Sending you perserverance and strength from afar, my friend. Glad you've landed on a good day. Just focus on letting the chemo and radio therapy knock this shit back to oblivion.
Agreed, me and my buddy watch the game on tape delay and were commenting on exactly that problem. Some times fun to watch but ultimately they pass themselves into nowhere.
I never liked seeing the Nike swoosh in anything that has to do with football. I associate Nike with many other sports, but I never liked their intrusion into football (even though they make some nice products). To me, football = adidas, puma, umbro, mitre, kappa, patrick, etc., but not Nike. And yes, I realize this is irrational (and a losing battle) but it's just something about them being both new and American and intruding into this time-honored sport.
Not a lot to say about the match other than we were dire in every way possible.
The first half was marginally better than the second half in that we actually created some chances and managed to score.
The second half was just awful. Long ball, shit passing, no ideas, no tempo, no creativity, terrible defending. We were lucky to come away with a point in all honesty. WBA caused us far more problems than we caused them. Tactically they were spot on and we were anything but.
Really disappointed that we blew a golden opportunity to go back above the shite and put the pressure on them before the Derby. It looks like it’ll be a while longer before we get rid of the choking habit we have.
I think it’s clear to see just how much we’ve come to rely on Barkley already to give us a spark. When he’s not there we have no one who tries to change the flow of the game, no one who will do something a little different or off the cuff. In short, we’re very predictable and slow. Which makes us very easy to stop. That’s exactly what happened last night and WBA did it extremely well.
I hope Martinez is rethinking his plans for January because it’s obvious that we need reinforcements. And I mean proper reinforcements, not just bodies. Naismith is a body and he’ll be a solid player to bring off the bench, but when it’s like last night we need players coming on who can give us something, some oomph. McGeady, once fit, is that sort of player but we need one or two more combative players to add to our team. I don’t know much about this Traore but I hope he’s good because Lukaku needs pushing and pushing hard.
Howard – Maybe could have dealt with a couple of balls into the area rather than being rooted to the spot but couldn’t have done anything about the goal.
Coleman – In the first half I don’t think he was involved all that much because we seemed to concentrate on going down the left. Second half he came into it a lot more but why oh why was he so scared about crossing the ball?! Quite a few times he got into a good position to put the ball in but didn’t. It was very strange. I hope his hamstring injury isn’t too bad because he’s been a big player for us recently.
Jagielka – I don’t know if it was because of Distin’s impression of a clown next to him but he looked nervous as hell and his defending was terrible. And his distribution… was like the Jags of a year ago; aimless.
Distin – An absolute liability. He was misjudging things left, right and centre, slicing the ball when under no pressure, didn’t have a clue what was around him whatsoever and was at fault for their equaliser because of that. Was he fucking high?
Baines – Thought he had a pretty decent first half and was involved in anything approaching good that we did. As with every one else he rolling in a shit pit in the second half.
Oviedo – I thought he was our brightest player in the first half tbh. Could have had two goals early in the half and was at least trying to get us moving forward and was one of the few players that didn’t look completely cream crackered. How he went off before Osman is baffling. My MOTM because he got me excited a bit. Not much of a reason for MOTM but I had to pick someone.
McCarthy and Barry – These two were on the pitch last night right?! Easily their worst games for us since signing and it’s unfortunate that it happened in the same game. They provided zero protection for the defence and neither made themselves available to receive the ball from the defenders so that was a large factor in why we played such awful football.
Mirallas – A typical performance from him this season tbh; extremely frustrating. He was trying hard and he took his goal absolutely brilliantly but his touch at times was shocking and I wish he’d stop running into players. You’re supposed to go around them, Kev. If I hadn’t spent the entire game wanting to wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze then he’d have gotten my MOTM vote.
Osman – Despite my reservations when the line-up was announced I thought he was one of our better players in the first half (not hard I know!). He used the ball well and actually managed to keep hold of it or actually find a team mate. He did a good job at getting at the WBA midfield too and managed to win the ball back a couple of times. Second half, though, he was utter shite. It was clear after about 5 minutes into the half that he was done for so how the hell did he last until the 88th minute before being substituted?! Complete madness.
Lukaku – As with most of our players his better bits came in the first half. I thought he put himself about pretty well and did well for our goal with that flick on (probably the only header he won all game!). Second half though he just gave up totally. A lot of that was down to how we played. Why do we insist on using him with his back to goal when his touch and control is pathetic? So I can understand him getting frustrated but it’s no excuse for the shit attitude he showed at things not going his way.
Ugly second half...way out-played. McGeady had a few good touches for the 5 minutes he was on, but apart from that it was pretty sluggish. We desperately needed some transition-play, too much of that long-ball stuff. And we didn't look good when pressured at the back.
Singled-out for criticism or not, seems like a shame either way as Zaha is pretty talented and for Moyes to not take the time to figure out how to nurture that talent seems a bit wasteful. Who knows what makes a player "work"...but for Moyes (this season at least) it looks like his bar is "score two goals in starting debut" (e.g., Januzaj) or sit on the bench.
I feel lucky (and sometimes embarrassed) to say that I study anthropology, and specifically I focus on studying lemurs in Madagascar. I teach classes on Human genetics and evolution, primate behavior, biological anthropology, and evolutionary psychology. Basically, I'm a zoologist who studies humans and non-human primates.
I arrived at this crazy job if only because when I was in high school I wanted a career that involved three things: teaching, animals, and travel. I travel to Madagascar every summer (click on my avatar and you can find a link to my webpage, to see the creatures I study)
And yes, JMU's soccer coach is a really cool guy. I've had a few brief chats with him. He seems well liked by all the players. They have a great soccer team here, but they are unfortunately dumping way too much money into football (as many US schools do).
New member here, and I'm happy to have found this site. I wish I could say that I had a long legacy of following Everton but in fact it was fairly arbitrary. I spent some of my youth in Mexico and thus when I returned home the American boys were all playing baseball and (American) football. I only knew how to play "soccer." And I've since followed and played the game every chance I get (one of my favorite teams is UNAM Pumas, a Mexican 1st division team). Back in the late 90s, when I was in grad school I had friend who one day said to me, "You should follow Everton." And so it was. And I've supported them on and off since then. More recently, I was in the DC airport with my girlfriend, getting ready to fly to Madagascar. In the bar we met some Evertonians who had flown over to see the blues play DC United. Since that experience I was further committed to the team based on their loyal and friendly fans' infectious commitment.
And so here I am, based in western Virginia, tethered to Everton by NBC sports network.
verreauxi got a reaction from Matt in Difficult one this, but on balance feel the need to post it....
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