A terrible game

Following in the pattern of other shit shows at Southampton, Brighton, Leicester at home in which we just looked abject.

I still can't believe the striker issues are remaining a problem since flogging Lukaku nearly 2 years ago now.

Tosun will never ever be enough of a threat and the amount of sitters the guy misses is unreal, earlier in the season fans were going on about a lack of service but he's had many chances and not taken enough of them over the course of the season, defenders must love playing against him.

Calvert-Lewin is 22 next month and after 99 appearances is anyone convinced that he's an out-and-out striker?

I'm not convinced and it wouldn't shock me if over the next 18 months or so his position was altered to a winger/wide player, he just doesn't possess the strikers instinct.

Defensively we still have too many players that simply switch off after the first action thinking the job is done only to fail to react to the second motion which yesterday resulted in the goal.

That's the big problem with too many of our players though.

Too many are reactive rather than proactive.

Regarding your suggestion about a break for them in this 17-day period I couldn't agree more.

I would recommend a two-centre holiday: A week in the Brecon Beacons training with the SAS and a week on Ainsdale beach. All paid by themselves, of course.

Failing that, two weeks of 12-hour shifts at Alder Hey which might make them realise what the real world is like.

Wasters!

There again, I have no idea what any of this team is thinking, especially when they have the ball!!!

And chances are it will be the usual mid-table finish, points somewhere between 45 and 60 (at the lower end this season), and many suggestions on how to get out of the cycle and return to glory.

As far as I can see, we can get out of the cycle and return to glory only by having someone like Usmanov here, with money to attract the very best players.

He's not ditching zonal marking on looking to make any effort tightening things at the back. I can't see any upturn in results over the next dozen games.

I would let him limp on until the summer, between now and then the club and Brands have identified the next man and fire Silva after the Spurs game.

Walcott
Sigurdsson
Schneiderlin
Jagielka
Baines
Stekelenburg

This lot are seeing out their days - at least Jags and Baines gave us good service for several years prior to now. What about all the shite we have got out on loan, whose wages we are still contributing to:

Bolasie
Mirallas
Williams
Sandro
Martina
Niasse

How do you sort out this lot? Some of them are earning mega bucks for doing fuck all. They are in no rush to leave. What must Gana Gueye think when he looks at this lot? Or the young lads, like Kenny, Davies and Calvert-Lewin?

Spot on about Richarlison too. Him and Sigurdsson both cost 㿙 million, and though they get the odd goal, general play just passes them by.

It's going to be a painful few years sorting out this lot, whoever is in charge.

Pickford; did okay but his first half overhit balls to the right wing were wasteful.

I thought Davies was easily our best player despite a few overhit passes in the second half.

Kenny had an excellent game and has a great chance to make the right back berth his own. His defence-splitting pass to Walcott was the best of the game but Walcott wasted the opportunity.

Walcott: 6 and did okay? His usual ineffective game and 4 at best.

Siguurdson: 4 at most. Peripheral for most of the game until finally hooked.

Gomes warranted a much higher score than 3 despite still looking a bit off the pace. He got the ball out to the left side at every opportunity.

I agree, Richarlison is becoming really irritating with his play acting and, at Brighton, it really roused the home crowd to our disadvantage. Yesterday, he was rolling around on the half-way line when we had the ball in their penalty area. Surely, Silva has a responsibility to instruct him to cut it out.

Calvert-Lewin: I agree that at 22, and with 99 games under his belt, it's obvious he's never going to make it as a goalscorer.

Silva: his team selection, tactics and substitutions were as mystifying to me as they obviously were to the players. 2.

Watford just played as they should against those tactical weaknesses and Everton's reply didn't exist.

What's more, the Walcott substitution saw the total abandonment of Silva's solution, with another tactical faux pas.

Richarlison seems to have been selected to show Watford, as Silva said earlier in the week, the Troy Deeney outburst resulted in the team picking itself; I wonder if Tosun was picked for the same reason? There was no rhyme nor reason to this forward selection combination.

I really thought that Silva would finally learn and have posted comments recently to this effect, I am now coming to think that Silva has totally lost it, after seeing this terrible match>

The Watford goal was the usual set-piece debacle. Silva definitely can't coach defence.

Silva is plain and simply hopeless and seems to have abandoned any semblance of a tactical philosophy.

I'll be the first to admit that losing the game at Anfield the way we did was a flattening blow which took a good few days or week to get over but, by mid-December, we should have been back at it. If that is the case and the derby has broken them then what does that say for the mentality of this group?

It concerns me greatly that they haven't been able to show any forms of recovery when going a goal behind, no resistance when backs to the wall (Millwall away late on).

Rather than just blaming Silva, it's a collective problem here at this club that's gone on too long.

To say it won't happen is crazy when we are only on 33 points without a win in us. Get rid of Silva now and get in someone who knows how to win games and make us tough to play against.

Forget about this obsession with style of play or how many pretty passing triangles we can complete, we need someone who knows how to win.

Funny thing is this was always bound to happen – we tried this route with Martinez and it failed... yet some fans seem to have very short memories on what happens when you put a philosophy ahead of results.

I'm not trying to defend Silva (I'm pretty apathetic about him at this point) but I do think we have been pretty hard done by these last 2 month or so. I don't think we've played well but equally I don't think our opponents have often been that much better than us, except for Spurs.

I think the margins have been relatively small but. in each game. we have missed chances, had decisions go against us, had individual mistakes etc. I'm not sure what it is. Whether its bad luck or fragile mentality but the little 'moments' have not gone our way.

I think it may have a lot to do with confidence and self belief; the players just snatching at chances or overhitting passes out of desperation.

At the beginning of the season, I had the sense of the players enjoying themselves, enjoying whatever Silva was trying to get them to do. Thats's gone now. And I think its probably Silva's job to try and get it back. Top managers get their teams out of the inevitable ruts. We've been in this one too long already.

I have been utterly gobsmacked over the atrocious officiating this season. We have had the shit kicked out of us in so many games, and put up with horrendous decisions. Unless I'm missing something, this is bound to have an effect on players. We were playing decently against top-6 sides, but had to endure dirty play and bad decisions in those games as well. I have this image in my mind of that terrible tackle on Sigurdsson in the Chelsea game, which went unpunished, as an example.

It strikes me that the cock-up in the Derby could well have been the straw that broke the camel's back. The players are not robots, and no amount of money they get paid can make them immune from the kind of shit that we're witnessing, the continual cheating and biases that are ruining the so-called beautiful game.

None of this is an excuse for poor performances, and Everton do appear to have problems right through the hierarchy that we'd all love to identify clearly and remedy, but progressing from this situation is not made easier by the shit that's happening in the modern game.

When Koeman came here he said we were too nice. No doubt he was right in that. We do not go round kicking the shit out of other teams, it's never been the Everton way. We're not Angels by any means, no team is, but we don't do what many other teams, including top-6 sides, do habitually, which is cheat, foul and get in the face of officials. And ironically, the authorities appear biased towards those sides that commit all this shit, particularly the top-6. So not only are the authorities doing fuckall about it, they're effectively encouraging it.

I don't know about you Jim, but this whole thing is putting me off watching football, regardless of how well Everton play. Even the World Cup last summer was won by cheating. It's gone too far.

It seems that we'll never achieve better things unless we join in the circus of cheating and have officials biasing decisions in our favour. But if that happened, I for one would lose interest in Everton as well. I don't expect the Corinthian spirit of Brian Labone to prevail, that would be far too much to expect, but perhaps EFC could be more vocal in raising concerns about what's happening. In this respect, Marco Silva was absolutely correct to raise questions about the referee on Saturday, and I believe we should all support what he's said there.

Zouma commits a nothing foul (his first of the game?) and gets booked. He and Keane both booked before Wolves got a card (and that not until the second half).

I'm not a one-eyed blue; I think I'm honest about when we deserve a card etc (some of our fans can't accept when we justifiably are penalised) – but I can't believe some of the decisions against us.

He is a good athlete but not a good footballer. He has poor technique and very poor positioning. No football brain. He is 22 next month. I have never seen him take on a defender on the edge of the box or try to turn him. He just doesn't have that in his locker.

We are not talking about borderline decisions but blatantly obvious ones that everyone can see apart from the officials who just seem too gutless to call some of them particularly in the box.

Aguero at Manchester City is a prime example or Kane at Tottenham. You need an outstanding centre forward if you are to ever have any hope.

One of the reasons we finished 7th in Koeman's first season was best because we had a striker who scored 25 goals and bailed us out in many home games against the average sides in Spring 2017.

Would we have finished 7th in 16-17 with Calvert-Lewin and Tosun? No we wouldn't.

I hope Marcel Brands is on the case every day now for the best striker available to us in June. I don't want to see any protracted nonsense which collapses on deadline day.

We have absolutely no chance of any progress without a top class, centre-forward goalscorer.

Now many of these you could say happen across the season and that's life. I agree. But it is quite a charge sheet isn't it? Even if I discount the Brighton, Liverpool and Spurs incidents (which are the more tenuous examples) the woeful officialdom at Man Utd, Arsenal, Man City and Chelsea undoubtedly protected those sides.

I was one of the gaggle of Evertonians him and Stuart bumped into in Lime Street Station, and Paul had a supply of ale for the train down. We got down to Watford at about 11:45 so there was plenty of time for a good few pints to be sunk. Where were you on the return journey, Paul?

[Only joking about him being a pisshead, by the way.]

I might be paranoid, but I think I've got my reasons, and I reckon we get nothing off referees, because the present main man, (maybe unofficially?) is Martin Atkinson, and he fucking hates us.

Some Evertonians somewhere, have definitely terrorised this man wherever, and we've been paying the price ever since!

Got to credit Benitez: despite spending sod all, he has them pretty well organised under the circumstances.

No other industry can you be rewarded the way our players (perhaps Chelsea) are, give so little to the fans, produce utter dross, week-in & week-out... And they are still given all the perks of the good life.

They should all be on performance-related pay (thus saving the club millions), taken to Ainsdale Beach, ran up and down the dunes until they get a bit of fitness and stamina. Instead, it will be golf, swimming and relaxation in Dubai.

I live near La Manga in Spain... if they come here, I will be sure to pass on all our good thoughts and thanks for their efforts to date. So wrong!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dLArw8CBk0

Hahaha very funny. I thought that being suitably drunk is the only way to get through an Everton game these days. :-)

I went back via Wolverhampton. You guys headed in to Euston, didn't you?

Nice to meet you fellas. Catch you next time.

I can't do West Ham as wouldn't make Euston in time for the last train, so it's coach instead.

A terrific strike by Oviedo though, I still get a warm glow recalling that night, COYB.

Hopefully the current farce will not be allowed to continue for much longer.

Bit by bit, the club, its players and by association ourselves are losing the respect and dignity of other clubs' fans.

Once again lads, my previous post was just a weak attempt at lifting the gloom that is grinding myself and I suspect Paul and others down.

I may be 12,000 miles away but I also feel it.