Often They Hurt You

Good on you for stepping in like that – not many would in these days of knife crime etc. Love your reports and I think we saw the same game!

See you at the Burnley game I hope?

On reflection, I think Saturday's general performance was better, football wise, than quite a few in matches we have drawn or won this season. But there are no points for style in football. Grinding out positive results is a necessity in our position.

I agree with you, we have to stick with Dyche. Changing the manager now would make us worse. The results will turn positive soon, providing the players and fans stick together. With four wins and a couple of draws, we will be safe.

Good on you for pulling that thuggish bully off the lad, Danny; hope the lad was okay and the other twat was one of the ones who got pulled off the train at Crewe.

Yes, Dyche has to stay until the end of the season. We will not go down, I have never thought that we would. But everything should be up for review over the summer, including Dyche, even more so if this long and winding takeover saga ever ends.

I thought that we played some of our best footy of the season on Saturday, in spurts. Dyche has to be questioned for sticking with particular players and the timing of his subs (and more else besides). It's simply not true that there are no alternatives, the bench, to be fair, did not look that bad at all.

Dyche is not a dinosaur but he is fecking stubborn. I do hope that he can be a little more flexible in the next couple of months or so.

Love the Oxford Tube, Danny. Always like settling in at Marble Arch, dead comfy, good wi-fi, checking out the western suburbs and on to the city of dreaming spires.

COYB

Simply dreadful.

These days it's an easy cop-out to look the other way. It was so much easier in the '60s. Mind you, I remember coming to near fisticuffs with my best mate at Ian Callaghan's testimonial in the '70s.

He was an RS so didn't matter, we loved each other before guys loving each other meant what it means now!!! Jesus, that brought back memories…

Thing is, Danny, I used to be a season-ticket holder and would make a very similar journey to yours. I simply would not bother now for a myriad of reasons. But the main one is that Everton have been serial bottlers for about a decade and it's embarrassing.

I am currently being treated for a brain tumour yet to see these millionaires take to the pitch and fail to get the basics right and think 'what is the point?' They are spineless. They don't deserve and the club no longer deserves the likes of you and I travelling a 10-hour round trip to see them go down to last-minute goals at home.

Dyche is doing my head in but then so did Benitez and Ancelotti.

It's pathetic yet, to me, for some reason, the players have been weak and flimsy year on year whoever coaches them.

I think it is safe to say I have long gone off "loving them".

More importantly, I wish you well in your challenge. Best wishes and God bless.

I remember coming home from Goodison one game and a big heavy Everton fan was picking on a young cockney who was with his girlfriend, he took a smack off this fan, who was picking his mark, before any of us could help the kid another Evertonian gave the bully a “Kirkby kiss” and asked him did he want some more, he didn't.
I took the young cockney and his girlfriend along Netherfield Road and told him this was the quietest way rather than going down Scotland Road and into possibly more trouble. I put them onto a bus and told them this would take them to Lime Street station.

As for the game, we played poorly in patches but created chances in spells, enough to win the game. We are struggling at times and one big element that is missing, as one fan pointed out on here, is luck and a decent run of the ball. I know we shouldn't rely on luck but it definitely helps, a certain other team, not far away certainly get quite a lot of it along with being a good team.

You are right: Everton FC most certainly do hurt us, but the kind of hurt we have is, in my book, quite different from the malaise of the three or four clubs currently below us in the table.

Sheffield United are dire. Burnley try to play in a style which is only suited to better technical players, and lack nous and experience in defence. As for Luton, they are well motivated, organized and energetic, but again, prone to odd lapses in defence. Forest are a bit like Luton, and rely greatly on home form, and all four teams have taken heavy beatings this season.

Everton are an odd fish? We have competed well in most games home and away, having arguably been roundly beaten only twice this season; fans have grown hugely frustrated in seeing a team who, by rights, should sit mid-table, but have repeatedly shipped cheap and late goals after failing to capitalise on scoring chances, as happened against West Ham.

I am with you on the penalty taking, Danny: Pickford is a thunderous striker of the ball, and I feel he has the self-confidence to be successful. That said, I can't see us getting another penalty this season, we have had our quota, and we messed it up!

Danny is on his second childhood, and this is what I’m hoping happens to you Andrew, once you have won the fight against such a horrible thing🤞

I agree with the people who thought Everton played well, but only up to a certain point, because it’s also clear that the team needs freshening up.

Maybe the players will be refreshed after the three week break, but there is a big game on Saturday, and we should be able to go to Manchester, with absolutely no fear of turning over United., imo.

On the penalty, imagine if Pickford or Tarkowski had pulled rank and taken it, only for it to be saved or sail high or wide. The very people who were slating poor Beto would have been slagging off the unfortunate player, whoever he was.

It was one of those days. However, I recall watching us under Lampard and thinking that we're simply unable to create anything and yet here we are having had 22 shots, 11 on target. Dyche can't score them for the team.

Dyche does have rather a random approach to his subs but so has every manager I can remember.

Thanks for your report – always interesting.

I agree about your view on the performance and on our young central defender. I also agree with you about the correct role for Calvert-Lewin.

Playing Calvert-Lewin in his current role is something Moyes would do and, in my view, it encourages those behind him to just hoof it up the field.

When we had Yakubu, we had to play it to his feet as he was never going to run around chasing lost causes.

Dust yourself down and go again on Saturday!

We had a spell after we scored where their keeper made a couple of good saves, one right at him and one from the deflection – a worldie; other than that, I'm struggling.

I don't take any positives from that showing whatsoever. If anyone is happy with that level of performance, then more fool you. I'm not getting hoodwinked by this manager and players' talk of missed chances, the week before at Brighton we scored one and Doucoure had one kicked off the line.

I said after we badly struggled against an under-strength Palace side that we won't win another home game all season and that includes Burnley and the atrocious Sheffield United.

They say you get the team you support: not true in our case – 3 home wins all season in front of the best fans in the land.

I heard Dyche's and Tarkowski's after-match interviews – not a word of apology from them, but why would they They're not arsed.

Sick to death of half-arsed performances and players who can't string 2 passes together.

Worst run since the '70s any other manager would have been run out of town by now.

Not Sean Dyche though, because – according to some – he's worked miracles… do me a fucking favour!

I've been frustrated by the tactics at times, but it wasn't too bad at Goodison against West Ham, although the collapse in additional time was frustrating.

With points back ,we should be fine. We would have been comfortable with the additional 6 points.

So the manager has done a decent job and shouldn't be slated by the club's off-the-pitch performance.

Secondly, I think my general dismay with the club and the players is bred from a deep-rooted fear that younger generations won't want to support us. We've done little to impress since the Moyes era (and that was mostly just satisfactory) while our delightful neighbours and the likes of City are going to be more appealing to younger generations.

The new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock might help of course but some of my family are turning away from going to games or even owning season tickets while others have considered going elsewhere which is unthinkable to myself.

There's no feel-good factor surrounding the club which is a shame as our fans are ridiculously loyal and passionate. The fans have been the lifeblood of Everton FC and I am worried that this season-on-season malaise will dry that up thanks to apathy and despair.

Miserable, I know, but the owners, whoever they have been, have taken our fanbase for granted. This isn't sustainable.

I'm raising my Evertonian kids on the other side of the world. To date, I've done a good job but it's getting harder.

And that's what winds me up. We've been rubbish before. This isn't new. But we are just so uninspiring right now. We've got nothing going for us and there isn't even a tiny bit of passion or progression.

More than ever, I'm questioning why I devote big portions of my life to this. I don't even enjoy watching us nowadays... but I keep doing it.

Exactly, I liked watching us under Silva and perversely saw a lot of stuff live under Big Sam. Yet now and probably since early Ancelotti, it's been a drab experience.

You've got the other lot across the park with their energy and disingenuous coach and you wonder how many young scousers will flock to them and not us regardless of family ties? We have become an unfashionable club again which is soul destroying given how far Moyes and others took us in the early part of this century.

Like me and countless others, you're beyond cure and won't stop yourself! I can't, I'm an Everton fool!

I wouldn't be too concerned. We have and always will have a core base. I was talking to my sister last night. My season ticket holder nephew has been telling her that he will never watch them again after the West Ham match.

He'll be at the next home game. Guaranteed!!!

I think we're quite unique in terms of the city. My family is a mix of blues and reds often in the same household.

My observations, in the south of the city, it is more Liverpool. In the north, you see more Everton. That's a general view, not based on fact. But it is mixed.

One of my cousins worked in Kirkby for years. She is a red and always used to comment that it was an Everton stronghold. Maybe just the place she worked?

Apparently places like Widnes and Runcorn have strong Everton followings. I know our coach used to stop at Widnes to pick up and drop off quite a sizeable number of supporters.

We have supporters on this very website from various parts of the globe who found Everton. I have friends from other parts of the UK that I converted.

Whilst success is what we all want, it isn't the be-all and end-all for supporting a club. Since the '70s, there have only been two, now three dynasties. Living in London, I see the Liverpool and Manchester United shirts all the time. Interestingly, the Manchester City following hasn't caught on.

I hope this takeover saga is resolved and, whoever the new owners end up being, build the brand and make us compete. That's all I ask for. If we compete, we will get success. Then expand the fan base.

It seems an age since I saw Calvert-Lewin's clever turn and shot at the London Stadium and trips home and away since then have resulted in crushing disappointment. I can't get over the feeling that we won't win another game. We've played shite, and we've played well – it makes no difference – we just can't win.

I remember, again in the '70s, my mate's dad predicting that sometime soon, this team (Latchford, Dobson, King etc) would batter someone, and it came to pass. If we were playing teams from the Scottish 2nd Division in the next few weeks, I wouldn't predict a flukey win, let alone a battering. Something is rotten and we are either cursed or seriously inept in every department.

I've got my ticket for Chelsea away and I'm looking at a home game again soon, but the flame is flickering. I'm tired of Everton being shit! UTFT

It's taken a few days, myself included, to get over what happened, even me. But it's one match. Big one coming up at the weekend.

See you at the next one friend.

As Danny's post says, they often hurt you. Those of us unlucky enough to attend the games don't go there to expect some joy but attend in the knowledge that, in having this craving, we will endure untold agonies that linger long after the game has finished.

I'm in the position of having kind of missed the '80s. I was there, but I was too young to take it in. Perversely I remember the Cup Final defeats to that lot vividly. That's always seemed a bit unfair to me.

But I went through tough times with hope of something better. And then Joe Royle took over a relegation bound team and months later I was at Wembley watching us win (twice!).

Other managers have given us hope. Moyes, Martinez, even the big name appointments of Koeman and Ancelotti.

Now I might just have got wiser (though I doubt that) but I can't see where this changes now. Like Danny, I've taken what I was born into and converted people on foreign shores... I'm beginning to think I've been unfair to the poor sods.

Why keep getting up at 2am to watch what we're serving up?

I count myself one of the lucky ones as I started going to the game regularly the season we came back up to Division 1, as it was called back then. So I have seen them win leagues cups and I was lucky enough to be in Rotterdam when we won the European Cup-Winners Cup — now no longer played for.

So that's 1 European trophy that the other lot have never won and never will seeing it's been dropped by Uefa. My 2 sons have only seen us win the FA Cup and my Grandson has seen us win nothing with little likelihood that will change anytime soon. So, like you, I have passed on my addiction to my family.

For me, apart from that brief spike under Joe Royle, the '90s were as bad as now.

Under Moyes, we were stable.

Had it not been for the Stalanistic dictatorship and unreasonable punishment, we'd be stable now.

Keep going' Ernie. I think I've talked my nephew down from giving up!! And his dad and two brothers are Kopites!!

My late brother's birthday today, he would have turned 59 but passed a decade ago, and he was the reddest of the RS, never missed a chance to get a dig in. Even his lads (both around 30 now) recognized how horrible the RS were/are and support other teams, sadly not Everton though. Spent a great day with his oldest around the West Ham away match mentioned by Mark above, including meeting Mark and Danny.

Excuse the ramble, I'm having a few remembering my brother. Thanks for another enjoyable report, Danny.