From My Seat: Wigan (A)

I thought Baines had a match that was far more than decent... his passing was superb, his tackling solid... and I guess you didn't see it from your vantage point, but he hit the post with a close-in shot before the break. And I loved the passing combinations between Baines, Pienaar and Mirellas.

I think we've seen the last of Heitinga for a while... he's had three stinkers in a row, and let's face it, nobody subs out a center back at halftime unless there's a serious problem. I don't know if he wants away or just got old, but he's two steps slow. He completely abandoned Kone on the first goal – had him marked and just let him go – and then got scorched for the second.

Given the present vulnerability of our centre halves (whichever combination they are used it), I think that Fellaini has to play the holding midfielder role if we are to give them protection. At least until Gibson is back.

Osman and Neville are not mobile enough to give them protection. Ossie repeatedly gets dispossessed in central midfield and Neville backs off into the penalty area rather than closing down.

That being said, we were imaginative in attack in the second half and created a lot of chances against what was a very good Wigan performance.

Heitinga looks badly out of sorts, so I wouldn't be surprised if Moyes dumps him in the next window, and looks down the leagues for a new Lescott. We need a tackling bulldozer in midfield as well.

An improved Everton team is bit like a house you are doing up. The kitchen might be new, but it just shows up that the bedroom and garden is looking tatty. Onwards and upwards, let's just hope Moyes puts Mark Hughes in his place.

In terms of the points then a draw is frustrating but at least we keep a good unbeaten run going, we're not playing that well and still doing alright so hopefully when Gibson returns we can really hit our top form again. As ever the crucial test of where we will finish this season will come in the home game against Liverpool. Away draws are only ok if you win your home games and we won't do anything this season if we give that lot another 6 points.

No doubt we look a better team than last year but sadly so do Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal amongst others. QPR will be fighting for their lives next up but 3 points will be needed if we are not going to sink back to mid-table obscurity.

James Martin, of course Distin will make another mistake. Everybody makes them. But as I have argued for two years, he is a better choice than Heitinga even at age 35. As to whether Duffy or a new signing should be Distin's eventual successor, personally I haven't seen enough of Duffy to form an opinion. I'll trust Moyes on that one.

But as to Coleman, my opinion has been clear from the first few times I saw him play RB. He can't, at least not at this level. He lacks defensive instincts, is continually caught out of position, and couldn't mark a three-legged basset hound. Sure, we all love his attacking ability... but as we saw yesterday, it's way too expensive.

I think that this game and the WBA game have told us all we need to know, we are still lacking quality in midfield.
Since Gibson got injured the midfield was left with a huge hole that can not be filled with players such as Neville and Osman.

Moyes had more then enough time to find loan players to cover that hole in midfield, but waited until it was too late as usual.

Moyes now will have to tend to finding midfield players as his nr.1 job in January, we simply can not let this decent start get away from us!

Perhaps Moyes should get this Vadis guy, plus a defender and another flexible midfielder in on loan.
We simply have to fill the holes that is showing right now.
The biggest hole is in midfield, but our defence also needs another quality defender.

I think Heitinga is out of form, but he really should be fit at this point in the season. The way he backed off Kone was abysmal at best, somehow I still can not believe that Heitinga was so poor in this game.

Also Coleman, he has played enough games to be fit, but I think he just lacks ability overall. We might as well sell COleman in January, I can not see the use of him anymore.

Phil Jagielka so far this season has been not very good, it troubles me that we concede these silly goals while under the watching eye of David Moyes.

For all the period Moyes has been here, the defence have been Moyes`s favourite area to be strong in.
I can not help feeling that Moyes has let us down a little in strengthening the defence in recent years.

Even Yobo is better than what our current defenders are showing, but Moyes chose to sell him without finding a replacement, like a loan player.

My overall conclusion so far this season is we still have huge holes in the squad, but now instead of having no wingers, we now have no central midfielders, and there is a hole in the defence because Distin now is too old to be counted as a regular consistent performer.
That leaves us with just Heitinga and Jagielka.

If anyone thinks this squad is good enough for 4th or better then they are way off!!!

We are seriously missing Gibson in his role as the Defensive Midfielder, particularly his positional sense means he cuts out a high number of opposition attacks, and he has the physical strength to compete whereas Ossie doesn't and Neville doesn't have his mobility.

The real plus point this season is our creativity but all top teams defend well – we need to sort it out quickly.

But to criticise him for Wigan's first (offside!) goal is ridiculous. The ball was fired in from within the penalty area and rocketed in from the near post. No goalkeeper could have done anything about that.

Distin has made some mistakes but has provided enormous cover with his speed and strengtrh, and wins most balls in the air. He gives everything and he and Jags are the best we've got.

Unfortunately no-one in the Prem will want Heitinga so we'll have to hope a Euro team comes in for him.

What do the officials say to each other through their sexy little headsets? Any way of hacking it? I'd love to know. 'Let's get our story straight here lads' must figure highly at a guess.

I watched El Classico on TV here in Spain tonight. Loads of hard decisions to make, no doubt their best people in charge. Nothing 'controversial' that I could see. As usual in the many Spanish games I watch. They simply do it better than the FA do. I think we are stuck in a time bubble which makes many believe that the 'home of football' produces the best, the fairest officials. Wrong on both counts.

I don't think you can lay that at Heitinga's door, the least he can expect, after some excellent play by Kone it has to be said, is that one of his buddies will pick up the other players.

Some will argue Kone should have been tackled further up the field but if he had committed to a tackle and lost out, a three v two would have become a two v two.

Heitinga doesn't do nearly enough. He puts in a little pansy tackle with the end of his toe and then stops as he thinks the balls going out.

I agree that other players should have been backing up but the cross should never have been allowed to happen.

I think Heitinga should have done better on that goal but it wasn't just down to him. I don't know if you seen match of the day but on it Martin Keown highlighted Neville ( about the media picked up on his shiteness ) tracking back, he ran from the half way line all the way back to his own 6 yard box without once having a look around to see if any Wigan players needed picking up.

No its not true just because Keown says it is but it is true because the camera shows it. Neville didn't make a decision at all,when he started running back ( Kone and Heitinga where just inside the half on the far side of the pitch at this point ) he had no idea how it was going to play out, so how could he have decided the best thing to do was to run all the way back to the 6 yard line to cover Heitinga?

The earliest he could have decided to do that would have been when Kone was in our area and even then he was too far behind play to actually cover Heitinga. When Kone pulled the ball back Neville was about 6 yards behind so if Kone had got past Heitinga he still would of had a free shot on goal.

What really happened was Neville was caught ball watching as usual, he ran half the length of the pitch while having absolutley no idea what was going on around him, if he had glanced over his sholder he would have seen Di Santo running into the box on his own and would have been able to do something about it.

Neville was facing the ball (ball watching if you want) and didn't see Di Santo while Jags and Coleman both went to cover the goal line and probably both should have seen Di Santo coming as they were facing the correct way.

It should have been dealt with before that though imo.

I haven't seen the MotD analysis but Heitinga has done his job fairly well but, as I said before, Kone's done well too.

You have to admire Wigan's game plan and understanding of their identity and how Everton play. They know we over commit on the left and they've pushed Kone right up to work the right hand side channel, they've got early, long ball up to him and he's stretched us, as soon as he sees Kone stretching out wide Di Santo has busted a gut to fill the box.. You can almost see Martinez drawing it up on the chalkboard on Friday morning!

I did think Heitinga was a bit lame on the other goal, instead of putting his head in the mixer, he tried to step up and play offside but that's Heitinga in a nutshell.. Distin is a better athlete and Heitinga is more cunning.

I don't think he did his job fairly well at all. He should have put the ball out for a corner. As he didn't do that, he should stop the ball from being played into the box.

As I said though, I don't think he was the only one to blame.

Just for clarity though. I obviously don't know what he was thinking. Why do you think he stopped, or pulled up?

Jamie gets it right with his "bad defending all round".

Equally I don't think Nevilel's positioning was great. He should take a look around to be aware of the options and if he had moved a few steps to his left then he could have cut off any cut back to the penalty spot whilst also being able to cover Kone should he skin Heitinga.

Of course such analysis is alwasy easy in retrospect but for me it so happens that Heitinga and Neville are two of the weaker players in our first XI at the moment. Hopefully Gibson will come in for the latter but difficult to say what are best choice CB partnership is as to be honest none of ours have looked at their best this season.

I think he appeared to stop because he slid/took a lunging stride when making the block, came to the end of his slide/lunge, and Kone took another step to make more space for the cross.

By committing the block where he did he made sure Kone crossed from the byline instead of attempting to cut in and shoot, again a good move in the area avoiding an unnecessary penalty situation.

I don't think you can take anything away from Kone, if I had to concede anything, perhaps if it had been Distin, he would have got to the ball before Kone and the move would never have started.

Your post is an incredible example of a highly subjective interpretation of events being treated as absolute cast iron fact. Neville watched the ball, of course he did, because that's where the danger was! Neville was in a perfectly reasonable position to be in, covering two things at once. The cut back got past him and no-one else was picking up Di Santo either. If Neville had been five yards further back, the cut back might have gone in front of him and Di Santo could have beaten him that way, then you'd slag Neville off for not being closer to Heitinga.

If a player runs half the length of the pitch, is it too much to ask for that player to have a quick look around to see if there is another threat?

There wasn't a mass of bodies in Neville's way, he didn't need to keep looking where he was going, he had plenty of time to have a look around to see if there was something else he should be doing or that he was in fact doing the right thing anyway.

Do you honestly believe it is acceptable for a 35 year old, captain of the team, 50 odd caps, more experience than most, who's only job in the team is to break up attacks not to be aware of his surroundings?