The Fellaini Effect: Reviewing Everton vs. Manchester United

Of all the footballers plying their trade in the Premier League at the moment, few receive harsher criticism, or are the butt of more jokes, than poor, derided Marouane Fellaini. Despite having shown a few glimmers of consistency during his three years at Old Trafford, the bouffanted midfielder is destined to feature on 'Top 25 Worst Manchester United Flops' listicles from now until the end of time. It's not his fault that David Moyes decided he was good enough to play for the most successful team in the country, which in an entirely objective sense he is not. He works hard, he tries his best, but the reality is that he is outstanding at sly elbows and, unfortunately, not much else.

One of Fellaini's biggest problems has been his conspicuous struggle with confidence at United. For a big, lumbering midfield enforcer, he comes across as a surprisingly sensitive soul, and often seems weighed down by the considerable burden of expectation which comes with playing for a struggling behemoth of a club. In the routine games he has started for United this season – against Swansea, Southampton and Bournemouth, say – he has tended to do fairly well, while it the bigger games – against Manchester City and Chelsea for instance – he has often been left looking horribly exposed. He seems far more suited to bullying weaker sides than to asserting himself in high-pressure situations, which perhaps explains his disastrous intervention late on at Goodison Park this weekend.

Timing. pic.twitter.com/MCxxlLn7l0
— Coral (@Coral) December 4, 2016

Having been brought on late in the game to shore things up against his old club on Sunday, Fellaini almost instantly gifted Everton a penalty with a clumsy challenge on Idrissa Gueye. It was content gold for verified betting accounts on Twitter, a challenge which fulfilled every Fellaini stereotype which has been carefully cultivated by social media's professional piss takers over the past few years. We, as a nation, like nothing more than having our prejudices substantiated by a comical moment of playing to type, and Fellaini obliged us with agonising ungainliness. It was Fawlty Towers-esque in its slapstick inelegance. Marouane – more like Maladroit, amirite!

While coming on late and giving away a penalty will now doubtlessly be dubbed 'doing a Marouane' or 'the Fellaini effect', we cannot help but feel a pang of sympathy for Manchester's most unloved man. The people laugh, the critics howl, and so Fellaini is doomed to wilt further and consequently make even more mistakes. With Jose Mourinho in a particularly spiteful mood at the moment, who knows what the consequences will be in terms of selection, even if the Special One defended Marouane in the immediate aftermath of the match. A man already low on self-belief, Fellaini needed a solid few minutes against Everton to reaffirm his status as a competent utility man at the very least. Instead, he got another comedy moment for the blooper reel, and a post-match drubbing from Gary Neville, who would have been kinder had he simply called Fellaini a complete tosser.