Young's penalty saved to end Everton's cup run

Likewise newbies Ndiaye, Lindstrom, Mangala and O'brien.

McNeil at LB will be interesting but I think everyone will be relieved to see him there given the alternative.

Coyb!

McNeill at LB, Jay Harris actually called that out earlier today, I thought it was a positive shout, really interested to see how that pans out, fingers crossed.

Come on lads our season starts here.

UTFT

Hopefully they up their game to the point the coaching staff are convinced they can be routinely be relied on, rather than just emergency cover.

Up the Toffees! Not desperate to progress in this competition but we want overall performances to improve massively and the results to come with that. Happy for that to start tonight!

Naturally we hope that whatever they get they can hold onto until the final whistle.

I really hope it turns out well for them tonight.

UTFT Dyche. Set us up for Saturday please, in a positive way.

The most rewarding thing I think is that Tarks gets more time to rest up, hopefully in time to team up with Branners at the weekend.
Plus giving JP the night off, might be the kick in the pants he needs to up his game.

An interesting line up and even more interesting bench.

1-0 and COYB (PS How come Doucoure still remains so talismanic to us?)

Jake O'Brien flicked the ball on at the back post, Keane headed it towards goal and then Doucoure had the final touch.

However, minutes earlier and Beto opted to go to ground instead of chasing after a through ball. Once again, the small margins come back to haunt the Blues.

The clamour for changes and giving Dixon, O'Brien starts is well heeded by the manager in this game.

May we win in fine style and make them undroppable.

We just are not a team nor are we even the sum of the parts. We need another ball player in midfield. Yes, Doucoure scored, but he is otherwise anonymous and contributing nothing.

This is Southampton. Mighty Southampton and they are controlling the game. Spaces everywhere. C'mon Dyche. Prove you can manage and make the changes/ adjustments we are desperate for.

Tim for Doucoure. I wish we had a left-back. McNeil doing okay but just too much space down both flanks and he doesn't have the pace of Dixon.

Can someone tell Dyche we can't play for a point here.

This could be our last-ever cup game at Goodison. It's like a pre-season friendly.

If it goes to penalties, we're out.

Lindstrom, Ndiaye, McNeil, even Harrison to some extent will have a chance to craft things without them being broken down by a weak link like Doucoure or Beto.

No real intensity. Like watching wallpaper dry for the most part.

Doucoure can score the odd goal but generally is poor as a midfielder. Why the hell does he bring Young on???

So bored of watching this style of football!

Analysing tonight's performance is pointless. It's the bigger picture. We are a shockingly poor team. Playing as we do and managed as we are, we are incapable of beating anyone. We are going down and badly.

Change is required now. Not after we fail to beat Leicester and Palace. Dreadful dreadful football.

You've just got to laugh.

He looked like a 12-year-old.

Extending his stay by a year was a big mistake.

Of course he had to miss his penalty.

He is done.

Surely it must be time to drop the embarrassing song.

Southampton looked streets ahead of us and they're our main rivals for the drop.

Thoroughly fucking depressing.

Uninspiring and pathetic — and I've got the 45 somewhere.

What a shit game in every respect – and it could be the last ever cup game at Goodison.

We were overrun in midfield again because Dyche won't change his formation, and they controlled the whole game.

Just sit back and give them the ball? I think he's lost the plot.

Beto was having a go — I can't fathom taking him off for Young? Was that like the seconds throwing the towel in?
Head scratcher, that.

Passing backwards and zero goal threat, it's soul-destroying watching this shit. When's the next international break again?

Thanks for last season, Dyche, but I think it's time to find the door.

The only minor comfort is that penalties can go either way and we didn't lose it in the 90 minutes.

Dyche now has one game to save his job. No points at Leicester on Saturday and he has to get the sack... Moshiri, Friedkin or Textor will have to pull a couple of million out of their pocket to pay the Dychosaurus off!

Players continually passing backwards. Beto isolated. No support. No runners. 25% possession.

Lone forward off, Ashley Young on. I never want to see him in an Everton shirt again.

I never want to see Dyche on the touchline again. He can wipe snot over his bald dome at some other club. Get him out. Now.

Dinosaurs don't rule the football world anymore.

I was a Dyche fan but not anymore, we are a Premier League club and yet we act like a 6-th tier club.

It's like he just said "Here's a bunch of guys who have had not much game time, chuck them together and let's see what happens..."

Not good enough, Mr Dyche.

It can't go on like this. Time for change. Who? I don't know… the club's a mess.

I've supported Dyche from Day 1 but my belief in him is ebbing away right now. He needs to turn it around pronto because this is joyless stuff currently.

He has to go!

Southampton stroking the ball around in midfield, and all we did was hoof the ball, and no striker? He'd no game plan whatsoever, and Doucoure a total passenger supposedly a midfielder?

I don't understand what Dyche thinks that 30,000 Evertonians turn up for in an early round cup-tie, a hot pie, a cup of half-time Bovril, a catch-up with mates. No! none of those they come to be entertained by a team that will give it a go and try and win the game, not sit deep and play on the break, hoping that something positive happens.

Lindstrom did have an opportunity to put us two ahead, and there were other chances on offer, however, the overall performance was lacklustre, disjointed and bloody damn awful to watch.

I'm not disappointed that we're out of competition that we seem destined never to win, because it would likely impede our chances of stopping up if we had progressed to the later rounds, but I am disappointed that we didn't try and dominate the ball, and ask more questions of a fairly ordinary Saints team.

Never mind off to Leicester City on Saturday with a back four that will include Keane and Young - there's always something to look forward to at Everton isn't there?

Beto is awful. Up there with the worst we've ever had. Yer Barlows etc. He's worse than The Stracq!

With our side so weakened, it's all about the weekend

I'm not that bothered by the result. We lost on penalties with a patched up side in a competition we had no prospect of winning.

But it increases the pressure for Saturday's game.

I predict an unbeaten run and we'll be up to 14th by the start of November.

But please, no more Young. For his sake and ours.

Misery after misery after misery!!

Shameful stuff from Dyche, I can't wait til he is gone. 25% possession at home in a cup game, for fuck's sake!

For fuck's sake, it's why we watch and play football to win trophies and games.

Fuck the weekend — tonight mattered as us fans have seen no trophies since 1995.

Take it in… 1995 — it does matter!

The club will have no choice but to make a decision on Dyche if he fails to pick up 4 points from the next 3 games. It's that simple.

I hate penalties. I often wish we'd bring that golden goal rule. Play in added time until first goal wins, although we did have a great chance to go 2-1 up in the second half.

As said above, over the course of the 90 minutes, the best team eventually won.

We didn't have much shape, although it's difficult to judge when watching on the tele. And with all the changes, it looked disjointed.

Onto Leicester at the weekend. Turn the tide and we could actually be 15th, results dependent. Then Palace. Fingers crossed, it could be a different landscape in two weeks time.

We shame Professional Footballer's everywhere!

Young is a fucking disgusting disgrace too.

Dyche should go tonight!!!

I always regard Bernie Wright who was dispatched after playing 11 games for us as the worst striker I've seen, but even his strike rate of 2 goals in 11 games was better than Beto's (to date).

God help us if Calvert-Lewin gets injured again.

I don't want to see him playing for us again, but he's not to blame for the shite we see every game. So give him a break – but not another appearance, unless we're really stuck.

Southampton, the only other pointless (in our case in more than one meaning of the word) side in the prem, made 11 changes.

We had 11 strangers, with no plan other than play in your position, try really hard and run about and if the opposition give you a chance take the ball off them. “What should we do with it then?” Erm, give it back until they do it again.
We were rudderless and a pale imitation of a cohesive footballing team.

I don't blame the limited players. Brereton Diaz, for example, is beneath even us, but we are simply not a football team - and that's down to the manager.

He has to go. Enough.

We were taken to the cleaners and made a Sunday league player a multi-millionaire in the process.

Who was playing up top? This clown had totally lost the plot.

Time for DoF Thelwell and CEO Chong, to pull finger and start Directing and Executiving - while there's still in theory, time.

But this season...of all seasons...might be the one our luck runs out.

We had 26% possession at home against a newly promoted side (albeit a patched team)… absolutely dire.

You can see it. I can see it. Everyone can see it. For goodness sake, there must be someone with the capacity and authority to act and do so now.

“But the players, they do know. All you’re really doing is pointing out things they know. We had a quick debrief in the dressing room afterwards. It was all that’s needed. There’s quite a bit of experience in the group, so they will know. You don’t have to keep showing them endlessly what went on, they know.”

Since Everton were dumped out of the League Cup last December (Fulham on Pens) they've played 30 matches.
They've won 6.

Crystal Palace (FA Cup)
Burnley (H)
Nottingham Forest (H)
Liverpool (H)
Brentford (H)
Sheffield United (H)

Is Mike Walker available?

A patched up,team tonight, who will turn out at Leicester, does it make any difference the way we are playing and set up to play.

It was painful to watch. The narrow defensive formation we use was gifting so much space to their wide men, that whenever they passed to one of them we struggled to keep our shape as inevitably someone had to run to mark the recipient on the wing who now had the ball.

They made one crossfield ball that seemed to take forever to land but it still hit their man unchecked as he was in so much space.

Sitting in the Upper Gwladys there weren't too many boos when Beto was replaced, just a silent puzzlement.

Immediately after, one of our defenders launched a ball up to the big man up front. Who was now sitting on the bench and N'Diaye watched it be, well, defended.

I'm not overly critical of Dyche normally but I am struggling to defend that performance. We looked more up for it in the pre-season friendly against Roma, which says it all.

At the end, after Southampton won on penalties there was just a stunned silence of inevitability about the place. There were very few boos and some of the players came over and clapped to the Gwladys street and got a smattering of claps back.

Dismal night.

Dixon played well against Frazier and should be in the 11 on Saturday. Young will probably play left back.

Armstrong looks like he could be a future first teamer but needs to be out on loan in the championship or abroad.

Mangala did ok, he shielded O'Brien and Keane quite well and helped Armstrong.

Our last ever league cup game at goodison won't be remembered for long.

Sickness in the camp will make Saturdays game even trickier.

Fair enough, Dyche was without his first choice full-backs, but would a long past his best Coleman on the right and Ripley from ‘Alien 3’ on the left really have made any difference to that lacklustre performance?

Calvert-Lewin may have held the ball up better and Branthwaite may have added composure at the back but we play the same cowardly, ‘not the face, not the face’, facade of football amounting to fucking nothing regardless of personnel or opposition.

We can’t keep hold of the ball for a minute, turn and play it all the way back when approaching the opposition box for the keeper to hoof it, huff and puff chasing around the pitch belatedly after the ball like the mad kid at school who wore a Super Mario coat and sprinted round the corridors humming ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ at the top of his voice while people chucked rubbers and half-full tubes of Vagisil at his head.

Doucoure, in particular, despite his goal, was diabolical and passed the ball like he had pins and needles in both feet and Peri Peri sauce in one eye.

Harrison was game when he came on but he plays like he thinks he’s just joined the X-Men and can simply phase through physical objects in his path. I’ve never seen someone lose the ball so often by simply running straight slap-bang into an opposition player. Time and time again.

The only one in blue who looked like a player was Ndiaye and the young lads did no worse than their more experienced, supposedly wilier teammates. They’re the only small positives I can glean from the game.

From his post-match comments, Dyche…as per usual…seems utterly unphased by racking up yet another piss-poor display/defeat combo and once more sending long-suffering fans home lamenting why they persist in putting themselves through this shite. At this point he’s beginning to remind me of Raul Julia’s ‘M Bison’ from the mad Van Damme ‘Street Fighter’ movie:

“For you, the day Dyche graced Goodison with yet another galling display, where Everton were passed off the park by Southampton, may have been one of the most frustrating days of your footballing life. But for me….it was Tuesday.”

On top of that the Manager thinks he can play the same type tactics, select players who do no perform, play the self same players out of position and make nonsensical substitutions. Games are lost and the same is tried the next game.

Does anyone care that it ends up as a training ground rump for the opposition.

5 wins in 9 months may not be deserving of the boot but actually standing there, being interviewed and speaking aloud the words ‘last minute.com’ instead of just saying last fucking minute is definitely a firing offence.

Is Dyche sackable? With any takeover still very much in Limbo, I would doubt it. In our current financially precarious situation, where is the £10 million going to come from, that will be required to oust Dyche and his backroom 'band of charletons'? And just as crucial, how will funds be made available to find a suitably dynamic proven successor?

I can only assume that Dyche did not attach that much importance to tonight's competition. Perhaps he's saving himself for a determined challenge for the FA Cup and mid table safety.

Was that a pig that just flew by...?