Everton flight home aborted seconds before take-off

Flight delay adds more misery to Everton's pre-season to forget



EVERTON'S flight home following another pre-season defeat had to be aborted seconds before take-off leaving them grounded in Germany for almost 24-hours.




Roberto Martinez's squad were stranded following Saturday's 3-1 reverse to newly-promoted Bundesliga side SC Paderborn when a fault with their charter flight meant they could not fly back to Merseyside immediately after the game.



A miserable pre-season continued when the pilot of the plane pulled out of a take-off after they had sped down the runway and left Everton's players spending an extra night in Germany before finally returning yesterday afternoon.



The loss leaves Martinez's side without a win in five warm-up games, the first time Everton have failed to win a pre-season game since 1979-80.



Despite that and concerns about the fitness of the players ahead of the opening weekend of the Premier League season, Martinez said: "It's going to be a really good week now getting ready for Leicester, which is another challenge again. We're looking forward to it and getting back to playing league football."