West Ham (home)

[CraccerC]

Nice cross by Baines! Good goal by Yakubu .. Game OVER.

 

Edit: omg....

 

you bloody jinx!

[Bill]

so pissed off at the moment! At least we didn't lose but it's games like this we need to be winning!

 

I still think 5th is a possibilty though! But we need to win the rest of our games!

 

All chance of a 5th place has disappeared with the last two games, another 4 points dropped against two of the worst teams in the league.

Add Wolves and West Ham to Burnley, Stoke and Hull, the other shit teams that we lost points against.

[Blue 250]

Well played West Ham!

 

They were pretty poor first half, and we just didn't make the most of it.Second half we really didn't do too much either.

 

Couple of decent goals, Yak's was a really good header and a nice cross from Baines.....

.....oh yeh!, and the sun was shining!

[DonKey]

What a load of crap that was....

 

Great ball and finish from West Ham to get the draw, but we stuffed by allowing them the counter attacke.

 

I don't mind being shouted down if people disagree, but I put the goal 'largely' down to tactical naivety at the end of the game. Pienaar goes chasing a nothing ball, with no hope of getting anywhere near it. West Ham then exploit the space that's been left to pull the goal back.

 

Bearing in mind we'd just gone 2-1 up, surely the idea would be not cock it up again!!! Or is it just me?!?!?

[The Beard]

What a load of crap that was....

 

Great ball and finish from West Ham to get the draw, but we stuffed by allowing them the counter attacke.

 

I don't mind being shouted down if people disagree, but I put the goal 'largely' down to tactical naivety at the end of the game. Pienaar goes chasing a nothing ball, with no hope of getting anywhere near it. West Ham then exploit the space that's been left to pull the goal back.

 

Bearing in mind we'd just gone 2-1 up, surely the idea would be not cock it up again!!! Or is it just me?!?!?

I have to agree with that comment. it has been a major trait in our game over the past couple of years. That is the inability to close a game out without panic setting in. Even before Yakubu's goal, you could see the players getting edgy, yet it was West Ham playing under the real pressure in their current position. Is it me or is it noticable that this season, we have been able to play well against the 'bigger' teams but when we are expected to beat teams or at least be the dominant force we have struggled a bit with our tactics??

[inertia8]

^ I agree, I was agitated by Pienaar chasing that nothing ball too. Fair play to West Ham for using the space, but that cross was wicked.. caught Johnny H right out.

 

We do get edgy, I almost prefer the team to go a goal down in the first half because it seems to calm the team down and make them fight for a result.. we seem to have a hard time in dealing with pressure.

 

Still trying to think of a MOTM...

[duncanmckenzieismagic]

I have to agree with that comment. it has been a major trait in our game over the past couple of years. That is the inability to close a game out without panic setting in. Even before Yakubu's goal, you could see the players getting edgy, yet it was West Ham playing under the real pressure in their current position. Is it me or is it noticable that this season, we have been able to play well against the 'bigger' teams but when we are expected to beat teams or at least be the dominant force we have struggled a bit with our tactics??

 

When teams come and throw up a defensive wall against us we do seem to struggle to break them down but to be fair to Moyse I think it is more to do with the fact that we are missing the likes of Felli and Arteta and combined with the complete lack of movement up front from Saha and Yakubu we dont have the quality to hurt teams

[Bill]

I have to agree with that comment. it has been a major trait in our game over the past couple of years. That is the inability to close a game out without panic setting in. Even before Yakubu's goal, you could see the players getting edgy, yet it was West Ham playing under the real pressure in their current position. Is it me or is it noticable that this season, we have been able to play well against the 'bigger' teams but when we are expected to beat teams or at least be the dominant force we have struggled a bit with our tactics??

 

Thats the way its always been, its the joy of the rollercoaster ride you get with Everton.

[Romey 1878]

Our season is just fizzling out into nothing, and I can't wait to be done with this season and move on to the next one tbh.

 

That was such a bad performance from start to finish from us; we just did not ever get going. We had plenty of ball in the first half but did nothing with it because we had no urgency and we did everything so slowly. Couple that with the players not having any ideas on how to attack and get through West Ham and you're always struggling to create any real opportunities in a game we should be comfortably winning because, make no mistake, they are a poor side. But they wanted it more and we didn't have the fight for it and they did, so we totally outmuscled in the second half. Plus, we didn't have any sort of support for Saha because we had Cahill playing as a proper midfielder for the majority of the game so Saha was totally isolated. Knowing that you'd think we'd play it on the floor a bit more, but no, we decide to lump the ball up to him every time so West Ham were just getting the ball back. I hate our negativity at home . The thing that most annoyed me was the crossing, mostly from Neville I might add. I was getting so frustrated with the stupid floaty crosses that were being put into the box! The one cross that we did put some pace on we bloody scored from .

 

 

 

Howard - Another good penatly save .

 

 

Neville - He was poo, and he's becoming a liability. I thought he was crap defensively, which is what he's primarily there for, but he was so bad going forward as well. He was in brilliant crossing positions on so many occasions but fucked the chance up by putting in a poor cross pretty much every time. For someone with as much experience as he has it's surprising that he has the composure of a 12 year old! - put him under a bit of pressure and he'll either hoof the ball to no one or out of play.

 

 

Jagielka - Not a good game from Jags IMO. I thought he looked quite shaky and he played far too many long balls, and quite a lot of them were when he had simple balls on that he could have played.

 

 

Distin - Apart from the penalty he gave away I thought he had a good game. I'm not sure what everyone else thought of the penalty award but I thought it was a penalty straight away.

 

 

Baines - Didn't put in the best of defensive performances but he played very well going forward, and he was pretty much alone down that side due to Pienaar doing an impression of the invisible man. What a cross for Yak's goal too. My MOTM.

 

 

Bily - He looked totally lost again, he's just not a winger and it's there for all to see. He was looking for guidance from Neville at times and Neville was just ignoring him. He actually showed good movement in this game though which provided Neville with plenty of room that we should have exploited.

 

 

Osman - He never got into the game. Saying that he still didn't do much wrong and was far from our worst player.

 

 

Heitinga - Pretty much the only one of our midfielders who was up for the fight yesterday and he didn't stop going all game. I thought he could have done better for their second equaliser though.

 

 

Cahill - Played most of the game as a second holding midfielder with Heitinga . I don't think he played badly there but having him play so deep makes him largely ineffective.

 

 

Pienaar - Did he turn up?

 

 

Saha - He didn't play at all well. Maybe it was borne out of frustration at the service he was getting, but whatever the reason it was shite.

[Bill]

Nice report Mark, thanks.

[marcopaulo]

neville had a shite game i just hope it doesnt prompt the bashers in again as he was not massively worse than any of the other tossers on that pitch yesterday...baines put in 1 good cross and that was it from the chances he had!

 

as for the pienaar point he did the same against arsenal when we conceded to van persie in last minute last year if i remember correctly? summat moyes needs to have a word about...we could have nicked it!

 

some good points on the radio phone in about us not having a plan b and i think its right..we have changed to a footballing side and rely heavily on quick 1 touch football in the final third now and when it isnt working we have nothing else to go on..

[dark]

We can kiss Europe goodbye I think, unless we seriously buck up and win all of our remaining games. The performance yesterday was classical Everton, we come up against one of the worst teams in the league at the moment and can do everything apart from beat them. Saha looked lonely up from and was crying out for someone to come on and help him (Yakubu was too late) and I hate the fact that whenever we get a chance to cross the ball we float it in, rather than smashing it onto someone's head.

 

The referee was a disgrace but I guess that we can't complain due to our shabby performance. No way was it a penalty and our shout was as clear as it got. We should have won 3-2, but then again we should never have let West Ham put two past us.

[Bailey]

neville had a shite game i just hope it doesnt prompt the bashers in again as he was not massively worse than any of the other tossers on that pitch yesterday...baines put in 1 good cross and that was it from the chances he had!

 

as for the pienaar point he did the same against arsenal when we conceded to van persie in last minute last year if i remember correctly? summat moyes needs to have a word about...we could have nicked it!

 

some good points on the radio phone in about us not having a plan b and i think its right..we have changed to a footballing side and rely heavily on quick 1 touch football in the final third now and when it isnt working we have nothing else to go on..

 

Normally we would go long ball but with Saha all alone, everytime we did go long it came straight back. The times we did press from the front and win/chase the second ball we scored.

[djspark]

Yeah i stayed up all night to watch the match (Aus) - we looked clueless when given so much space and time on the ball there was a lot of ball going backwards and distin though he was good defensively, struggled when offered the space in the middle of the park bring the ball out.

 

Im sure better afficianados of the game than me would provide a better analysis but it looked like none of our inventive players wanted to come and get the ball from h/w line where theyre surely better qualified instead leaving it to jags/distin who were fish out of water IMO.

 

I guess Moyes couldnt figure out how best to reshape the team with subsavailable and people playing where they were - i suppose no-one wants to completely re-jig once the match is underway.

 

Just really frustrating to watch!

[Matt]

well... 4 year wait... what a disappointing game and also the atmosphere, is Goodison usually that dead? Ive been thinkin for the last few days that i would go on a rant, but frankly i cant be arsed. If we play like that against Villa, we are screwed....