Bailey

Everton 1 - 1 Chelsea Mirallas

I would start a fit Lukaku over Naismith any day. Naismith has done really well in the last two games and last season but Lukaku simply offers more. Personally I would put Naismith wide for this game and get him to cut inside. Ivanovich has been a key player for Chelsea in the last couple of games down the right so our left side needs to be watertight and I dont see McGeady offering that protection.

I dont care about Stone's shockers in preseason, I care more about Distin/Jags' in the league. I think he will be knocking on the door very loudly if they keep costing us points, especially the latter.

Well it was to do with Ossie, but if Coleman and McCarthy had done their job correctly it wouldnt have been!

I help McCarthy partly responsible for their first goal which is why I didnt vote for him. That error aside he was excellent though.

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. He is a good keeper overall, certainly not without faults and he falls into the category below the world class keepers with a hell of a lot of others. Some are better at some things than others but in terms of overall ability they are very similar. In the premier league I would only put Courtois (based on roughly 6-7 games I have seen of him)and Lloris as clear of him with maybe Vorm and in there too (although I havent seen much of him in the last 12 months). The rest are all on a pretty similar level in that they are capable of world class moments but make one too many errors and this is the category Howard falls into IMO.

From the patches I saw of him he was crap last night too. First touch was excellent but it's just what came after that. The commentators were suggesting he started well mind you. I would rather we focus on getting Kone and Etoo fit, as with those 2 at the club I don't see where he would even fit in.

This should be a good game. I watched the Burnley game and Chelsea looked really sharp in periods but then look a little shoddy in others, especially defensively which is unusual for them. From what I heard of the Leicester match, they didnt fire on all cylinders either but importantly for them, they are winning. We have also been excellent in parts but unlike Chelsea we havent finished the job. They should be a real threat to us on the counter but we negated that pretty well at their place last season. Hopefully Lukaku is fit, because he will want to get one over on Mourinho and with Kev on the right and maybe Naismith drifting in from the left (or vica versa) with Besic, McCarthy and Barry centrally I think we could cause them a few problems of our own. To have any chance though we need to keep our concentration for 90mins and at the moment I dont see that being the case. Might as well go for another 2-2

I wouldnt disagree Paddock. Our performance did drop off a cliff midway through that second half which is worrying. I think that our pass completion dropped to something like 60% in the last 10-15 minutes which is shocking for a team that was operating at 90% in the first half. As I mentioned early on in the thread when the sub was made, I would have brought in Besic because I didnt fancy Osman to see out the game. That would be my criticism. I think Martinez was looking at the right now (in terms of Osman as an attacking force and his clever link up play) rather than the bigger picture at the end of the game. Osman did ok first half but he didnt offer much else after that and at one point before the goal Ramsey just dribbled past him like he wasnt there. I would have probably made the Lukaku substitution for McGeady too because that would have been a great counter attacking outlet on the right hand side. I'm not sure what I would have done on the 3rd sub. If the Besic sub had been made early, then I would have probably looked at bringing one of the young strikers on for Mirallas (presuming he needed to come off and couldnt have played on) and then moved Naismith wide (purely for defensive purposes). Preferably I would have just stuck with Mirallas because I thought he was doing well. If it wasnt you I apologise, I was probably meaning to refer back to your under the cosh for 90mins comment. I have already mentioned why, several times. Lukaku was the only player with a license to stay forward which worked a treat for our second goal. Mirallas, Pienaar and even Naismith dropped in and got behind the ball when we were defending on the whole but being our attacking outlets they are always going to get caught upfield. Like Steve_E has already said, we had more than enough people back to deal with Arsenal's threat but the individuals fucked up well and truly. Arsenal's attacking threat is all through the centre and we snuffed it out well all game but certain players fucked up, we concede and then we drop another clanger to cap it all off. A 3 man central midfield has nothing to it other than maybe the personnel of the 3 man midfield which I have mentioned above (especially the paceless combination of Osman and Barry). I wouldnt disagree that the ball to Ramsey for the 2nd should have been made much harder but that should have been a case of Osman and McGeady both tucking in further because the ball from Chambers splits them in two far too easily. They are both goal side initially. 99/100 Jags and Distin will deal with second goal. 95/100 Seamus and McCarthy will stop the cross for the first goal coming in. The rest of the team could have been standing on Szechny's goal line and we wouldnt have conceded in the same way had the two pairs above done their job correctly. I agree there was an issue with the subs but Pienaar didnt look like he was playing wide to me (the positional map shows that he was playing in line with Distin and inside of where Mirallas played) so bringing Atsu on wouldnt have really helped, unless we were going to have a complete reshuffle and bring Naismith into the 3 more central midfielders and move Mirallas left and Lukaku upfront. If we were going to stick to our plan, which the first half scoreline showed Martinez was right to, then IMO it should have been for a more central midfielder in Besic. Once he brings Osman on, he puts himself into a corner because then you will potentially embarrass a senior player by taking him off before the end. I would agree that the wide player subs could have changed earlier but it was at that point that things really went downhill! The probably with Moyes' subs is that we would be legless and in the 85th minute we bring on a slow, defensive player. We can all agree or disagree on who those players should or shouldnt have been but at least Martinez was thinking the right way. He wanted to make sure we had an attacking outlet so that we werent getting pinned back, unfortunately it didnt work because McGeady had a shocker and gave the ball away with almost every touch. I think the Leicester goals were completely different. We had no control over the game, we were getting pressed early and turning over the ball and even then the goals had an element of unluckyness about them. In this game (for the most part) we had control, we only had ourselves to beat, we made the right subs for the situation (in the second half) but we made silly errors. It might be fatigue, and there probably is an element of it, but for the 2nd goal Jags and Distin shouldnt be fatigued and they fucked up. Instead of showing why they are senior players, they showed inexperience. Both of them culpable of errors you would barely expect Stones or Duffy to make. Anyway its gone now, this will be my last post on the matter.

Thats got to be a made up name!

If they have to offload players to balance the books they are hardly going to do it for peanuts! They need big money in and Welbeck will command a decent fee from somewhere. I think his wages would be surprisingly high too.

Etoo was much maligned last year but he did a good job IMO. He was off the pace to start with but at the end of the season he was as almost as good as any other striker in the league (bar your Suarez/Agueros). His link up play is excellent and he scores goals. Keep him fit, keep him happy and we have a great player on our hands.

What I will say about McGeady is that we will prove to be a very useful player when we are trying to break down a packed defence.

We were at around 85% pass completion rate after 60 mins... Hardly giving the ball away all half or for the whole game as MC implied in the post I quoted. Once they did score they were on top, never disputed that, but at the same time they didnt exactly create much which is hardly backs to the wall. Up until the goal we were frustrating them well. The evidence in both games says otherwise mate. Exactly. I wouldnt quite agree with Shearer as we werent even brilliant in the first half. We did well enough without really being in top gear. Never said it all, as I mentioned in my first response in this post to Paddock.

Spot on! Narrowness in midfield had nothing to do with it! Plus you always defend narrow against Arsenal anyway. You watch how narrow Chelsea are and they are supposedly the best at 'parking the bus'. Like Steve_E says, we had PLENTY of men back. Spot on. First goal we had Baines, Jags and Distin marking no-one and Osman let the one player they had in the box go. The cross shouldnt have come in but even then we had 2 guys in position to stop him doing so but they didnt.

We were under the cosh? We were comfortable in the first half and we were even in the second half until they scored. On the whole, they didnt carry much threat and our was our silly mistakes (coleman leaving Giroud just after half time, Distin/Jags playing in Giroud again for their second chance, McCarthy/Coleman/Osman for their goal and Jags/Distin for their 2nd goal). I dont really recall them having any more chances which isnt exactly a team struggling to defend. The only winger that was meant to stay up was on the right hand side (Lukaku or Atsu at the end) and the left hand side was supposed to track back, as is virtually always the case (Pienaar, Mirallas, McGeady). Mirallas actually did a very good job of getting back which meant we had a block of four in midfield allowing McCarthy to cover the right hand channel with Coleman. If a move breaks down with Mirallas forward then he will get caught out of position but thats the same for every team in the world. I thought we were the most likely to score next when they did score. We had weathered the mini storm (after the 2nd Giroud chance) and we should have made more of our opportunities on the counter (mainly stemming from Lukaku). The Baines cut back which was narrowly missed, Naismith miscontrolling what should have been a clear chance and then the chance that Osman had which he was too slow to react to went begging and then they scored. We should have been home and hosed before they scored their first.

I don't know if you are referring to me or not but I said he was crap last week.

Especially in the position we were in holding onto a lead. You dont need someone who wants the glory in that situation, you want someone to get involved. His lack of effort in the build up to their second goal is shocking.

Ramsey just leaves him for dead. I think Distin especially could have done a little more though, he had no-one to mark and could have also covered the run. McCarthy was the man who helped cover out wide. Thought they did a great job together bar that one cross.

I agree. Todays performance summed up what I have never liked about him. Too inconsistent and cant be trusted. He certainly has some qualities but he shows them for 5% a game.

Barry or Baines for me but I have edged with the former. Naismith showed some real heart and graft but I just wanted to see a little bit more quality from him in key moments.

The system on the whole worked well though, we just had a couple of idiots that switched off at key times. Martinez will be lighting rockets up Coleman and McCarth arse for the first as that ball should NEVER have come in and the same with at least Jags and Distin for the second. We have done everything almost everything else right but unfortunately you cant manage poor decision making unless you want to bring in new players.

I think that is just because McCarthy (and Coleman) switched off rather than fitness. McCarthy was making 60 yard runs at the end and Barry was the most composed player on the pitch.

I also thought Mirallas was playing left from the start with Pienaar playing inside. It wasnt really conclusive given his time on the pitch mind you.

I think Besic is better going forward than expected. He certainly would have done more than Osman in that role. He has quick feet, better passer and reads the game better plus he has the physical attributes to make things happen. I wouldnt want to see 3 holding players in there generally but I think Besic has more in his locker, especially in comparison to Osman. I would prefer to have someone in there who will take the responsibility and can control possession rather than McGeady who constantly turns the ball over.