Two points dropped, but with caveats

The only central midfielder who is in any way comfortable on the ball was Garner yesterday, so ball retention was always going to be an issue. On top of this, Brighton were fresher and looked to have more energy throughout. Wednesday had taken a few percent out of us.

Overall, the lads did well; we had marginally the better chances and were unlucky with the freak deflection that spun like a Shane Warne googly over Pickford's head.

It's been a good seven days; there is progress in work ethic and belief in the squad. We will continue to be hard to beat and pick up points. I am nowhere near as stressed as our previous two seasons as we have stability and we are playing to our strengths. Steady progress, in the mid-table zone, and a good crack at a cup beckons.

I think yesterday showed we are light in the midfield department; hopefully Gomes can be moved on in January and that frees up some financial headroom to get a decent midfielder in.

The two extra points would have taken a bit more pressure off the team, and Dyche could have experimented with a new system, given our more relaxed league position, but it is what it is, and another valuable point that may keep us out of the dog fight for survival.

On the road at Palace next weekend, let's hope that we can continue on our decent run of form, especially away from home.

After we scored we stopped pressing high, let them have the ball and they totally dominated the rest of the game.

From Brighton’s perspective, I suspect they feel they should have won. Remember they scored a brilliant goal soon after us which was harshly ruled out by VAR. Yes their goal took a lucky deflection but so did ours.

I think if we’d stuck to the same plan and pressed higher for more of the game, we could have got another and seen the game out. Because it’s obvious that our only plan in possession is kick and rush. Can anyone remember any passage of good passing or moments of skill from any of our players?

Our attack lacks any cohesion, they don’t have any chemistry and seem like they don’t want to pass to each other. McNeil and Harrison (especially) continually run down blind alleys. Unless we steam-roller the ball into the net, it ain’t happening!

Sorry this is a bit negative. I’m well aware we’ve improved and are much harder to beat than we were. It’s all progress. But I know which of the two teams on show I’d rather be watching every week!

Some of our players, most notably those who played in all three games were running on empty before the end. But they never gave up. When Brighton equalised there were still nine minutes of play remaining in which a flakier group of players might well have caved in. To their credit they didn’t and might even have grabbed a winner as Brighton dropped deeper to make sure they kept hold of their point.

I doubt, in our financial situation, we'll see much happening in January unless we sell someone.

To a certain extent, this is right and good news that Dyche has got them to play according to what he wants. But I still think his selection and forward play could be tactically better.

I was thinking the same, John (6), is it me or is Harrison not that good? Doesn't release or cross the ball early enough, can't dribble past players.

I like Doucoure. but someone should tell him to release the ball earlier...

Then we have another Dyche problem: lack of decisive in substitutions. Ashley Young was getting a runaround and Gana was tiring. Every other manager in the Premier League revives their team through replacements with 25 minutes to go – for some reason, Dyche does not.

This has two downsides; lack of fresh legs and lack of belief that the manager rates you. As Brighton were dominating, it seems obvious to replace Young (on a yellow) with Patterson. Replace Gana by moving Doucouré deeper and bring on some pace upfront to create some new problems for Brighton.

Our lack of faith in a much-improved bench seems detrimental to our chances of developing a confident squad and building success. I'm pleased we seem to be developing an identity and more resilience, but Brighton really were there for the taking if we had a more positive game plan.

Brighton are a decent side and might very well have picked us off if we'd have really gone for it. It's clear that, although we're improving, we do still lack quality.

Brighton have conceded a lot of goals this season so surely it was obvious that we continued on the front foot to try and grab another. But no, we surrendered the ball to them and, after letting them have 83% possession, the inevitable happened and they equalised.

I will never accept this from an Everton team, especially at home. If this is what Dyche is going to play like, then as far as I'm concerned, I can t wait to see the back of him.

That was disgraceful on Saturday, 95 minutes of sheer boredom, with the added pleasure of getting drenched as well.

Sorry, I will never get behind Dyche if this the shit he serves up.

I had been watching Harrison several times for Leeds. I was always very impressed by his aggression, speed, workrate and efficiency.

So far, I have not seen the same Harrison for Everton. I am very confident that he just needs time. If he reaches his Leeds level, he will be a real asset.

There is a (big) difference between surrendering possession and allowing the opponents to be the only one with a chance of scoring; and sitting deep and compact whilst keeping the opponents at bay and looking to take advantage of any counters.

Possession just by itself is useless! It's only useful if you are good enough to use it to create goal-scoring opportunities (which the best teams can do obviously – but that's not us currently!).

Despite scoring early yesterday we had more shots, more shots on target, and as many corners. And could have had more had we not botched a few good counter opportunities.

Some may say it's not entertaining and that's fair enough but I prefer it infinitely to having more of the ball but getting hammered 4-1 which is what happened last time we tried to go toe to toe with Brighton.

There's more than one way to skin a cat and Leicester won the league with 42% possession over the season.

Another aspect is that Brighton are deadly on the counter and we never gave them that opportunity as we didn't over-commit. I think that was a lesson we learned in the derby.

We ourselves are becoming a counter-attacking team so when two counter-attacking teams meet such as here, it's pretty much a "Who blinks first" scenario. In this case, we scored first so then it was up to them to change their approach, not us.

And until that fluke, we were dealing with them. As I said on another thread, we would also have had at least one of two good penalty shouts if we had been a Sky club.

UTFT

From my seat on Saturday we didn't intentionally invite Brighton on to us as a tactic, we just inexcusably gave them the ball back seemingly at every opportunity. Our pass completion was 62%, which basically means that every three times we had the ball we gave it away once. Surely it is one of the fundamentals of football that you pass to someone in the same colour shirt.

To compare Saturday to last season's debacle is invalid since Brighton have sold Caicedo, Colwill, McAllister, Trossard and March is out injured. Everton on the other hand have theoretically improved by losing Coady, Davies, Iwobi and Gray

One thing is certain Dyche's anti football, if continued will make it easier to get tickets for Everton home games.

I do agree that Dyche should have made earlier changes, Young was visibly tiring (after having a very good match imo) and we may have won with fresher legs.

Pickford had a poor match as far as distribution goes, he should have occasionally played out from the back and relieved some of the pressure we were under. There were many occasions when Branthwaite or someone else was in space but he punted it long and Brighton came straight back at us.

Still pleased with the week and the point, we could have had at least one penalty and scored from other attacks too so I'm really not bothered by the possession stat.

Dunk was offside for his goal, nothing cruel with that being ruled out. His head and shoulders were in front of the last defender and you can score with those, the camera angle made it look closer than it was.

It's fair to say we need more from him though, and I think we will see some better performances. As to whether he is worth the £30M Leeds are rumoured to be asking us for another thing altogether. I doubt we will be offering anywhere near that.

However, as a fan sitting in the stands, I'm not at all impressed by the way in which we went about getting that point. We have both Manchester clubs, Newcastle and Chelsea to visit Goodison in the next few fixtures; doubtless Dyche will employ similar tactics and we might, if we get the breaks and maintain the work ethic, manage to take at least 4 points from those four fixtures.

The players carried out Dyche's game plan to the letter on Saturday, which is why Sean was so happy to say, in response to his original assessment of his early days at Everton, that as a team, they weren't very resilient:

“It's tough for me to question then with that work ethic, and the tactical understanding, but just on the counter we didn't find the key moments and were a bit loose with the ball at times, but the pleasing thing for me was we've had three games in six days, so to go and deliver that performance tactically and physically is very very pleasing.

"It's another marker of where the side is getting to, because there was a time where people would argue from the outside looking in, particularly when I first got to the club, that there was a softness within the team. I think that is improving now, there is a hardiness now actually, and I think we showed that again through the hard yards and nitty gritty aspect of the game. I thought that was massively on show and the sheer work ethic of the team to make sure we got a result.”

I understand we have to walk before we can run; I can also see that gaining a point from each and every game we play from here on in will be enough to secure our position in the top-flight, but please don't ask me to enjoy watching it – I just can't.

My real concern is that this necessity to avoid relegation will become a permanent mindset that will be almost impossible to remove. I remain unconvinced that defending deep and hoping to snatch something on the break is the best way of developing our future; it's just about tolerable for the here and now, but if it becomes our only way of playing, then there may be more empty seats at the new place than we might have anticipated.

Let's be honest: most if not all home fixtures are a challenge… but must we really be so fixed on a single way of playing? It might work better if the manager could get his players to realise that the ball is part of the game, and actually it's the most important part of the game: if you have enough of it and use it properly, it will help to put points on the board; if you have little of it and use it badly, you'll drop points and remain on the 'point a game' merry-go-round for quite some time.

If you allow them the ball - you take away their greatest strength.

It’s not pretty, but if we had of pressed and got undone then we’d all be on here saying that Dyche got done tactically.

We might have won 3-0, we might have lost 3-0. At this stage, and especially compared to the last couple of years, I’ll take an unlucky draw.

Certainly we were poor at times with the ball and he said so much in his post match interviews. We had some more opportunities to counter that we blew (whereas last year at Brighton we were clinical).

We can and should definitely do better with the ball in such counters but those expecting us to match possession against good footballing teams are in for disappointment.

The way Dyche is setting up is not going to turn us into Top 6 material any time soon, but we need to stabilise mid-table and keep out of trouble. It might not be good enough for some, but for now, it's a massive improvement and you have to give credit for that.

In the last two seasons, we looked at the fixtures and knew we would be in the Bottom 3 after Christmas. Looks a lot better now to me.

I agree with much of what you write, but I think we're at the beginning phase of building a team/squad and building from the back has been the hallmark of many a successful manager.

As a litmus test, I'd hope we can get close to 40 points as quickly as possible and then see if the manager can play a more expansive game – perhaps this will come as confidence grows? I'll reserve judgement for now, due to the predicament the club has been in for some time.

I honestly don't know a single person who couldn't see any Brighton goal was coming from Mitoma.

Many (including myself) calling for Young off and Patterson on, but a guy infront of me mention what Dyche had done in the cup, leaving young and taking off Harrison, this would have worked a treat to double up on Mitoma late on.

Shame as it cost us in the end.