Season 2011-12 Fan Articles

Results Indict the Moyes Defence

By Peter   Fearon  ::  10/12/2011   122 Comments (»Last) The only possible justification for the negative, destructive and dull, hesitant brand of unfootball favoured by David Moyes is success. Instead, the kind of craven posture we saw on Saturday ? used against Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Newcastle, Liverpool and now Arsenal ? has yielded a grand total of ZERO points from a possible 18. Is that not a clear enough signal that it is not working?

When you have SEVEN defenders on the field ? Hibbert, Heitinga, Jagielka, Baines, Coleman, Neville and Distin, with the other three playing deep ? and can still not stop your opponent from scoring, isn?t it surely time for some profound self-criticism of your whole approach to the game?

Instead, Moyes insisted in his after-match comments that, when Arsenal scored, Everton were actually in the ascendancy:

?When they scored the goal, we looked the more likely to score,? he told Sporting Life. ?We had grown in confidence and weathered a lot of what Arsenal had thrown at us.?

I suppose Moyes was referring to the speculative chip from distance by Phil Neville which missed the target ? of course ? but which nevertheless was the closest Everton had come to mimicking a scoring opportunity. In reality, we did not look like scoring the entire game, let alone more likely to score than the opposition.

Moyes had actually given up on scoring by taking off our lone striker, Saha, and putting on our seventh defender, Distin ? a move that would have been cowardly and disgraceful if we had been winning but which given the circumstances would have made Don Revie blush.

Now I know that some are saying that only ?a moment of magic? defeated us but they might have scored from any of number of very ordinary everyday opportunities instead. Isn?t it a cause for concern that when Song passed over the top of the defence to Van Persie, Fellaini was watching him leisurely from several feet away? Or that when Van Persie struck the ball, Jagielka was wrong-footed and nowhere near him?

Once you have gone a goal down and played a third of the remaining time without a striker, you might expect to make some aggressive substitutions, but no. Conor McAleny and Magaye Gueye. I am all for blooding youth and all that but what precisely is it, I would love to know, that qualifies them to come on in these circumstances, and disqualifies Vellios, Barkley or Stracqualursi? Not goal-scoring experience surely ? nor indeed any other kind of experience.

So what led to that decision? Did Conor bang out 20 more push-ups in training last Wednesday than Ross? Did Magaye run 5 km a minute faster last Thursday than Tolos? Was Moyes trying to say to fans, "I just want you to know I tried everything. Even this"?

Don Revie?s Leeds was one of the most negative defensive dull and destructive forces ever seen in English football. The big difference between them and us is that their defensiveness, negativity and destructiveness usually succeeded in stopping their opponents from achieving the late breakthrough that against us is all too inevitable.

Don?t blame financial resources. This style of play is in Moyes's blood ? which is why he continues to employ it ? even if the face of regular bitch-slappings.

Arsenal were poor on Saturday. If we had carried the game to them and had strikers on the field, we could have given them a game. As it was, this was just a long wait for them to score the winner.

I have given up hoping Kenwright fires Moyes. I know it won't happen. I am just counting the days until someone offers him a job he cannot turn down ? like Celtic or Scotland. But then, what would possess them to try to emulate us?

Dear Santa?.

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