Stars new and old point the way forward as Everton deal with Lincoln

Gladly the unlikely biblical homicide was not to be emulated on this occasion. I would imagine it was a pulsating and entertaining match for those of a neutral disposition, but for a good portion for us it was a nail-biting affair for us Blues.

I think on reflection both sides can take credit for entertaining on the night, but I think bizarrely, it will have galvanised Lincoln into being a formidable opponent for the rest of their campaign, although they have no further part to play in this Cup, they will benefit in the long run.

I think too it has been a lesson learnt for us too, as there clearly were signs of a united squad with fire in their bellies to achieve a result, after a rude awakening.

There were no surprises in this performance and result, just as there were no surprises in the first three league games. We know we have the quality of players, and better strength in depth, to be challenging realistically for both cups and top places in the league. But our main problem is consistency, and if only we can start getting better consistency then this season should be a marked improvement. The better strength in depth, current injuries notwithstanding, can only help achieve this consistency.

There in front of us last night was Everton's new captain, a voice on the field at last, and he isn't match fit yet.

There was more of a central threat. The new additions certainly helped, Iowbi in particular. Tosun does what he does well, laying off the ball and moving into position to do so. I recently had a look at his stats and that is what he is good at. He is not an out-and-out striker and never has been. He can score if provided a clear cut chance, but has always lacked pace. Calvert-Lewin also played well, coming on as a sub. Holgate was a little rusty to start with, but played a lot of great long passes.

Richarlison was reinvigorated with the play around him. It's only a matter of time until Kean will score.

I knew Everton where playing well when I saw Schneriderlin in the opposition penalty area. Digne is a world class footballer, better than Gueye. Hope we don't get a big offer in for him in January.

All the goals were well taken on the night,a real old-fashioned Cup tie from the brief highlights I saw on Quest after listening to the live commentary.

Magnificent away support again, let's finally win this Cup, eh!

Onwards Blues.

The record throughout the history of football is littered with "Only teams" that triumph over more fancied opposition, the most recent one of note being, Wigan Athletic's victory over Manchester City in the FA Cup Final.

My outlook is 'Enjoy the moment' no matter who the opposition may be.

I think the gesture by Marco Silva sending the players over to the away end to give their shirts away was the highlight of the night for me. Showed a great appreciation towards the the supporters.

Keeping hold of Digne is going to be the big test for Brands. Digne has to easily be the best buy Everton have made since the Premier League started.

In particular I don't think he took on the majority of the role of distributor and I have distinct recollection of others such as Holgate and Schneiderlin being the ones clipping the ball to the flanks from our own half. I also felt that the ball went back to the central defenders and goalie more than it has of late.

Delph certainly tried some adventurous balls further up the pitch but none really hit their mark. I'm not trying to knock his performance as I think he played sensibly and deliberately to steady the ship, but I have the sense that his contribution is being puffed up quite a bit.

I don't think we will or should be looking to hold onto Digne. We should be looking to maximise the profit we will be making from his sale.

I think we went down the wrong road with Baines, we should have let him go to Manchester United, and brought in the dosh.

Keeping players when they have the chance to go to much bigger cliubs never works, and in fact, selling well is the only real way we are going to survive and prosper. Them's the rules — not just for us but everyone except Madrid and Barcelona.

Spot on. The day when you play lower league team littered with players barely above semi-professional level are long gone.

Right down through the leagues you will find players of great skill who, although don't tick all the boxes to play at the top, tick enough to give anyone a game on any given day.

As you rightly point out, there was always somebody who would come a cropper, but these days it's even more likely. Teams down the pyramid are ultra-professional.

I think we as a club have been guilty of not respecting lower teams enough, our managers have taken liberties, certainly with team selection. I think we all know how that has gone.

Teams from the top flight are favourites, of course, but you have to show these lower league teams 100% respect, do that and you will probably win. Approach these games thinking you only have to turn up and you are asking for trouble.

Only Lincoln? I don't think there`s an "only" anybody anymore

What's the point in building a strong squad, only to dismantle it every couple of years, and then start all over again? Doesn't make any sense at all.

The best way to keep our best players is to win a cup, AND finish in a European qualifying position via the league, this season. This would then enable us to make the squad stronger come the next summer transfer window. Players will want to join us, not want to leave us.

At least now we can bring in younger transfers, bar a few strategic older buys. Hopefully our days of buying obvious has-beens are finished for good.

The American expression is "on any given Sunday..." which comes from the NFL and says any team in the league can beat any other on a particular day.

Of course, in order to do this, we need to get some consistency under Silva. If we can't get this consistency, and remain midtable, then of course the best players won't come here, and our best players will leave to win medals elsewhere.

So, we MUST keep hold of players like Digne for the foreseeable future, and to do this we must get consistency, otherwise we will remain midtable.

Hi Mike [20], in days gone by we would have said, "On any given Saturday" unfortunately thanks to the Premier League selling its soul to Sky Television, we now have to say, "On any given day, and any given time".

To win a cup a team has to simply keep winning. Performances don't matter too much as long as the team do enough to beat the opponent and move on.

To us Lincoln are cannon fodder; to them, Everton are Goliath!! And every team outside of the Premier League will see the same, so up the game.

Win, move on. If at the end of the season it ends up at Wembley, no one will remember that in the 2nd round Lincoln made a decent game of it.

Delph feels a touch ‘Gareth Barry' with his introduction. The overall package is clever, intelligent and he will put his foot in.

Iwobi demonstrates amply how just passing and moving creates space and allows him to maximize his ability. Others in the team could learn a lot from it, Siggy & Richarlison especially.

Kean will create things for himself, he did tire but unlike the other forwards we have who are way too reliant on the system.

Sadly the biggest disappointment was the decision to stick with the formation and approach. Until the Digne special we persisted with the very predictable out from the back, down the sides and cross. League one centre backs love that shit, and well they lapped it up.

The absence of variety, and bodies in the box will make Sunday very tricky. Wolves play 3-5-2, so crossing the ball into a heavily packed box is stupid.

It's going to need a change and formation that plays in between, got to go 4-3-3.

Some improvements but Silva needs to get a wriggle on.

I now hope we can take confidence into the Wolves game and give a really good account of ourselves, against a very good team. If Gomes is still suffering from that foot injury he got at Palace best to give him a rest and we may see the real Gomes whens hes fully fit.

Obviously you don't want to be selling constantly or more than one of your starting XI every season or two but if someone were to bid £80m+ for a 27 year old Digne next summer I would feel confident in Brands finding another, younger option who'd do a similar job. Some very good left backs around, easier to replace than a goalscoring striker for example.

This squad still needs work and with the stadium incoming I don't think Moshiri will be blowing big net spends. We saw that this summer with a much lower net spend than last summer. Selling the occasional player at their peak before their value drops is good and necessary business for any club without endless financial backing that wishes to continue investing in the best young talent.

When you sell without a clear equivalent replacement in mind who already agrees to come here, then it is the mark of an habitual 'feeder' club that maintains its position as midtable and never really gets to the top. All clubs of course lose good players, but the Cities and Real Madrids of this world, like Everton when we were elite, don't habitually get rid of players in their prime. Instead, they attract them. That's where we want to be.

You say there are plenty of good left backs around who we could get. There are, but there aren't many of the quality of Digne. What you've said has been said before, about strikers when there was all the talk about Lukaku leaving, implying it was easy to find replacements who could give the equivalent goal return. It was idle talk, as is the current talk regarding Digne.

I'm in no rush to sell Digne of course, or any of our starting XI but if we wish to keep buying exciting young player like Kean, Mina, Richarlison etc then we will (I think) have to make some money from outgoing sales. Picking the right player to sell at the right time for the right value and crucially with the right replacement lined up will of course be up to Brands and his team. I was not entirely convinced by his work this summer, felt like we sold a few players cheaply and there were some holes unaddressed, but he's definitely a big improvement on what we had.

Yes, before Sky TV and the Premier League, Everton were thought of as one of the top clubs, but this is no longer the case. If Barca, Real, Chelsea, Tottenham or even Man Utd come knocking, it's going to be hard keeping any player, that shows promise.

An example of this is Leicester. They won the Premier League league and instead of the players thinking, let's stay in a winning team, some of them jumped ship to the more fashionable clubs.

Leicester may have been able to offer them comparable salaries, but I don't think this would have mattered a bit. They had a chance to play for one of the Sky six and took it.

Methinks I'm teaching you how to suck eggs, but the way some people think players will remain at Everton, I'm not sure. Yes, Ambition and love of your club is essentially part of being a supporter of any club, not just Everton, but it's got to be tempered with the fact that football has changed since the last time we were successful.

Recent history has proved, that having local allegiances to Everton, does not deter you from wanting to join Chelsea or Man city. So we can't remonstrate again foreign players who have the same ambition.

The agents will have their toxic effect on the players. Even if Deigne, wanted to stay at Everton, do you think his agent would allow it?

Finally, Sky, the BBC and money, do I need to say anymore? They manipulate to keep their Sky darlings at the top, so that the revenue is maintained. No amount of success from Everton will change this.

Look at the way Sky and the BBC changed the way they displayed the top of the Premier League, when Everton got to sixth place, suddenly it was relevant only to show the top five.

You may think I'm a defeatist, posting this, but I'm not, even after fifty years of supporting them! I'm just realistic about about Everton and their standing in a modern money dominated, football league, and the shallow people that run it for their own greed, the FA.

Sadly you are right in as much if any regular Champions league team come calling on our players it will be very difficult to keep hold of them. But this has gone on for a very long time, as you and I can remember when we were the club who could buy any player we wanted when John Moores was in charge.

Many Premier league clubs are owned by billionaires but they cant match the money that the top clubs in world football can offer. You only have to look at Spurs were Pochettino has done an amazing job, but their spending on players and transfer fees don't compare to what City,Liverpool and Chelsea spend. But I think this reluctance to spend money will see Pochettino leave before December. Arsenal are another club who again cant or wont compete with the very top clubs. Now in light of what has happened at Bury maybe these clubs are doing it the right way in keeping spending to an affordable level. I think the Sanchez at Man Utd sums up the crazy situation in football, Man Utd are prepared to pay a staggering ٦ million a year as PART of his wages just to get some of his salary off the books for a season.

So lets hope that more realism regarding transfer fees and wages, but I doubt it very much. Clubs now selling their ground to stay in the Premier league and others at the top end spending fortunes in wages on a weekly basis.

I think you're right that in Brands we seem to have a more targeted business-savvy plan for improvement.

Phil@34: You're right, unfortunately! But we were a very top club not that long ago, have won 8 trophies in my lifetime, are not in the category of Leicester and that isolated trophy, and do have much greater 'brand image' through history than clubs like that could only dream about. The potential here for exploiting that 'brand' is surely massive, and our ambitions must be in kilter with it.

EFC are viewed by the media as a stepping stone to something better. Evertonians, obviously disagree with this contention, but I feel it's blind faith, not a bad thing, when you say that you have witnessed Everton winning eight trophies, which will influence players to stay.

It's patently obvious that it's irrelevant to Sky, the BBC and the media. Therefore, it's not beyond the boundaries of imagination, especially with the influence of their agents, that top players, feel the same way.

There's a young left back at Wigan, an international as well.

Everton aren't in that category yet but we can attracts young players on their way up as a really good proven stepping stone. If we can attract enough, develop them quickly and improve our standing while they are here then we benefit and we build our finances, especially when BMD opens.

None of those players will stay if a CL club comes calling, so forget about players staying with us to become 'legends' until we are up there, and as Leicester have found out if success is not underpinned by the structure to support a doubling (or more) of finances success will be fleeting. BMD is a vital part of this and we are getting there. Until we achieve that transition we will not be bracketed with the top 6 regardless of where we finish.

Everton, on the other hand, are different. There are many Evertonians who've never seen glory, used only to mediocrity. But there are many for whom Everton being at the top is as natural as the Sun rising in the East. Such Evertonians are never happy being midtable, they are hungry and thirsty to be top dogs again. Clubs like Leicester haven't won 8 trophies, whereas many Evertonians have experienced it.

The media have never been friendly to Everton, ever since the days of Catterick and his apparent disdain of them. He played games with them, such as when he told the Echo that Liverpool were signing Kendall when in fact he was joining us. We've never been in kilter with the media, and perhaps never will. But that didn't stop the 8 trophies.

Many on ToffeeWeb write as though they feel continuing mediocrity is a law of nature. It comes across as a fatalistic mentality that sees any attempt at returning to glory as futile, and it manifests itself in a fatalistic belief that we will lose players as soon as they become outstanding. This is not a problem in itself, since we don't run the club. But it is a problem if the people who do run the club are also of this mentality, because such a mentality is self-fulfilling and likely transfers onto the field.

I can't think of many great players, that have stayed loyal to EFC. Even after we won the FA cup in 1995, Gary Speed, fucked off to Newcastle. The last 25 years are littered with players who have thought they are better than Everton, many of them falling flat on their face in the process.

As I said at the start, we all hope and dream of Everton getting back into the big time, but let's keep a bit of perspective at our chances. I personally don't think our opinions transfer to the players on the field, only Jim White's and the players family and agents. 😡

The offensive term Phil used (referred to below) has been removed from this post – Mods

Beyond that, if the people who run the club don't have the mentality to aim for the top, if they readily let the best players go without a clear business plan to replace with comparable or better, then that light will be an illusion and we'll remain at midtable.

At the extremes you have optimism and fatalism, but between those extremes there can be a reality of substantial progress only if there is belief.

I sincerely hope that your opinion of Gary Speed is not conveyed to his family.

If you ‘wasn't at it ‘ Phil, you were well out of order having a go at our former player like that.

Gary was a dedicated supporter and player of Everton, well before he came and long after he left, in circumstances that shouldn't have been allowed to happen.

Gary had to sign a non disclosure document before he left when he could have opened up and explained what had gone there.

Booed, disgracefully, by Everton fans every time he came back to play at Goodison, he took it on the chin, and kept quiet. A good solid man Gary, a credit to the club while he was here, and loyal to the club after he left. Rest in Peace Gary, I think you held in high regard by most Everton fans now.

Obviously I never, John, why would you think that? The sentiment was of the time and although it's what was thought at the time, who in the right mind would write to a players family? Are you going to ask me if I wrote to the ref's family, calling him a bastard? Once more, I'm sorry for any offence, none was intended, if Michael or Lyndon could edit it out, it would be appreciated.

However you have apologised and said your comments were based at what you knew at the time so best to leave it at that, I can assure you though Phil that many fans knew the real events at the time including many at the club.

Changing tack slightly, I know there have been a few who left Everton thinking they were "better" than the club in the last 25 years. But the two that really crack me up are Carl Tyler and Craig Short. I remember reading interviews with both after they left for Charlton and Derby (if memory serves me correctly). Both said something along the lines of they'd left to join "better" clubs. Hilarious.

I have no intention of asking whether or not you wrote to the referee calling him names, what I expected from you [and what you have offered] was an apology.

I respect you for acknowledging that your comment was in the public domain, and could have caused distress to Gary Speed's family.