But then you have to ask why?Why after how many years in the Premier League we have only beaten them... twice? It is because we are also-rans, and cannot compete any more for trophies and as a consequence have been reduced to minor competition?

We have absolutely no ambition and the players can see this. They will be off after this season no doubt. I cannot blame them.

Billy bullshit has a lot to answer for as he has ruined any progress we have made. What is the point of playing videos of our past successes every match, eg Dixie etc? It is ancient history and means nothing to any supporter today. Kenwright is stuck in a time warp of 80 years ago and needs to be relieved of his position now and somebody has to take this club on because at the moment the only way is down.

Don’t get me wrong, these other teams may be deluded, but at least they go onto the park with the intention of winning; Moyes's tactics, which are going to be dictated by who he plays and where, are an abject failure, he can’t even be called a reactionary manager because he doesn’t know how to react!

I don’t want to hear the fuckin’ tired injury, stretched squad excuse — it's worn thin when the players who are on the field can’t get the basics right and look totally demoralised. If he plays that fuckin’ 4-5-1 formation again he should be fuckin’ sacked. We’re slipping to the bottom Davey, show some fuckin’ leadership and coaching ability and try something different before we end up in the fuckin’ Championship!

As the Man U goals went in I clocked the looks on our players' faces, it wasn’t a look of pain — it was one of pathetic acceptance. It has become clear that Moyes's objectives at the start of a season are to maintain the status quo and keep his bank balance and everybody who’s on the payroll at the club ticking over nicely thank you.

Any platitudes about putting the Club back where it belongs and attempting to win trophies are mere red-herrings. He made his bed with Kenwright and will not utter a word about poor closed season or lack of progressive investment. We are stuck with Moyes like it or not — and I fucking don’t!

Thank god we shall almost certainly be hearing some great news about our ground move in just a few days time. At least that will lighten the gloom!

Moyes has done a good job. I don’t think anyone can dispute that. Taken over an old poorly performing squad & changing it to a much younger better squad, but now we need someone who can take it on.

A positive manger, who can say let’s have a go, that’s the only way we will learn how good we are. For a moment today we had a go, no it didn’t work, but that was because it was a too little too late & having a go isn’t just about attacking, as much as that is what we want, it’s about defending, like you mean it, not standing off rooney, get into him & the rest.

So in the end we need someone to give not only the forwards belief but all the team. Stand up & have a go.

Man Utd get their easiest 6 points every year cos this dummy is shit scared to have a go at them. MOYES OUT FUCK OFF TO SCOTLAND; take Cahill, Gosling, Jo, Heitinga and fucking Rodwell with yer. Before the idiots who continue to sing the red thick bastards name start, you can all fuck off — this negative bastard is making EFC a laughing stock.

I was irked when we started with the usual lone striker and longed for Yakubu to come on... but really, if there's no creativity or imagination from midfield, it doesn't matter who is up front. It's not that they are second-rate players so much as players turning in too many second-rate performances.

The one serious chance Yakubu got he took a half-hearted stab at and then grimaced in pain. Not one member of the side looked like they felt for a second that they could have an impact on the result and only one or two looked like they cared either way. That's not the attitude that's needed against any Premier League club, let alone Man. United. If they take that attitude into the derby game it will be a long afternoon.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to give us over 20 mill for Rodwell I would say take it and be careful not to bite their hand off. I haven't seen a single match where he has seriously impacted the outcome. I realize he has potential, but right now, take the money and look for someone who can actually produce a win.

In Moyes we have a man who has stablilised the ship blah blah blah. However, can our "David" take on the Goliaths of Ferguson, Wenger etc — No. Why? Well, because our "David" has an inferiority complex when playing against the SKY 4 and his fear then transmits to the team.

There was a time when I truly believed that our "David" could become the "Goliath" we all want him to be.

I now know that I was wrong.

Don’t believe any of this big four shit, it just lets Kenwright off the hook. It's not what we have on the park, we all know we’ve been deprived of our best players, but its the way the players who we do have available are representing this Club at the moment and it’s not fucking good enough.

Anyone who has ever played football has played when you're second best but you still want to come off the pitch with your own performance intact. Too many of them are hiding behind excuses or simply not good enough.

That said what a negative approach to the game, I lost count of the "punts" up field to no-one, unfortunately we have seen this so many times under Moyes, but it’s ok cos he got us 4th place in 2005 so of course he can do no wrong.

Until us, the fans, start to demand more, we will get at best mediocrity and that's not good enough for a top team like us.

I grew up with the Everton of Ball, Harvey and Kendall and maybe it’s too much to expect that, but surely more can be expected than sopping up pressure and hoping for a break.

The problem seemed to me to be midfield — absent when defending, and slow and unoriginal when attacking. We gave the ball away cheaply so many times, and made the game much harder for ourselves. Gosling looked completely out of his depth — too slow and lighweight; Cahill sweated but ran into defenders every time; Rodwell was slick but unproductive. But I’ll stick my neck out to defend Fellaini — he at least was trying to carry the ball forward and look for openings, even if he didn’t have much around him to aim for. We were much better connected in the opening of the second half, when there were more options up front.

I agree then with the gist of the comments above — negative tactics put us on the back foot from the start. And we desparately need the return of some midfielders of pace and quality that can read the game.

Looks to me like we’re in for a long winter (or summer, where I am)....

So it’s 4 games and a 1-16 aggregate score - much as I want to see EFC on the telly here, I think I’d prefer it if we never appeared again. At least that way we’d et some goals and points.

Why is it that Steve Bruce can send his Sunderland team out with two strikers up top and get a result at Trafford while Moyes sits on his hands and hopes for the best???? Does Sunderland have a better squad than ours?

Speaking of our squad... Gosling may have potential but at the moment, is nowhere near good enough to be playing at this level. Get him out of the fray Moyes and gives someone else a go. I felt sorry for Saha in the first 45 as he was so isolated, he was almost in another post code. Moyes, wake up to yourself!

So at 8:45 with toast and coffee in hand off I went. 20 mins highlights of all the other games. RS devils own luck once more and Hunt and Bullard looked good in another game.

Fast forward ads and promo’s and away we go.

Straight from the KO, back to Howard and...HOOF!... encouraging.

Now to my moment of shame.

So crap, boring and predictable it was watching a, for them, average Untd play 90% in our half, that I, mumbles...speak up.

I FAST FORWARDED IT AND JUST WATCHED THE GOALS.

Step one, Hi my name’s Derek Thomas and I’ve been an Evertonian for 48yrs.

I noticed a few incidents in the game namely Ref Bennett giving Fellaini his yellow and then lecturing him about one or two other incidents. It's a pity the ref did not show the same attention to detail when Vidic smashed Heitinga in the head.

In another bit of vision you saw Neill roaring for his defence to push up but to no avail. Then, blow me down, Distin sets off on one of the Blues best runs at Utd but nobody seemed to catch on apart from the short spell after half time. In that spell we did knock it around quite well and perhaps did have no luck but as soon as the second one went in that was it.

What cheeses me off is apart from the teams apparent resignation to it all is the way Moysie seems to go into a bit of a sulk alongside the assistant coach.

One final point about the injury situation is that seemingly straight forward injuries seem to morph into month long and over spells out and I’m not talking Jags or Arteta. Our team need to have a good hard look at themselves or they could be in the mire before it dawns on them.

1. We clearly have 5 players out that would improve our current starting 11.

2. Saha is the only class player currently in our team and as soon as he touched the ball 4 Man Utd defenders were on him.

3. This is because we only play 1 up top and invite the defeat on us.

4. The media and commentary is so one sided it's untrue. (Felli elbow, they say definite foul, nasty. Johnny gets smacked, Vidic didn't mean it, it was an accident. What a load of bullocks!)

5. when we got the ball not one player moved off the ball to want a pass, they did it all the time. (That's because we are scared to be in control without Peanuts and Arteta.)
6. Off to my first ever Mersey derby Sunday... should be excited, but I'm scared.

I think David Moyes has done really well, but he needs to ask himself a few questions this morning, because no matter how well he has run his race, the only thing we remember is the last lap.

Far too many times I’ve seen opposition players (not just yesterday) given far too much time and space to run, shoot or look for that killer pass, no other team allows us that luxury... why are we so fecking generous?  At least when playing a 4-4-2 each player knows who his man is and what is expected of him.   

I’ve no doubt that, when the first-choice players come back, a fluidity in our play will "return", confidence levels will rise, but the guys that have been taking to the field of late should not just be "filling-in", they should be playing their socks off to make sure their names are first on that teamsheet and if they don’t feel that they are any better than the next guy, they should still put the effort in. 

Getting back to the original post, a mate of mine, a Forest fan, told me a story about a young Ian Woan growing a beard   and being told by Brian Clough to shave it off and that only men can grow beards. After a MotM performance in Europe, Cloughie pulls Woan to one side and says something like "Son, you can grow a beard now... you’re a man!" — TRUE legend. 

The same mate told me how the last time Forest were in the Prem, the Man Utd away fans started chanting "you’ve never been in Europe!"  I suppose they can be forgiven, as SKY only invented football in the 90s. If you know your history, eh!  

Hopefully it’s a big fat NO! Which will definitely "lighten the gloom"... Yet somehow I doubt that’s what you had in mind.

All things considered, he seemed surprisingly chipper. Maybe it was the suit and tie, looked like he was trying to impress, like at a job interview or something... Strange, cos he’s devoted to Everton... isn’t he?

He couldn't get promotion for Preston, he won't give us what we want either. If, he had a policy of positive ’attractive’ football (as The Cat used to call it) I could accept we will never attain top four status, but we play negative boring stuff, players playing full of fear and not able to express themselves. To me, the sign of Cahill being well below his best says it all, there is something drastically wrong... Taxi!!!

Why did he even bother taking the team to Old Trafford, he had no belief they could win.

I'm so fed up with the dire, dour dross that he’s churning out... Why did he bring Hibbert on with 10 minutes to go??? Why not give one of the kids a run?

Useless, absolutely useless. I don't care who comes in to replace him, they cant possibly be as bad as he is... Turd!

I've got to say I'm a big fan of Moyes and what he's done for the club, but I think another summer of strain has done him in and it's creeping into our play. Ok, we've never played our best football under him but there used to be some sense of confidence in the players. Not anymore. The injury situation is obviously a bitter one, but (apparently) good players seem well below-par.

All I'm trying to work out now is what WE can do. I mean, it's all starting to look worrying. We have no money, we have a squad that gets smaller every year, we have an inpotent mentality and a coaching and playing staff that looks like they've all had a dog just die. As for the hapless board and a stadium move that would a) take more money away from aforesaid depleted squad and b) divide a restless fan base - well it's all a bit grim isn't it?

I don't think a Barcode-shite "Sack the Board" protest would get us anywhere, but unless the results start picking up then something's got to give. How much can you change though when there's (supposedly!) no-one interested in investment, no money to bring new players in and probably no better manager to come in.

Oh well, least the RS are cocking up on a similar level, though taking that as a positive I guess shows a sign of the times.

It has been well documented we have no money and for that it’s Kenwright's fault (he hasn’t got billions to throw at the team, if you want that piss of to Man Citeh and see how great they are!).....we have no proof anywhere that anybody has bid for the club, and no proof of what Bill is actually looking for.

We are a team low on confidence, because of the results, a manager who when he first turned up was considered the Messiah, for the fact that he has saved us from relegation, totally transformed a team that was full of has beens and no marks. A team that had lost it’s soul and lost its way.

A lot of that was due to the way the club was mismanaged by the previous administration, and yes I am fully aware that BK was part of that administration, but stepped in when we were about to go tits up, again he was declared a savoiur practically.

I just think we need to look at the bigger picture here, it seems what ever they (DM / BK) do they can’t win, they have made glaring errors, but show me a club that hasn’t. We just have not got the money to compete at the level the fans crave. It’s ridiculous that we have this I understand peoples need for success, I think we need to look at the ’degree’ of success we have had under Moyes.

He has done a good job in getting the club to where it is, HE is responsible for that, and all us fans are great at criticising when we are playing badly, and not getting points, make no mistakes I am as disappointed as anyone at what is happening, but who would you have Martinez, was one quoted some time ago.... what are peoples opinion now...? There isn’t anyone better able at this time to manage our club.

Wonder what his tactics will be against Hull, Has he the guts to set the team up to play for an away win, and I mean with a bit of style??!! Who am I kidding??!!

And there’s the potential move to Kirkby. Who stands to gain from all of this? In what way is this in the interests of the Club? To get good things on the field you have to find answers to the overidding problems within the Club. I only want the best for this Club and at the moment no one is stopping the haemorrhaging.