Two steps forward, one step back

The problem on the wings will be resolved when we get a striker and move Richarlison back to his preferred position, but at the moment he is still our most likely striker to score.

But his biggest problem, as I see it, isn't his movement off the ball. It's his tendency to go down in a heap under physical defense and then get up wailing at the referee. It's building him an unhelpful reputation that is costing him calls on actual fouls.

Using the same starting eleven, regardless, has not paid off and perhaps we should question one or two changes in midfield or attack in particular.

Maybe a change in midfield will be forced if Gana doesn't recover in time for the next game. Up front, perhaps drop either Bernard or Walcott and introduce Lookman.

Poor team selection, poor tactics, poor play. Sort it out, Marco! Teams are adapting to us but we aren't adapting to them.

To ask a manager to come in change the pattern of play get rid of dross and add real quality is a difficult ask. To ask that it be done in a short space of time is near impossible.

We have a reasonable squad with developing players. we lack a real centre Forward and I am afraid we need to replace our right back too. Bernard has a nice touch and gives us some quality but is he strong enough for the most physical league on the planet? Gomes looks to have everything except pace. We should try tie him up ASAP or someone else will.

Out go Tosun, Davies, Jagielka, Coleman, and Baines in the next years and add a goal scorer and a right back. It will take a few years though.

But we need to freshen up that area of the pitch. Man City on Saturday lunchtime, I'd be inclined to give a few other players a run out before a busy period where we face Spurs, Brighton, Burnley and Leicester before the FA Cup. Something like the following against City:

Pickford
Keane - Mina - Zouma
Kenny - McCarthy - Gana - Baines
Lookman - Calvert-Lewin - Walcott

We're unlikely to get much from Man City, this side has pace and could cause a few problems; this also gives key members of the team a rest before a potentially winnable home game against Spurs.

My concern is this... The substitutions made us more ineffective, Bernard, although light weight is a handful and a bloody nuisance, he should not have been pulled. The subs where just passengers from the minute they came on.

If Silva has anything about him we will lose 5-6 players come the next window. Either he will learn from his mistakes or he will go the way of our last 3 charlatans.

Man City will cause us more than a few problems in fear.

They are more than capable of giving us the thrashing of a lifetime; if they click in front of goal, I fear a landslide.

Watford are a decent side and will finish top half. They were obviously massively up for this game given it was against Silva and Richarlison. Yet, despite our below-par performance we scored two goals, missed a penalty and created a number of other chances. They scored from an own goal and a header from a deflected cross – other than that, I can't think of many real chances they created.

When I think back to last season, I still see huge improvement, but we are clearly a work in progress. I also think the negative atmosphere at Goodison Park is very damaging to the players and gives the opposition an advantage.

Silva may well be preparing the teams but is he actually motivating them? We just seemed to have come to a grinding halt. Slow, ponderous, devoid of any sort of Plan B. Our passing and crossing is in the main embarrassing for professional footballers.

We have to change things quickly as we are being easily sussed out by the opposition.

With Man City's pace we have to play Zouma at the back. Gana needs taking out the firing line and practise passing the ball. Richarlison needs to be back on the wing with Calvert-Lewin up top until we get someone better.

Now is the time for Silva to show us that he deserves the hype some people have been giving him.

So what happened after the derby is no surprise at all. Without quality in depth, it was almost inevitable.

The Premier League is so physical, on top of the high pressing being done, that a club having a single fine team is not enough. That's the bottom line.

We're definitely on the up in terms of quality of football, which has been absent for a while, and that has been achieved by bringing in very good players and organising the team well. But this process of putting in the resources to attract the right players needs to continue, which is the case for every top club to compete.

Why is there inconsistency with referees regarding taking free-kicks before they blow their whistle? Last night, referee Friend never blew his whistle for Watford to take the disputed free-kick prior to their second goal.

Further, why was Kabasele not sent off for his handball with his hand above his head for the free kick that led to our equalizer. Mina was booked for a similar handball.

I remain supportive of Silva; I accept we have relegated Allardyce and his style of play to the dustbin of history, and I know we need to be patient with a work in progress. However, even taking all this into account last night, as you write, all felt massively disappointing.

It does not take an awful lot to get Goodison under floodlights rocking, but the lack or urgency and indeed complacency on the pitch failed to ignite any spark. My own disappointments centred around the manager's selection and set-up.

Picking Walcott not only leaves us with a "if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got" situation, it negates the impact that a confident Lookman trusted with a run of games might bring. Okay, he might not give us that impact but the point is we don't know but we do know that there is no, never has been, an end product to the talented but frustrating Theo.

Gana Gueye has played some decent games this season but last night wasn't one of them. Stats about pass completion are often irrelevant when mostly it is central defenders who come out on top by passing the ball sideways to each other. Gueye is fine playing the easy ball backwards but last night he even surrendered possession with some innocuous sideways passes and, apart from one excellent crossfield ball to Walcott, was totally ineffective in making any penetrative passes.

Richarlison had a poor game. He clearly does not relish a ball shielding position and his amateur dramatics need to stop now. This is all up to Silva a) to find a role that brings the best out of him, and b) to explain why diving around is best left for the likes of Sturridge. The same goes for my otherwise Man of the Match, Mina. the manager needs to ask him why he thinks inviting a yellow card for a totally ridiculous handball is a good idea?

As things got more desperate, courtesy of the team's own inability to stay switched on, so did the manager's tactics. Was there room at 1-2 for Tom Davies, perhaps for the outstanding but last night under par (injured?) Andre Gomes? How would Bernard have done moved to the Sigurdsson role, would Lookman have been better cutting in from the left? Tosun and Calvert-Lewin together?

You get it spot on again, Lyndon, that a beautiful last-gasp free-kick goal from the excellent Digne actually felt anti-climactic. Things to ponder.

I'm far happier than I was 12 months ago but, if we have to be patient in waiting for Silva and Brands to produce 11 players on the pitch who are all without doubt worthy of the shirt, then we should not need to be so forgiving in waiting to see 90 minutes of hard graft and concentration from whichever 11 are on the pitch in the meantime.

We have the signs of something good starting but still have a fair way to go.

In my opinion, we will need at least two windows to get near to where we want to be.

Even by the woeful standard of "professional" officiating in this country, last night scraped the bottom of the barrel. Friend allowed Watford to take so much time out of the game and his only response to the chicanery was to waste more time having a chat with Deeney.

You are correct that the referee's inconsistency in his decision-making was obvious but at least the linesman, sorry referee's assistant, on the Bullens Road side in the first half did manage a high degree of consistency: he missed every off-side, did not spot one of several fouls within a few metres of him, and always managed to look like a rabbit caught in headlights.

Look at David Silva, he has the tenacity of Gana and the skill of Messi. I'm not saying we need David Silva, but our ''lightweights'' need more of his attributes.

Also, I feel teams are targeting Seamus more as a perceived weak link and I still think he is 5-10% below his best.

We looked knackered after half an hour last night and really ran out of steam against a vibrant Watford who were obviously well up for the game given the motivation of the Silva thing.

You can say what you like about fitness, how much they earn etc, but the evidence is there to suggest the fatigue of playing a number of games in a short space of time is getting to them.

We also play a very high pressing game, as the stats prove, which is very hard to sustain over a season – just look at the RS last season, falling down around December – a team who play a very obvious high pressing game. There are similarities.

Watford came out second half and pretty much ran the game and it was obvious to all that were there that it was only a matter of time before Watford scored. Yes, they had a bit of good fortune with the ball rebounding off Seamus but, even after that goal they still came at us and, a few minutes late,r they deservedly took the lead. They are a big physical side and they bullied Everton all night.

I would also say to Richarlison you are a talent, but stop going to ground and moaning to the referee all the time. You don't want to be known like your pal Neymar of always diving and moaning to refs; otherwise, if you don't man up, you will get more and more defenders trying to bully you out of games.

I seem to post after every game saying the same thing: we are not clinical enough in the final third. Although way short of our best last night, we still created enough chances in front of goal besides the penalty miss. But we only have one player playing up front who looks like he will score and that's Richarlison.

Walcott, as he did in his Arsenal days, flatters to deceive, he hasn't scored since August and Bernard is yet to open his account. It is very difficult to win games when only1 of the front 3 is capable of scoring. I am also sorry to say that the back up front players are not good enough.

Maybe the last minute disaster against the other lot has taken the wind out of our sails, seems we always suffer for a few games when they beat us. Also for no apparent reason over the last number of years December always seems to be a poor month for picking up points.

But we are all down over the last 3 results, but Silva has improved this team and he has only had 1 transfer window, I am not sure if the quality we are after is ever available in the January window. Michael Keane is back to his very best and Gomes is a class act, we could really do with signing him in January as the more games he plays the more he will attract the interest of Champions league teams.

So, while a little down over the last couple of results and with two very difficult games to come next, I have faith that Silva and Brands will make us a team to be reckoned with next season.

We had five days to recover from the Newcastle game. I cannot believe this is not sufficient time for professional footballers, at a top club with loads of support staff, to recover.

Even if we could give 30 minutes of high tempo football but we start and finish, added with the bit in between, at a slow pedestrian pace.bTiredness after 16 games with no European football is no excuse, in my opinion.

We have become extremely predictable and are being found out. Silva needs to change things around, that is, if he's the superstar we are led to believe he is.

If the team that started last night starts against Man City, then I dread to think of the outcome.

I agree, the manager had a poor night. He allowed the game to drift on when it was clear we were being outgunned all over the field, especially in midfield where the Gomes and Gueye duo had their least effective outing since the partnership was formed. The eventual changes resulted in a route one approach which would have been condemned as primitive under previous managers. So much for our change of style.

With Mina augmenting the attack, at least we posed a few problems for Watford. Ultimately it was those rudimentary tactics and Digne's wonderful free-kick which yielded a point when it looked likely we would finish empty-handed. It was, as far as I can recall, our first goal from a direct free kick since Lukaku scored against Palace in September 2016.

With Tosun, Everton were never able to maintain the high press. Although he did work hard, Tosun was never a threat, since he was unable to beat his marker and had to depend on running into prepared channels, which most Premier League sides can nullify.

Calvert-Lewin wasn't much good either regarding the high press, but concerned himself more with positioning.

Richarlison is more of a threat but he doesn't really understand the high press, tending to come deep too often.

The high press is further weakened by the peripheral play of Bernard and Walcott, who are not a threat. Bernard needs to come inside and is not really a winger. His shots on target are poor, as is his finishing.

Walcott is more aware of the importance of the high press and does contribute via his positioning. He struggles with the dual role assigned, having consistently the lowest number of touches of the Everton outfield players. His threat value is reduced and he has fluffed his lines when good scoring opportunities arise.

The result is that, when the opposition are able, and increasingly confident, to move their defensive line up to midfield. The result is Sigurdsson goes missing and Gana resorts to more long passes, which increases there inaccuracy. In the Newcastle game, even Digne had problems when the defence pushed their defensive line up. The more pressure is put on the defence, the inadequacies by Coleman, become evident.

The other contributing factor is poor play in the final third. The amount of completed passes is very low, meaning that Everton are unable to play their way past a higher opposition defensive line. There is a high dependency on Digne's crosses, which he is good at, but even he struggles when the high press isn't working.

Lastly, the standard of finishing is abysmal. Neither Bernard or Walcott can finish, Calvert Lewin is a bit better than Tosun and he is useless. That leaves Richarlison and Sigurdsson to score. The late arrival in the box of Gomes, Mina, or Keane hasn't quite clicked yet.

So Newcastle showed the way – push the defensive line up, pack midfield; other teams will play the same as Watford did. Silva's tactics are nullified and the neglect of the final third play, where there has been no improvement in pass completion or finishing, means that Silva has no alternatives.

The reason we have dropped points has nothing to do with how we play; it's because of the personnel – there's more dead wood at our club than Terrys Timber.

Koeman and his staff set our club back 3 seasons so it's going to take Silva 4 or 5 windows to rectify that. Will he get that time? I'm not so sure... Moshiri seems trigger happy but we need stability – we can't keep chopping and changing managers because in 4 or 5 seasons we 'll be in the same boat.

Great goals from Richarlison and Digne – both remain good signings along with Gomes.

It was the first time I'd seen Mina play and I like him a lot for his character and power – but I was waiting for him to be sent off, to be honest – I guess he needs to get settled into the league.

A lot of huff and puff in their third with some really poor final balls or runs down blind alleys and we seemed to give a lot of the initiative to Watford who looked the more athletic side at times.

I'd pick on Coleman but he always shows for the ball and tries something.

Tosun and Calvert-Lewin aren't the most inspiring subs, although Lookman does add something.

So, I've started looking down the table after looking up for a while. That's a shame as I thought we might start pushing some of the outliers like Man Utd.

You can't help feeling we are in the correct position in the table and we'll have to work hard to keep it on the last 2 displays.

I was starting to hope for a bit more.

Pickford
Kenny
Keane
Zouma
Digne
Coleman
Gueye
Gomes
Davies
Richarlison
Calvert-Lewin

And may god be with us!!!

I'd go a bit more defensive against Man City

Pickford
Kenny, Coleman, Keane, Mina, Zouma, Digne, Baines
Gueye, Schneiderlin, Davies

If we can keep City to single figures, then it's obviously a plus.

Gomes is an excellent fulcrum for any midfield, though I do worry about his ability to last a full game, he seems to be a much better first half player. Sigurdsson has many talents, but moving quickly with or without the ball is not one of them, Gueye is what he is and breaks down the opposition very well, but creativity is a step beyond him.

We need our full-backs to be effective and fast. Coleman has struggled since his injury, Digne takes a wonderful free kick, but is not as good as Baines was three or four years ago.

It may be that the hangover from Anfield has been more severe than we expected, but Man City on Saturday is not a place to go with the residue of a hangover and a heavy defeat will add to the lack of confidence we have shown in the Newcastle and Watford games.

We desperately need a focal point up front who can also score. Hopefully, this will be resolved in next month's transfer window.

Seamus continues to struggle and, perhaps, it's time to give Kenny a run out.

The poor quality of our corner kicks continues to irritate; how difficult is it to beat the first man? Does anyone know when we last scored from a corner, either the game or the number of corners ago?

I have not got a problem with the Keane - Mina centre-back pairing, I think they have done little wrong. The two goals conceded were not of their errors the full-backs could have done better, the first goal was even a communication error as the player behind Digne – Bernard? – was in a better position to easily clear the ball.

The second goal was from a cross that should never have been allowed to come in, and Seamus was all over the shop in defending it. Maybe he lost it in the floodlights?

The problem is that Everton's midfield is pressed and outnumbered as the opposition can push the defensive line up confident that the inadequacies of the Everton forwards' ability in finishing and play is a threat worth taking a risk on.

The fundamental problem is that Sigurdsson is playing too far forward, leaving us with just Gueye and Gomes in the engine room. For much of the time at both Anfield and the two recent home games, Sigurdsson was playing virtually alongside Richarlison. Not only does this leave us outnumbered in the midfield when trying to win the ball, it also leaves us one link short when in possession with a view to getting the ball forward constructively. Basically, we end up playing a 4-2-4.

I'm hoping Everton will surprise us by get something from the game. I would like to see Richarlison play a bit deeper, and run into space upfront. May be the game for Calvert-Lewin to hold the ball up, bringing midfielders into play.

I would also play a front 3 of Calvert-Lewin, Richarlison and Walcott. I fear we'll have to hit City on the break and these 3 are the fastest players to do just that.

Set up as a fairly flat 4-3-3. The other added bonus of this, is that Richarlison and Walcott should keep the City fullbacks occupied enough not to join in their attacks as much.

The probability is that whatever formation we play we'll get about 4 shots in total and perhaps 1 on target in the entire game — I think our best option is to be ultra-defensive, outnumber them in midfield, absorb pressure, and make the most of a handful of breaks.

Need some luck, of course, but we might get a draw, if we score first. Silva knows we have some players chomping at the bit but I'm pretty sure he doesn't yet know how to use them.

Interesting times ahead or is it just another Groundhog Day?