Signed in mainly to comment on the Spanish football talk, Altetico and Simeone. To give something on topic, I said Emery from the very start and he's still the man I want. Don't understand anyone wanting Koeman over him. Anyway..,
First point, Simeone is out of league. I expect some people to come in with the whole 'we're Everton, noone is out of our league'. He is. Get over it.
Secondly, the quality of La Liga is not too dissimilar than the Prem. It's less competitive in the bottom third or so, and they have 3 teams who are above the rest...true. That said, Sevilla would spank Southampton any day of the week. Celta and Bilbao would beat West Ham. The bottom 7 or so are weaker. Newcastle would never get relegated in Spain.
Thirdly, Atletico play to their strengths. You see them play against Bayern and call it negative - it's not negative, it's productive. Defending is an art form, and trust me, if you see Barkley running through on goal in a UCL semi against Bayern...about to fire your team into the final, it doesn't get more exciting and entertaining than that. Yes, they play that way against some lesser teams as well, that's true as well. Remember us against United in Martine's first season? We expected to dominate, it wasn't working and he adapted and we played a counter attacking game and thrashed them. Never did we see that flexibility again, but wasn't that exciting? Wasn't that great to watch. Southampton away this season just gone, probably the best of the season? Atletico are flexible. They play some delightful football with extremely talented players. Griezmann for one. You can't watch a player like that and not be entertained. A player like that is still at the club because of the manager and the success of the club. If Atletico's system wasn't working and they were 6th or 7th, they wouldn't be keeping Griezmann, Koke, Saul etc. On that topic as well, Saul's goal wasn't entertaining? I could watch that on loop for hours.
There's a passion and a fighting spirit that comes with this type of football too, which I think gets you more involved and animated. Think of Goodison's atmosphere now compared to years ago under Moyes and back to when we were fighting for our lives. Go to any Atletico game, any of them. Go to the Bernebeu - it's dead, all you can hear is people eating their pipas and unwrapping their sandwiches at half time. Everytime I go to Vicente Calderon I love it, makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It reminds me a bit of going to games in the Gwladys back in the late 90s early 00s - pure passion. For anyone that says that Atletico are boring, or that they wouldn't want that style of football at Everton...I'm glad you're nowhere near a position of power.