FairWooney

Hopefully Coleman or Patterson gets a game at right back and offers us a decent attacking option alongside Harrison.

Other than that I'd go back to DCL and keep the rest the same with Onana and Garner in the middle.

Not an easy game this but we really need to get all 3 points.  They leak goals so we need to really push them and look to take our chances and get an early lead.  Hopefully we can push on with a second after that as Bournemouth have plenty of attacking threat.

1 hour ago, Hafnia said:

Would they though? Why???!  No wins in 11 games.  0.67 per game.

Sacking form 
 

 

I suppose selectively Dyche could argue that he's won 4 in his last 15 games, at an average of 1.13 points per game.

The form is very concerning, as our inability to put the ball in the net but I don't see much benefit in sacking him and think that we'll get the required wins to ensure our safety if nothing else.

This is an important break for the squad now and he really needs to work with them to make changes to their attacking play that can give better chances to the forwards.  The forwards need to also be making sure they work harder to get the movement and anticipation right (and finishing!) to finish the chances.

Another problem we have is that it is so easy to defend a lead against us.  Dyche has us set up to play a reasonable game without the ball, pressing and counter attacking to create chances but get a lead and give us the ball which utd often did and we don't know what to do with it!

This isn't just a Dyche problem and we saw the same under Lampard and Benitez (Benitez was similar in his giving up of possession to play counter).

On 17/02/2024 at 09:32, Palfy said:

Onana definitely will be gone, more because he will be pushing for a move. I’m thinking we will be able to keep hold of Branthwaite he has 4 more years on his contract and I believe he would be more than happy to see a couple of those years out. Plus our defence has been the one consistent part of the team all season, and his without doubt before the 10 point deduction and now kept us in games, it would be very dangerous and even foolish to let him go in the summer when we still haven’t sorted the front line out, we are going to need our best defensive line next season imo, so for those reasons I can’t see him being allowed to go. 

Agree with this.

If we get a bit enough bid i'm sure we would let Branthwaite go and he would jump at the opportunity given the right side but I think we need to ensure that fee is set as high as possible as we really don't want to lose him.  Our centre back pairing is working brilliantly and Branthwaite's value I believe will only rise as his game continues to improve.

Onana if the speculation and comments from his sister are true would be happy to put himself out there to get a big move.  Can't blame him to be honest, if he makes the right move he will do very well.  He still has a lot to improve and needs to be getting plenty of game time wherever he goes.  We have to make sure again that we don't sell him short, if that many big name clubs are interested then they can battle for him and pay the price.

7 hours ago, Palfy said:

I’ve obviously somewhere along the line suffered a bump on the head, I went with Gana until his substitution he was by far our best player on the pitch. Less said about his shooting ability, well lack of. 

I think you have.

He might have been ok early on but I thought he'd lost his way a bit before he got subbed, a few wildly bad passes across the pitch which luckily fell into empty space.

He has overall been playing well though and it's probably the one area where there is a tough decision in picking who to start.  Onana isn't as strong as Gueye at winning the ball back and shielding the defense but Onana is much better on the ball and will bring it forward as well as winning it back at times.  I'd have liked to have seen Onana come on a bit earlier in this game to provide a bit more quality bringing the ball out.

I thought his overall game was really good last night, winning the ball regularly with both feet and head and either holding up, winning foul or distributing well.  17 Aerials won is huge though also shows the ugly way we are playing!

He drops in well to win the ball though this is where we have a problem in the game that we are playing, often he  wins it having dropped back a bit from the centre backs but no one is then overlapping to give a good forward momentum.

He definitely benefited from having Doucoure back providing better support that gets closer to him.

Despite playing lots of aerial balls I thought we didn't actually get enough crosses in the box, at least not prior to going behind.  Mykolenko and McNeil both put in some great balls but not regularly enough.

DCL should have definitely done better with the one that he headed wide, this is the kind of chance that he'd put away if he wasn't on such a long run without a goal.  Just needs to find the net once and I think he'll keep going, hopefully sooner rather than later though!

yet still you see people slating him which seems to always be the case.  I saw someone suggest he was our man of the match on Twitter and got a response that he was responsible for both goals and gave the ball away everywhere!

I think he's done much better under Dyche where he's getting to press higher up the field a bit further away from danger but also disrupting opposition play and creating opportunities to win the ball back nearer the opposition goal.

I thought he was very good apart from the usual moments when he gets a chance to shoot!  

            Virginia

Patterson   Branthwaite   Tarkowski   Mykolenko

                Onana   Garner

Harrison          Danjuma         Mcneil

                  DCL

I'd go full strength side and play Danjuma down the middle.

Confident we can beat them, hopefully get an early goal, we always start games with so much energy and pressing but drop off after the first 20, need to make those starts count and get a goal.

Hopefully finally get a DCL goal.

Would like to see Dobbin get a bit of game time as well and would be good to give Beto a reasonable amount of time

2-0

There were some decent performances all round, I thought our pressing at times was outstanding and when we were 2-1 down we were really getting to them with some good hard challenges (some not so good) along with the quick pressing made them really know they were in a game.

Pickford would have been well placed for man of the match up until his error, he made some very good saves throughout.  Mykolenko was very good again, defended well and got forward a good few times to link up.  Branthwaite made light work of Alvarez for the most part and Tarks did what Tarks does best blocking and clearing things up at the back (7 clearences) along with a lovely tackle in the second half!

I know the ref will get a lot of stick for the pen but apart from that I thought he let things go very well, a lot of refs would have given fouls against our players a lot more often but he let plenty go, loved watching Grealish moaning at not getting his way all the time then getting booked himself!

Frustrating to not come out with any points in these last 2 games but they're both very good teams and we have pushed them both very close.

I didn't think we played badly but didn't find it easy to pick someone out.

Given it to Harrison, he worked hard and was at the heart of at least a couple of our chances, always quick to get a ball in to the box and normally a decent one.  Unlucky not to get an assist to his name.

While I agree with all the outrage about our punishment I think some of the details in the report really highlight how foolishly we've been run.

Sure Moshiri's early spend could have seen us progress up the league and work out well with us earning more revenue through league places and Europe, we over spent on some players, some players didn't meet expectations and some of the signings weren't best thought out so some of that can be excused.  There's was certainly a lot of optimism around some of the signings, especially someone like Klassen who turned out to be a complete failure.  I'd say the failing was not having a great balance in the quality of the signings we made.

One thing that really got me though was that I read that we budgeted to finish 6th under Benitez!

 We'd finished 10th the previous season under Carlo so I can only assume that budget was based on Carlo still being there, even still that seems madness to budget based on the maximum place that we were likely to be able to finish!  I'd have been budgeting at finishing around 10th though given they'd have known they weren't giving Rafa any money even that would have been a bit of a stretch!

The other thing I wasn't happy with was that it clearly seems that although the stadium isn't included in the finances and Moshiri has "bankrolled" a large amount of the build what has happened is that because all of his money has gone there we've had to take out a load of loans to cover the clubs shortfall.  Given that we were reliant on MSP and then 777 to give us further loans this year the stadium build is clearly and very sadly crippling us at the moment.  Hopefully once we move in we will see the extra revenue start to turn the finances around in our favour.  I guess this was the price to pay for getting a new stadium at last.

--

The Ukraine war and Gylfi were big factors in our losses which were out of our control.  Unfortunately with the Russians we were the one club to majorly suffer from the blocking of their dirty money!  There was always excitement from a lot of fans at getting Usmanov money and it's ended up going against us.

--

I don't agree with the 10pt deduction but my thoughts on the "no sporting advantage" would be that any club spending beyond their means is giving themselves an advantage.  Clearly our spending over the years shows that we haven't spent massively at all but had we spent £20 million less somewhere there's probably a reasonable chance it would have been by cutting spend within the squad.

I think the other reason that they're pushing for point deduction (beyond just making a show of someone, being us) is that a fine just doesn't do much of a job at changing the way that clubs run themselves.  They're quite happy to pay a fine and move on.

If the fine was of any consequence it would probably just take us closer to the brink!

4 hours ago, StevO said:

He’s got to learn when and where he can stick a leg out for those tackles. Players like Eze willl go down and that could have been two penalties, the one they got was cheap, but he doesn’t need to do that. 
He will learn though, he’s doing brilliantly so far this season. 

exactly this.

Whether it's a pen or not he took as risk by dangling a leg like that in the box.  Eze took a fall but I couldn't be sure from any of those cameras that there wasn't a slight touch.  Had the referee given the penalty they may well have stuck with it.

It was tricky play and the kind of player that will win penalties with quick feet in the box but it's a lesson for him.

2 hours ago, Palfy said:

I’m all for getting your defence set up and solid it’s so important that you have a sound foundation to build on, it’s still early days but once he’s comfortable that his defence has completely gelled he needs to start making changes to improve the rest of our play by keeping control of the ball better. To have your defence under pressure for 70-80% of a game every week and expect them to stand up to that week in week out is unrealistic and a dangerous game imo, a couple of bad results or injuries and the confidence in the defence can soon be undone and then we are back to square one a team that can’t keep possession and a creaky defence. We need to soon look at how to keep better possession of the ball and still being forward thinking in our possession and give the defence some breathing room. Ultimately we need progress in our game to improve I for one would not be happy to see the way we are playing being long term it’s too fragile to play in that way long term, but I’m happy that short term it’s giving us an opportunity to get some consistency and hopefully then allow us to build in other areas we are still a work in progress.  

I agree with this.

It's great that we have been able to get leads early on through good fast play and pressing and that we are fairly good at protecting the lead however we resort to sitting too deep and inviting too much pressure for long periods.  Keeping a tight defence and being fairly protective of a lead if one thing but our problem as you've said there is that when we do get the ball we give it away too easily.

I don't mind us having less than 50% possession ever, but when you win the ball back you need to make good use of it, whether to keep it for a bit and give your defence a breather or  to do as he often talks about and looks for quick forward progress.  We are trying to do this a lot of the time but it's not smart enough at times so they need to work on ensuring there is a good outball and players quickly supporting a quick break if that's what they want.

This is the one thing that will frustrate fans at home that produces the groans around the ground, it's not lack of possession but poor use of it when you get it.  Brighton was a prime example where we defended resolutely but  threw the ball straight back to them whenever we got it.  Their goal had a bit of luck but no matter who you have defending a goal becomes more inevitable the more time you spend defending around your own box without ever getting away.

31 minutes ago, Palfy said:

But would he take a bullet for you

that's my hope!

I think he clearly has good plans going forward with the way they are highlighting types of player they want that fit the style of play they want and trying to work this through the younger categories also.

He was very honest in his assessment that whilst they have done lots of good things they are majorly restricted both in first team and youth levels by money when it comes to getting what they want.  This won't change any time soon but at least with the structure and planning he is putting in place he is starting to move us in the right direction and when money does become available hopefully we spend it wisely this time.

I felt a lot more confident about the way we are  being run at the football level after listening to his interview.  I've not delved into the Colin Chung one yet so no idea how that goes!

Mykolenko.  might not be the forward thinking left back that we'd like to see but does a really solid job when just concentrating on defending and has done it a few times this season against quality opposition.  Most notably twice v Saka (once for Ukrainse) and now against Salah.  Absolutely bossed him

Tarks well worth a mention too, if I needed a body guard he'd be my man! Always puts his body on the line to make the block

thought he gave a good interview in the BBC Podcast.  very unusual to get an interview out of him let alone such a long and open one.

Episode 8 for anyone just interested in hearing tht

I think if Leeds don't get promoted we'll have a great chance of signing him and would likely want to.

If Leeds get promoted it would depend on if he wants to go back to them and if we're willing to pay a likely higher price to pries him away

2 hours ago, Palfy said:

Right let’s get back on track, a great win against Bournemouth so my thinking is rather than sitting on our laurels we should be looking at how we can improve on that win and keep moving in the right direction. Personally I would like to see Danjuma playing wide left and replace McNeil who has been a shadow of the player from last season, everyone needs to earn their spot in the starting lineup and at this moment in time McNeil is struggling to earn his. We can’t stand still if someone isn’t performing to their best and there is an option then the change should be made.  

I'd say Zero chance of that happening against Liverpool and rightly so.  While I don't necessarily always agree with the wingers need to be good at defending philsophy that Dyche seems to have I think for games like that you really do need your hard working wingers who will chase around and put in a shift with their full back and McNeil is a player who can do that.

I think he had a good game on Saturday to be honest anyway.

23 minutes ago, MikeO said:

https://www.evertonfc.com/news/2408778/branthwaite-signs-new-everton-contract

Great news.

No surprise that he's taken his chance,  already looking like an important player in the team and someone that will only continue to get better.

Hopefully we can keep him and see him at the heart of our defence for a good few years but if nothing else the new contract will protect his value which will be rising by the week.

On 22/09/2023 at 19:44, StevO said:

Has that “long ball league” got Man City in third? Alright then!

They are probably top in short and medium passes, if you have that much possession and pass the ball around like they do you will also clock up a fair few long balls.

Difference when they play a long ball is it's not a hopeful punt but a pass aimed at a player making a smart run (Walker for Foden's goal on Saturday).

Brentford so far this season have the 4th highest xG, of 10.2 goals.  They've scored 8.

Their xG against is 6 which is the 6th best in the league.  They've conceded 6.

They've drawn 3 games but have had much the better xG in all of their games apart from the loss to Newcastle which they still only narrowly lost.

This will be a very tough game and not one I fancy winning.  Would be huge if we could get the victory but I'm going to go for a hard fought 1-1 draw with Beto getting the goal.

5 minutes ago, Matt said:

I think people just assume that a manager has a style and the players magically adapt. He'd probably walk before he was kicked with this lot. We need some discipline to reinstall some confidence, we have that guy. It just takes time. 

I think it depends on the manager, some a pretty stubborn in how they want to play where as others will adapt and may over time try to steer things to what they'd prefer.

A manager that can't adapt really isn't worth having unless they are coming into a side that matches their philosophy.  A smart side like Brighton ensured that they replaced Potter with a manager who could continue his job rather than wanting to change everything.  This also makes things much more simple so far as building a squad goes.

A flaw in Martinez was he tried to get players passing it round and playing possession football, at times it often ended with either mistakes leading to goals or fans screaming for players to hoof it forward because there players on the ball didn't have the nouse to know what to do with it when confronted by a wall of opposition players.

I don't think he'd have us top of the long ball table though!

Note on the above, Brentford also play a fair amount of long balls but a lot more of them reach a target!

Teams on our level in Bournemouth and Sheffield United have similarly low success rate but haven't attempted as many.

On 18/09/2023 at 09:21, Palfy said:

He’s going to get the sack it’s just a case of when and not if, in my opinion the sooner the better if only to give the next manager as long as possible to try and improve the situation. Whilst Potter is still available I’d be going all out to try and get him in and let him try to start implement the system that helped Brighton and him become successful, instead of being a poorer  version of Burnley.  

I'd love to see us with Potter as manager and I've thought about this and just can't see at the moment that he'd want it.  I might be wrong but he still has a very good reputation despite his Chelsea failing, he's been a manager at a very well run club and whilst he didn't spend a lot they did have money to spend.  Whilst he's unlikely to get a top 4 job as his next job and Everton could be a good potential job for him I think he'd want to see a big change in the way the club is run before he'd consider taking the job on.  It's going to be a while before we get a change of ownership, and ignoring the fact that no one has much confidence in the likely new ownership it'll be a while before we see benefits of change.

I'd definitely be hoping we'd be trying to get him if we did decide to get rid of Dyche though.

The 4minutes was bizarre when you consider how they've been giving stoppage time this season.  That said we wouldn't have scored with another 30 minutes. 

Some good defending but so poor on the ball, didn't see any glame plan besides sticking in as long as possible . Never got the ball into Beto or down the wings which you would expect to be the plan. 

Great return to the team for Mykolenko.  Dealt with Saka brilliantly. 

7 minutes ago, Goodison Glory said:

There's only one question we want answered (besides where's the Arteta money!)......what's happening with Teflon Bill? 

I'm sure once the sale is completed we will get a statement from 777 saying that Bill will be staying on to assist with his vast knowledge and experience of Everton football club.

It's like having your granddad living with you, selling the house the he says behind in the basement popping up to pass on his advise to the new owners every now and then.