Deacs

Not just cocks Brett.... Big cocks!!!

Always makes me laugh when I remember John Terry talking about Claude Makelele "beer can swinging around in the shower" and Claude was what all of 5ft 5?

And there' isn't a person alive who hasnt wished they could throttle Freund!

In fairness to the big fella, he did his time before he joined us

Good call, wish it wasn't

First goal might literally decide the match.

There'll be goals in this. Utd are good going forward & terrible at the back. We have the capability to play amazing football, I just hope our trip to Russia doesn't take to much out of the tank.

Agreed, they're that bad at the back now they make the formidable Barthez, Brown, O'Shea combo look solid.

Man Utd 1- 3 Everton Naismith

That's probably my biggest worry. A few changes for Thursday and then a few more again on Sunday, just enough to disrupt the fluidity of the side (neither of which would be our strongest available) and we end up losing both. I hope I'm wrong!

We've already seen that playing on the Sunday after a EL game on a Thursday is challenging. We took a lot of positives from the Wolfsburg game into the Palace game but were still shocking. We have to accept that playing the two games in such close proximity is going to mean changes to the line up. Even sending a full strength side to Russia is no guarantee of a win, but it would probably mean a weaker side playing against Man Utd. As I said before, a loss on Thursday after fielding a weakened team won't harm our chances of progressing in the EL (which I really want us to do), but another heavy league defeat could do real harm to the teams confidence.

Give this game away. A loss here isnt going to stop us progressing, but sending a first choice 11 may well cause issues (travel, short turn around etc) I'm hoping RM sends a second team.

That said, I do concede some of his recent decisions/team selections don't really support my thoughts that this is part of his master plan.

My point was its hard to judge the manager as a weak link until we see the end result of his plan. (hopefully i'm not being stupidly optimistic)

Liverpoo 1 - 2 Everton Lukaku COYB

Mate ive been living in oz now for 8 years. Pretty much all sports they play here are geared towards a finals series at the end of the year. As a result some of the better sides in the respective sports often start slowly (poorly) building towards the finals. Obviously we aren't playing for a finals series but hopefuly RM is priming the team for the sharp end of the season. Remember Blackburn coming home strong and pipping us for a UEFA spot 10 or so years ago, and West Ham getting off to flyers when they played the inter toto cup only to disappear by xmas. I'm saying I 'm not in any way happy with the start, but if at Xmas we are in the top half and qualified for the next stage of the Europa with Barkley and the rest back. Things might look different.

Everton 2 - 0 Crystal Palace Mirallas

Great result, combined with the other result in the group makes for a perfect start. Still issues at the back though which are very concerning. Certain players are going to need resting for the Palace match, which we have to win. It's going to be interesting to see how RM finds the balance. For me he needs to keep the stongest team for the league and let the Swansea game go.

It's fairly obvious that we do need more options up top. The injury to Ross is a huge blow, but Mirallas, Naismith & Pienaar should be able to do a job in behind the front man until he's available. IMO still need a back up sticker. If Lukaku gets injured we would be in real trouble. Off topic, lets hope the back four tighten up a bit. The players we have available are much more capable than the performance against LC. All up though a decent transfer window.