Goal by Davies secures second win for Everton and lifts them from the bottom of the table. To prevent my jumping on the “sack Moyes” bandwagon, Everton needed to secure at least 2 points from their last three games (Tottenham, Chelsea, Birmingham). They’ve managed 4. So Moyes is safe for another month (like my threat of jumping on the “sack Moyes” bandwagon had any impact - or did it?)
November looks like a month where the Toffees can pick up some points to steer clear of the relegation zone.
Ahhh, too bad that Everton didn’t sack Moyes. After all, they are only winners of their last two Premiership games, and have 7 out of their last 9 points. Bad form, that.
Watched the game on Fox Soccer Channel - nice cross by Van Der Meyde was beuatifully headed in by Beattie in 17th minute. Although Boro controlled possession for much of the match, Everton played solid defense and denied Boro the opportunity to get into much rhythm. Everton’s play against Boro was very similar to how they played last season - not exciting, but they played hard and smart.
Ordered the United-Chelsea match. The second half was a messy affair. Drogba was woefully overpriced. Ferdinand is not a central defender. Was impressed with Makalele (as always) and Si Jun Hi when he came on.
John O’Shea makes me ashamed to be Irish.
Still, it was a good win and it just might…just might slow Chelsea down. Chelsea will probably buy a new striker in January though and the that’ll be that.
Another disgusting, disgraceful, inept and woeful performance from Everton today. Why oh why didn’t they take the chance to sack that viciously malcompetent idiot Moyes when they had it? This man is an albatross around our neck. He is not worth going down for! The only way forward for Everton is to ditch this loser - we WILL be relegated if he is in charge one month longer.
Give it a fucking rest with this ‘Moyes out’ posturing. I notice you were slow to comment following our last two wins against Birmingham and Middlesborough. Do you have the slightest insight into the problems the current team is facing? Any opinion even? Something substantial beyond ‘Moyes must be sacked’?
Where is he going wrong? What are the big weaknesses in the team that have them where they are right now? If you want him out so bad who would you approach to replace him? Give us something to talk about besides this juvenile ranting FFS.
Watched the game on Fox. Looks as if Everton has reverted back to previous form. I’m at a loss as to explain why they played so poorly. Defense looked solid up until the last few minutes of the first half. WBA sould NOT have been awarded a penalty kick as Ellerington was clearly fouled outside the penalty area (as the replay showed).
Mid-field play was extremely poor - players kept giving up the ball and lacked aggresiveness. VDM did have a few nice crosses, but was rarely involved in much else. Kilbane played horribly, and his poor pass near the end was inexcusible. Arteta, Davies, and Neville were equally ineffective. Hibbert was given too many opportunities to put the ball into the box. While I like Hibbert as a defender, he’s NOT the go-to guy for crosses.
I hate to say this, but Marcus Bent is clearly a liability as a starting player. He showed hussle and hard work, but he constantly loses possession. I don’t know why the players were getting him the ball more often than Beattie. Beattie was a non-factor.
And what’s the deal with constantly kicking the ball upfield? It seems to me that this works well only in conjunction with trying to establish possession for a substantial period of time in setting up an attack (or you have players that are good at winning headers, which Everton rarely did today). All the constant kicking the ball upfield did was allow WBA to regain possession and establish their own attack. Granted, WBA’s midfield play wasn’t all that great either. But Everton needed to establish their presense on the flow of the game in the midfield - make WBA play defense. While Everton’s defense has been good of late, you can’t constantly rely on them to bail you out of poor midfield play all the time.
I see Bent relegated to the bench for the next match (replaced by Ferguson) - I know, Ferguson was less than 100% for this match and that’s why he didn’t start. Kilbaine is a loadstone that needs to be benched. Once some of the other players get healthy, move Neville and Koldrup into defense and bench Weir. Put VDM and Arteta on the wings as they are Everton’s best players in putting crossing passes into the box.
Beating shit teams like Birmingham and Middlesborough is the very least I expect. What does he want - a fucking medal for doing the bare minimum of his job? Losing 0-4 to shit teams like WBA is, as far as I am concerned, justification for a rant.
Let’s see, he buys crap players who are always inuured, he sends them out with no clear tactical direction, we have no effective midfeilders or strikers and he insists on buying defenders and, for the love of God, James Beattie.
He is the manager, he bought the players, he should be accountable.
As I have said - he is incompetent. He is clearly no judge of a player, he is tactically woeful and he seems to love to buy players who are always injured. Or injured when we buy them. Why he does this I do not know - incompetence is the only explanationi. He also seems incapable of motviating the players as once he may have done.
Well, perhaps the fact that the players Moyes has brought to the club are uselesss (Bent, Kilbane, Beattie anyone?) and the Moyes has no idea how to get the shower of shit he has bought to play as a team apart from the big hoof up highway 1 to the tall, psychotic Scotsman could be a predicate factor. And if Moyes was actually capable of learning from his mistakes ( which is perhaps his most galling, appalling shortcoming) he might want to take a look at what they are doing at Wigan and Charlton and copy that. That seems to be working.
How about Rainieri? Seriously Pisso the Alcoholic Dog would do a better job at the moment. Frankly, Rangers could make a call to Moyes and end our woes immediately and cheaply.
Talk about whatever you like - fact of the matter is Everton are in deep deep voodoo and Moyes has to be held accountable for the damage he has done.
And I got through all of that without mentioning the lowest points total in the clubs history or a 0-7 loss to Arsenal - two of the outstanding dot points on Moyes’ CV
It certainly is, just not one we’ve heard four times before eh? There’s unquestionably a case to be made for sacking Moyes, performances this season have been a disgrace, but I don’t think you’re making it. What you are doing, and let me apologise in advance for this grevious insult, is sounding like a koppite.
The Liverpool fan’s belief in the ‘divine right to win’ of their team is so entrenched in their identity its become a cliche. The mediocrity of Souness, Evans (:)) and Houllier notwithstanding, Reds fans have taken fifteen years to adjust to the fact that their team is not always going to be competitive in the premiership.
You’re playing the same record; Middlesborough are a shite team, Moyes isn’t fit to manage the club, Marcus Bent shouldn’t wear the shirt etc etc. Just because we’re the original ‘grand old club to play for’ doesn’t give us the right to beat Birmingham city away. I don’t understand why anyone who follows football, Liverpool fans excepted, would think that their club can just swan in and beat a smaller one in the current premiership climate? Our teams have been struggling for the past fifteen years with occasional highlights courtesy of Moyes. Basically since year zero when we missed the premiership boat along with the rest of the league minus one. Moyes is unequivocally the best thing to have happened to Everton in recent memory. Whilst this is easily demonstrated, I think we would both agree that you’re not receptive to the facts relating to Moyes, so lets not bother. One fact I will emphasise, though, is that Moyes took over from Walter Smith in March 2002, when the club was 15th in the table and nailed on for relegation given their form. You were presumably asleep / overseas / in outer space at this time, having lost touch with English football in 1967 when Everton bestrode division 1 like colossi.
As to the here and now, I agree with you that the ginger man’s habit of signing injured or unfit players is exasperating, and hard to understand given his reputation as a hard-ass on the training pitch. I would love to be able to counter your argument that James Beattie is shite, but I cannot. You are also correct to point out that it is his team, there can be no hiding behind the fact that he inherited a lot of Walter Smith’s players anymore, they’re largely gone.
I’ll throw in a few other negatives for you; when the game starts its like its on rails and cannot be altered in any shape or form. At the moment he doesn’t seem to be able to change a game, be it through a half time talk, change of tactics, substitution etc. As a ‘live’ manager he is really poor at the moment. His body language is also very worrying, he seems to be really feeling the pressure. Seeing him interviewed on Motd he had that brittleness that Alex Ferguson has when he’s fucked things up. I would like to have seen a shrug of the shoulders, we were shite, it wasn’t our day, got on the wrong end of some awful decisions but we’ll be back. Instead, he looked like a man under crushing pressure. I guess its no picnic having your players expose you like that on national (and international) television.
At the end of the day, Brian, we got beaten by WBA. BFD. When we took seven out of the last nine points happy days were here again. If we go and sort out the black and white bottlers next week then everything will be right as rain. You have to take the rough with the smooth and not get hysterical after a bad defeat.
I bet you had a smile on your face when you typed that.
Weir has to be dropped for the next game in favour of Koldrup, he was terrible yesterday. Kilbane’s back pass was funny, if nothing else. A superbly weighted ball, hit with just the right amount of side to get behind Weir and put Earnshaw through for the fourth. :smack: I thought we had gotten rid of the comedy football when we sold Stubbs, but it looks like Kilbane is stepping up to full the breach.
Not sure what to do with Bent, he was a big reason for our success last year - a great athlete who puts a lot of pressure on the opposition’s possession. His technique is awful though, and his attitude has been disgraceful this season, sulking on the park at times. He’s a moody player, having bounced around numerous clubs before he arrived at Everton.
It would be nice to write this one off as a terrible result and move on. Hard to do though, when you’re down amongst the dead men of the premiership.
Didn’t see game, but by many accounts Everton looked to have rebounded from a poor performance against WBA. Yobo scored the goal and played well, as did many of the others, especially Arteta. I heard that McFadden played well, and that Kilbaine did not play. Still waiting for Kroldrup to break into the starting line-up.
I watched the game on the TV, the Blues were OK, one of the better performances I’ve seen this season. We were lucky, in that Owen wasn’t fit and avoiding a dead cert penalty for handball by McFadden on the line; but as far as the game went we deserved the three points, in control for the second half. Arteta and VDM are class players, so no surprise that they played well, but the team in general wasn’t bad.
I read some comments by Moyes recently on Kroldrup, along the lines of him ‘not being ready’ just yet, but was making progress. A 5million pound player from serie A not ready to play in the premiership The signs are a little worrying there.
Newcastle have problems of their own going on yesterday’s display. Their two centre halves Bramble and Boumsong (who cost a lot of money IIRC) looked really poor, Shearer is so far past it I don’t know how to describe him anymore, although his agression, foul play and general nigglyness are as fresh as a daisy.
Souness seems very unpopular with the fans, as well.
The pace of Serie A football is significantly slower than the pace of English football. It isn’t unusual for Italian leaguers to take some time to get worked up to the point they have the stamina for a full 90 minutes on an English pitch, IMHO.
Where are the “sack Moyes” crowd today? :rolleyes:
Damn, it’s a hell of a good thing that Moyes is barely hanging on to his job. How can he possibly hold on given such results? I mean, only 2 - 0 away at Ewood Park over Rovers!! Come on, Toffees! How can you accept such poor results as that!??
Sack Moyes. Riiiiiiiiiight.
If mamboman were a quarter the man Moyes is, he’d come back in here and apologize for his ranting.
Reading continue their stealth promotion campaign. They get almost no coverage, but today they beat Luton 3-0 and are now four points clear at the top of the Championship (the division below the English Premiership) and fourteen points clear of the play-offs. A big deal for a club that has never been in the top division despite being one of the oldest football clubs in the world.
You don’t get it. do you? beating crap teams like Newcastle and a 10 man Blackburn are what we are supposed to do. That in itself does not represent any corners turned, water walked upon or deep lying problems solved. Gee, maybe we’ll even stay up this year - and if that’s the limit of our ambitions, then pity help us. We may as well not have sacked Walter Smith! :rolleyes:
The fact of the matter is Nil Satis Nisi Optimum still means something to some people. I’m far from convinced (and I’m putting thast generously) that that applies to David Moyes.
mm
If the basis of your complaints is that Everton aren’t one of the top, oh, four sides in English football, it isn’t David Moyes you need to focus your unhappiness upon. You might try focussing it on the directors of the club who aren’t leveraging it the same way that Arsenal’s board, Man U’s board and Chelsea’s multi-billion pound owner are. Then look at the conditions that surround that, like the prices of tickets, the constant push to merchandise, the loss of control to multi-million pound owners like Malcom Glazer and, worse, Roman Abramovich, etc., and ask yourself if it is really worth it?
Everton were in Europe this year, not that they made much of it. That sounds like a pretty good result last year, and it was achieved under Moyes. They’ve done better under Moyes than they had their previous years. It doesn’t add up to sacking Moyes, no matter how discontented you are with the situation. And I love the fact that it is only after BAD results that you come in and trumpet your discontent; it makes you sound like a spoiled child. A true supporter of a club also revels in the good things that happen; you likely hate the wins because they “justify” keeping Moyes. :dubious:
Just as an aside, I should note that I forecast the beginnings of instability in English football back when the Bosman case was decided. Free agency inserts into any sport the inability of mid-level teams to cement their positions. Unless spending caps are put in place, teams with lots of money grab all the impact players, and teams at the tier below that end up with wildly varying degrees of success as key players are either contracted or not; from one year to the next the “face” of the team will change dramatically.
So the days of easily being in the top half of the table year after year are likely gone, unless you are a team willing and able to spend what it takes to attract the very best talent. I see some of that in the English game already.
There are other pitfalls, too. You don’t want to end up like Leicester City and Leeds Utd. did, spending beyond your means in an attempt to jump into the more elite strata. I’d hate to see the Toffees in second flight football, simply because their directors wanted to be in Europe every year, and couldn’t control their purse.
I often wonder what has made Arsenal so successful in recent years off the pitch. Highbury is not a big stadium, the club doesn’t have an especially high international profile, yet they seem to have done preeminently well out of the premiership. They’re not owned by a wealthy benefactor (are they?), yet they’re putting the finishing touches to a 356 million pound stadium. I understand how success on the pitch can lead to a general virtuous circle of reinforcement; maybe they’re simply a very well-run football club. Being in the ‘market’ of London doesn’t hurt, either.
What do you mean by leveraging DSYoungEsq? Something to do with borrowing or debt?
The signs are a little worrying there.