than he has done so far this season. He certainly did that, and got into goal scoring positions on plenty of occasions. The finishing touch proved elusive though and he was frustrated by the Wigan defence and keeper Mike Pollitt on a few occasions.

Everton continue to struggle with the start of the season and few could argue with Moyes' assertion that we just aren't ready. A 1-0 defeat at Burnley follows the 6-1 drubbing by Arsenal and leaves us bottom of the table. Thankfully those results fall either side of a welcome 4-0 win over Sigma which at least gave a boost to our hopes of having a good season - imagine the doom and gloom if we'd lost that one as well !

As season openers go, it couldn't have been worse. After a fairly tight opening, Arsenal took hold of the game and ripped Everton apart to plunge the season into turmoil after only one game.

The Lescott saga rambles on with David Moyes coming out and giving a pretty conclusive and final statement that should get the message across once and for all and put an end to the the whole affair.

Let's face it this pre-season hasn't been the most exciting and other than the Lescott will-he-won't-he saga and the quite shocking "haka" video on evertonfc.com, there haven't been too many talking points. But some blues out there have actually had a pre-season to remember; David Kurtz from LA talks us through his trip to Salt Lake City for the penalty shoot out victory over the MLS Allstarts.