Koeman sees United clash as potential catalyst for Everton's flagging season

A win on Sunday will put us 6th, unreal with the football we've been playing. In the same breath, a loss would see us mid-table very fast.

Looking forward to the match but also dreading it.

Sorry but so obvious.

So he's happy with 7th place? He did better with Southampton. This is Everton and we're sick of mediocrity: he should only be happy with top spot. What happened to managers demanding 100% from their team?

He's basically said we've got no chance of winning the league, and that some of the players are not good enough. Now, we might not win the league, and some players may prove not good enough.

But at the moment, surely you work with what you have, and do your utmost to motivate and get players to believe they can do what any other team can do.

At this stage, anything is possible, and probabilities shouldn't enter into it when trying to motivate players. We can win the league, and we have the players to do so. Our players are better than Leicester's, and they won the league last season. Our squad is at least as good as Liverpool's, and some people are talking about them winning the league.

Either Koeman or I are not understanding the basics of motivating people. Or should I say, the basics of not demotivating them. I don't think it's me.

How many can there be before Koeman's much-awaited chemical reaction completely fizzles out?

Make some changes then, Mr Manager, and don't keep hoping that perpetually repeating the same formula will somehow yield a different result.

Our manager needs to get a grip and stop talking the club and the players down. Whereas Roberto was ludicrously positive in his utterings, with Ronald we seem to have gone a long way to the other extreme.

I think the team has certainly got more watertight at the back since his arrival but up front I agree he does need to address our poor strike rate and our plodding build-up play which is still in evidence as a hangover from the Martinez regime. So please let's keep things a bit more in perspective

Looks like Koeman has already lost the dressing room. The fans on here are getting frustrated with him.

A win against Man Utd will ease the pressure. Let's see if the team up their game.

We all suspected that when he took on the job it was a big task, after all the other manager, because of Billy big balls left an almighty mess. I think the reality for Koeman has kicked in.

My reality sees the season being like last season, unless we bring in some good players in January, which is highly unlikely.

The only light at the end of the tunnel is, if the younger players coming through continue to progress, then we have some foundations to build on in a few years time. Unless they are so good they will be sold off to the highest bidder. Interesting times ahead.

One week we talk up the youngsters (Holgate at the start of the season) and when they do well (Holgate at the start of the season) they go no further?

What is becoming clear is Koeman wants to mould the club as he sees fit. Okay, I go along with that. Perhaps we all need to be ultra-patient in the long term and unambitious in the short term and see what happens . . . . . . .

Some years ago as a,qualified English Hockey Association coach, I worked with the colts at an EHL (English Hockey League) club. As the season drew to a close, I was asked to take a group of players to an annual one day 7-a-side tournament as their regular coach was sick.

Now, our club had never won what was the stand-out trophy for this age group and,I was told by the Head Coach "Don't be too concerned about trying to win it. It's basically good experience for the lads."

I thought to myself, what an awful way to approach an important tournament. So, on arrival, I registered our team and was given a print out of our qualifying group. I then proceeded to tell my players,

"Forget what you've been told in the past. We're here to win, not to take part. You're all good players or you wouldn't be here representing ######### Hockey Club. Now, anyone who doesn't think we're good enough, put your hand up and you can sit out the tournament."

Not a hand went up. The group stage began with a,resounding win, 4-0 against another EHL youth team. Suddenly my young players had belief. Two more wins followed, and we topped the group, making it to the quarter-finals.

A tough match brought a 2-1 win, the first goal we'd conceded that day. The semi-final was a tough one, but a single goal meant we were in the final for the first time in the club's history.

Clever rotating one or at most two players per game had brought dividends and for the final, I sent out my strongest team and we won 5-1. When we walked back into our own clubhouse later that day with the cup, nobody could believe it. I was asked to continue working with that particular age group and we went on to win that same tournament for the next two years.

Now, I may not be the greatest coach in the world and my group of lads, while having a couple of lads who would go on to represent GB at the Olympics weren't the best I'd ever seen, but I knew how to motivate them, give them confidence and self-belief.

Add those qualities to a group of good players,and we ended up with a team that won its league for two years running, before I left due to ill health. Sadly they never repeated those great years, some grew older and went on to the first team, or went to universities where most played at representative level.

Maybe the new coach couldn't motivate them to achieve success. But, my point is simply that even average players can be motivated to punch above their weight and achieve great things. Koeman doesn't appear to have that skill and just wants ready made experience that he can play musical chairs with from week to week. It ain't gonna work like that, Ronnie K.

If not, and we go in with the same attitude as against Chelsea, we will slide.

Take an example, Coutinho of Liverpool. He's great at the moment, barring an injury. But a year ago he wasn't playing well. Barkley, on the other hand, is not playing well at the moment, but a year ago he outshine Coutinho easily. Things can change if you make them.

Leicester are a group of fairly average players who gelled brilliantly as a team last season. We are a group of better players who are not gelling as a team.

I'm patient with Koeman, have been from the start. But the devil is in the detail, and he needs to get some details better, including not saying things he doesn't need to say.

There was no one better at motivation than the late, great Brian Clough. He took a bunch of players, gathered them together from various clubs and one or two who hadn't been performing at Derby County and then Nottm Forest and mounded them into consistently very good teams, season after season. He made players believe in themselves, gave them confidence, made them want to give their all for him, the club, the fans and most of all for themselves.

It can be done, but the manager has to give them that confidence and more importantly the players have got to believe and give their all every game.

I have heard two rumours this week that the players, don't want to play for Koeman, with the second rumour saying he basically told 5-6 players that he didn't really fancy them in the summer.

Who knows? It is a city of rumours after-all, but they started the season well enough and everything seemed rosy until the going got a bit tougher.

One thing I will say about Clough, Dave, is that having got off on the wrong foot with the players at Leeds, then he never really stood a chance. I hope when Koeman talks about players showing personality, that he's sat them down this week and said that this is what he was looking for off certain players, and was why he said what he did in the summer to try and get the right response!!

Pie-in-the-Sky, I know, but so is trying to get Lukaku to play a pressing game, so I hope he adopts one thing off Clough and gets us defending from the half-way line because it's the only way this present team of ours can really be compact.

I listened to a few interviews on Radio 5 this week with Eddie Jones, England Rugby Union Coach. Absolutely fascinating and open and honest and inspiring. He mentioned that he wanted only 'desperate' players.

He said when players moan or call in not motivated on a Monday, he just says "Okay, you're not in the squad for the next game". He wanted them to be "desperate" to play for England.

Tough and honest but the players apparently love him.

Oh my, oh my, how much we would love someone of that ilk anywhere near the first teams at our Club.

Coincidentally, I just watched the 1985-86 game against Southampton – Derek Mountfield's handball. I was with Derek last week and he was talking about that game, but what movement off the ball and fantastic forward play and you could feel the sense of camaraderie among the players even now.

"I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that."

Thank you, Mr Dylan.

Maybe all the players behind pinball boots will follow his lead instead of seeing him lose pass after pass and allow the opposition's defence to walk the ball out.

So by tomorrow, late afternoon, we will know if we are Knocking on Heaven's Door or indeed on Desolation Row.

But oh for a motivator, tactician and brave manager like Jones.

Broken bottles broken plates
Broken switches broken gates
Broken dishes broken parts
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken.
(Dylan - Everything Is Broken)

We need somebody to step up and start fixing stuff.

It is about time a manager said Everton isn't Stoke or Burnley or West Brom and we have a right to expect more from them but you will never hear that. It is easier to try to convince us that 7th is something to be proud of than to coach a team to honours.

Stoke £120,785,000 vs Everton £83,959,500.

Obviously Everton have spent more often and sold a greater number of players at big profits but the bottom line tells it's own story — how can we compete with Man Utd, Man City et al on a regular basis, with that sort of limited spending power? Perhaps Everton's money has been spent on wages; if so, why are this current group struggling to turn up most weeks?

But the sweetest apple is the soonest rotten,
And the hottest love is the soonest cold.
And what can't be cured love, has to be endured love

Maybe the Christmas spirit will help pull us out of our misery.

I hadn't been feeling very 'festive' myself but then I saw this and the sheer joy, passion and exuberance just... well take a look.

Link

Thank you, Kenneth Tynan.

Difficult Job

After giving one of Noel Coward's plays a terrible review, he was having dinner in a New York restaurant when Noel Coward walked in, he couldn't get out of Noel's sight, Coward walked over to Tynan's table and said 'Tynan, you are a cunt, come and have dinner with me.'

He then proceeded to have a long conversation with Tynan covering everything except the play that Tynan had lambasted. Nice man, Noel Coward... maybe Tynan learned something from that encounter.