Everton player ratings vs Brentford

How embarrassed do you feel, Mr "I've taken this squad as far as I can for my £5M"?

I have the opposite view of you on the ratings where I thought we were strong in midfield with Garner MotM and weak on the flanks with poor service to Beto and particularly bad crosses and weak defending.

Beto causes trouble and makes a lot of his own chances. If he scores one of his chances, he is a MotM contender.

Pickford – 6: He didn't have much to do.
O'Brien – 8: My MotM; he handled Lewis-Potter quite well and got his goal.
Mykolenko – 7: Me handled Mbeumo well and got the assist.
Tarkowski and Branthwaite – 7 not much troubled them besides letting the ball bounce for their goal.
Lindstrøm and Harrison – 6: They looked tidy enough but never threatening; both don't do enough for me.
Alcaraz – 7: Decent on the ball and wants to impact games.
Gana and Garner – 8: Controlled the midfield for large parts of the game.
Beto – 7: Makes his own chances, on another day could have been the hero.

What are you on about, Roy?

Speculation about squaring the third one to Alcaraz is likewise off target. Watch the replay and you see the defender has virtually closed off that lane.

Any teams at the top stay down for first chance and try and get their player sent off, fair play to Beto for getting back up again, probably saved the defender a red card.

As for the best person on the pitch, my vote goes to the ref, who let the game flow, always tried to play the advantage, one of the best refs we have had for a while.

Okay, we wanted and needed him to score. It would be a lousy, useless coach to knock him down in this situation.

Beto – 8 points IMO.

Weathered the early storm, but then coughed up a goal on half-time, when we desperately needed to see it through.

3 one-on-ones missed by Beto through the middle perhaps give a clearer idea what he's about after recent heroics. Great movement, but didn't shift the ball once, for the keeper to foil when the pressure was on.

A deserved point with a great header near the end, really pleasing to see O'Brien get on the score sheet. He (like others) needs to add goals to his size and power.

Elsewhere, Liverpool beat Newcastle at home for about the billionth time, city won at Spurs and Arsenal bottling it at Forest. Murmurings that Moyes to blame for all of that, and he's sticking 6.4% on the Ofgem price cap as well. Never liked that fella...

But we were the far better team overall and what a job Moyes is doing

Moyes has exceeded all expectations so far and this was a very good point away – and a game we should really have won as it unfolded.

I think the game also exposed some of the strengths and weaknesses of the squad – and the limitations of many of the players.

Lindstrom is a curious one. Worth persisting with (and we don't really have other options right now) but needs to show much more if we're to take up the option to buy.

These are the types of performances however that we weren't seeing under Dyche this season.

We had draws but we didn't go forward enough and try to win enough.

The fact that every game now we are creating loads of good chances per week, it feels actually refreshing now to watch it and I for one am just glad that I'm no longer bored rigid watching Everton.

The first two chances one one-on-one were straight down the middle, the first chance he tried to round the keeper, 2nd was a good save, 3rd was a tough angle.

Speaking of the summer, I hope we don't sign Lindstrom.

Beto is the direct opposite, he looked devastated after those misses.

All strikers miss but it's the ratio of scoring that sets them apart. Beto or DCL aren't going to turn into harry kane, they are average players.

Even the most blinkered with loyalty Dyche fan can't deny or argue that David Moyes is a far greater judge of player and I expect with a better kitty this summer we will see at least one or two really canny signings.

I expect a striker will be signed, especially with DCL, Broja both leaving, and I expect it will be an upgrade on both of those mention.

As for Beto, let's be honest, if he's scores three more goals this season then there is 10 goals for him in total, I wouldn't have expected that from him based on what I'd previously witnessed, so if he hits double figures, great.

I blame myself as I tipped him to score twice in a 2-1 win. I'll keep my thoughts to myself in future!

Alcaraz is a player and he and Beto look a real pertnership.

O’Brien gets a lot of praise for his goal and that’s fair enough but it is also the reason for his marks he had a very poor game.

Garner was excellent and Gana wasn’t far behind him and I know we equalised after he came off and Mykolenko finally got a decent centre in which got him his 7.

The result mattered the most and I thought a draw was a fair result if you take the missed chances out but I won’t decry Beto because his usual 100 % effort was still there.

I'd quite like to see a ToffeeWeb reader-based poll (the site owners contributing their own), maybe including both a match and season average rating, high/low etc.

Actually, I thought Beto was Everton's best player last night, he terrorized the Brentford defence and with a slightly worse goalkeeper (whom I thought really was the Man of the Match, if Pickford had been as effective in a game for us we'd never shut up about it) and a bit more luck would have had a hat trick. While it's obvious that actually scoring goals is the real test of a striker, getting into a whole series of one-on-ones is an enormous improvement.

Beto will learn from this game and so will Moyes.

The consensus seems to be that Lindstrom and Harrison could have done better, but again Brentford were set up to spoil any wing play. Midfield played well.Though long range shooting not even on target was going nowhere.

I thought James Garner was our best player because he was always looking for the ball and used it well, got in plenty of tackles and started a lot of our moves, Gana wasn’t far behind him, in fact Gana has played well all season for Dyche and Moyes, again in my opinion.

A couple of VAR reviews, but he handled it well.

A 6 for James Garner, I don’t think so, MOTM for me.

I'm puzzled by more than a few of Anjishnu's player ratings, including his 5 for Beto that should have been higher. However, despite #7's timely reminder that “1-on-1s are hard-earned opportunities requiring strength, pace and timing” (who would have thought that? ), Beto completely fluffed his first one-on-one with some sort of what looked like a woeful effort to erm go round the keeper and run straight into a defender. As the commentator said, it was “mis control”. It was Beto's woeful ball control that allowed any sort of save and he had also had time to shoot or chip before we got to that point.

The second one-on-one ended up with Beto shooting it straight at the keeper, although, needless to say, in #7's reckoning the ball was not hit straight at the keeper it was a ”fine” save by the keeper.

The third effort is also, of course, like any other one-on-one, a tale of two people (like making a baby #7!). Beto did no wrong in not passing to Alcaraz, there were defenders in between the two of them.

Like many others, I am absolutely chuffed to have my scepticism around Beto disappearing into thin air. I'm made up for him and hope that his is one of the first names on the team sheet for each one of our remaining games. He will notch a dozen or so goals and that's impressive after the hard-boiled eggs barely used him.

It was the Alastair Campbell spin on the one-on-one where a miss is not a miss and a save is always a save that caught my eye.

(And I didn't even mention DCL)

Well, how did that work out on Wednesday? I remain a big Beto backer, but that first effort in particular is sad to watch. It reminds us of how badly we need a striker over the summer. And Beto did not exactly distinguish himself in two passages of play in their box before his first piss poor miss or, I'm sorry, should that be "fine save"?