Time for Silva to show he can coach

We were told after we beat Burnley on Boxing Day that January would be the month when we really started seeing a surge in positive results following the games against the big six.

Well January has basically killed us flat dead and has been worse than December.

The next four games are absolutely horrible for a team and manager that are under intense scrutiny.

Huddersfield
Wolves
Man City
Watford

I can't see many positive results from those games the way we are playing and – if they yield four negative results – then that could be it for Marco.

I don't agree with your line up or formation though. I've been saying all year our players don't fit into the 4-3-2-1 model and are much better suited to 3-4-3.

Sigurdsson should be playing deeper and time his runs forward better. That would then issolate our striker so l understand why he plays further forward. But if the other forward players played narrow this would work out so Sigurdsson could then help to pack the middle. So even a 4-3-3.

But, whatever the reason, the current formation stopped working weeks and weeks ago. Players are now out of sorts, out of confidence. They start slowly and if we do start slow Silva has no answers.

When Keane loses his confidence he starts playing like a little boy. Zonal marking can work if the right amount of aggression and common sense are used. It's been effective for a lot of top teams. We know our full backs are on the small side but a centre back dragged out of position also causes problems. Again that's fixed with 3 at the back. The squad should of been utilised much better and certainly in Tosun who hasn't really had a sniff, doubt he is good enough but he can finish.

There are only a few teams in the Premier League that you can look at and think they are higher than they should be because of the coaching... Wolves spring to mind. We are lower than we should be. It's a shame because it looked like he was building something. I just can't see him turning this around.

Our next four are the other three you list plus Cardiff.

I agree if it goes badly it could be curtains – ironic if that was after the Watford game!

Team talk: "Play into the corners. Get free-kicks and corners. Drop the ball either on the 6-yard box (the keeper deffo won't leave his line) and win the first or second ball. Or put your best header of a ball past the far post, he will only need to beat a full back in the air."

I have called for Silva to be given time. I can't deny the evidence of my eyes, though...

I feel this will be a season all Everton fans will remember for a long, long, time: Liverpool winning the Premier League and Everton relegated to the Championship.

Even in the positive waves of results, it took us ages to break down Palace, Fulham & Cardiff.

The zonal bit is I'm afraid here to stay, with VAR coming in you want the least amount of contact by your defence in the box. Zonal is about the ball not the player when it's done well.

That point is the single most damning against Silva. He has used this system and plainly has no idea how to mitigate other teams, a trope of every team he's managed in England. So why hasn't he gotten in a specialist? Either he's unaware or arrogant. The latter!

Do we even have a specific defensive coach? I'd argue, whatever else that ails the team, if this point had been worked through and improved, we'd be 7th and still in the cup.

He would still have favour and a platform to work from. He has patently tried to run before he can walk.

Roberto was the same but he luckily had a defensive unit in situ. Without it, they are all but identical.

Silva's problems are his own making, for me, it's tipped too far. If he left tomorrow, I wouldn't bat an eyelid.

Silva was a piss poor appointment in the first place. Ditto Koeman and Allardyce. Moshiri needs someone with more football knowledge to make the next big call.

Gomes has really been a let down the last month, a completely different player. He needs players around him to link with. I've noticed he struggles to pass the ball to teammate who is more than 10 yards away.

As a team, our poise and confidence is gone. How we could be so poor defending set pieces is bewildering.

Dave is right in saying Silva needs to step up and coach these players. They are young and if mismanaged it could damage them... then again, if coached well, there's a lot promise. Instead of this disappointment.

I think we have put too many out on loan, which is limiting our options, albeit most of the loaners weren't doing it anyway.

We are a mess and, as I said, Silva has to show us what he is made of now or face the consequences.

The crowd should rip into the first of our players who starts one of those mind-numbing sequences of back-passing that ends up with Pickford blasting it long and high toward forwards that have no idea on how to receive it.

This is a first post, that I was going to do yesterday in the heat of the moment, but backed off until today.

After watching our team dominate a bog standard team struggling from a lower league and then with consummate ease close the game out for a trouble free passage to the next round... dream on.

We are where we are!

The team/squad going into last nights game is one lacking confidence and not getting the basics right, there's no debate to be had about this, most Evertonians and outsiders will agree, I believe.

Our opponents like most Championship sides err towards the physical rather than the skillful and so, when I examined Silva's formation and personnel for this match, I was dismayed. That was a physical team (Millwall) looking to play the direct route and keep the ball if possible down our end of the pitch. The conditions were atrocious and not conducive to passing, as was demonstrated, they were back in numbers and found our passing game easy to stifle.

They played to their strengths and got some head tennis going that suited them and the conditions much more than our attempt as a poor mans Arsenal with a slick skillful passing game.

Silva had no idea how to set up the team for the conditions and the opposition he was facing, we should have gone 4-4-2 or 5-3-2 with our most physical presence, kept the game in midfield, stifled them and then looked to steal it. Cenk Tosun showed what was possible if we'd have kept them under any kind of sustained pressure.

Marco Silva showed a total lack of understanding of the British game on a winter's night, sometimes you just have to roll your sleeves up and do what's got to be done with what you've got and not expect a team that's playing poorly to enter the lion's den (pun intended!) and fight a lion!

Fulham have 14. By this stage last year, West Brom had 23 and they finished with 31. So what for Fulham? – less than 30.

Cardiff have 19. By this stage last year, Stoke had 26 and finished on 33. So what for Cardiff? – less than 30.

Huddersfield have 11. By this stage last year, they had 20 and finished on 37. I can't see them getting near 30.

Season 2019-20, now that will be the worry.

Spot on, I've been working this out for weeks as 7 teams have less points than games played, I reckon that 33 or 34 will be enough to stay up.

In turn, I think this takes some of the pressure off us in terms of pure results, but the manner of the games (and how we lose) is the frustration now. There surely must be an opportunity and a necessity to try either different combinations of defence, or maybe throw one of the old heads in (Baines or Jags) to at least try and marshall the defence.

They both played under Moyes and at least we always had a decent defence under his tenure. At the moment, any free kick or corner in our half must feel like giving a penalty away, so poor are we at defending them.

Gone are the days when Moyes would get moaned at for 'boring 6/7 ish'places - standards have dropped a great deal since we've had money. You must have noticed.

On Saturday, both Millwall and Everton had free kicks around the half way line. They played theirs forward and scored off one of them. Ours ended up back with Pickford from where we, painfully slowly, passed it back to the halfway line where we lost it again. It's mind-numbingly boring and predictable and we must be one of the easiest sides to play against – even before you consider the shambolic zonal marking from set pieces.

Pickford is receiving criticism for failing to deal with high balls into the box but I understand he's under instructions to stay on his line and let the centre-backs deal with them. The basic flaw with Silva's zonal marking is that with a high line our defenders are often facing the wrong way and so are slow to react to the second ball. We've conceded, time and again, after Pickford has made a stop only for our defenders to stand there watching the opposition score from the second ball.

As others on here have said, it's really basic stuff. Abandon zonal marking, bolster the midfield where we are always overrun and try to get the players to pass to each other and not to the opposition. Stop this nonsense of slowly playing the ball out from Pickford only for it to end up back him when he's forced to punt it anywhere upfield because he's closed down.

Can Silva sort it out? Hopefully, but I have my doubts. Millwall was a rerun of Southampton and Brighton. The man doesn't learn and carries on playing the same formation and making the same substitutions game after game.

Failure to get something from Huddersfield and Wolves will surely spell the end.