Everton’s second-stringers disgrace themselves with pitiful cup exit

1) shows how vital Coady/Tarkowski are
2) we can make amends on Saturday
3) Bournemouth will be very cocky, hopefully their undoing.

As for the game, words fail me…

We have a first team that are in poor form, lacking confidence, co-ordination, creativity and goals.

Why not use this, the penultimate game of 'part A' to this weird and wonderful season to work on some joined up football, partnerships, how to press as a team.

F in U less Frank, you may think you do, but sorry, you don't get us, your not an Evertonian.

Another 'quickly move on' moment. Pathetic.

Moshiri needs Premier League survival and options will open up after Saturday. The board have already courted Martinez before hiring Frank. There are other managers who are available and may be up for the job. There is a month out, followed almost straight away by the January transfer window. It's an absolutely critical time in Lampard's tenure.

I am very conflicted.

We need stability. Too many changes, too many managers, too many mistakes.

He also seems a good man, and he has spoken well, done well to unify a club when it was broken.

But equally, we should be better.

Howe transformed Newcastle and his team, apart from Trippier and Bruno, is essentially the same players that looked League 1 standard.

Lampard has transformed Iwobi, and he has given us a solid defence with Tarkowski and Coady. But beyond that it's hard to see what he's done. Grey's form has nosedived, Gordon is still ineffective, and what should be a dominant midfield is still routinely opened up.

So the pertinent question: can Lampard make a winning team? and there I really don't know.

Was the Crystal Palace game a one off, a game where circumstances and opposition weakness played into our hands? or was it a game where the players managed to play Lampard's system correctly?

It's a tough time. But if we lose on Saturday, I expect we'll be discussing whic manager we'll get for Christmas I've rte next 6 weeks.

My point is that in a team of low ability the more we pass the ball in our own half the more we increase the risk of a mistake or an accident. Abandoning this style is essential until such time in the future we have world class performers in blue shirts.

Control of the midfield is vital in most games. Without it the attack is redundant and the defence exposed.

Exactly what we were saying as we waited for the coach yesterday. We simply don't have the players who can play out from the back.

It's really idiocy when Pickford takes a 2-foot goal kick to either Coady or Tarkowski, only to get it back and he boots it down the pitch. As soon as Pickford passes the ball, the opposition forwards are right in there, forcing errors.

I've always said, let defenders defend, ie, get rid of the ball as far away from our goal as they can. After all, when the ball is 80 yards away from our goal, the opposition can't score, while the midfielders and forwards can play the “Fancy Dan” stuff.

May not look pretty on the eye, but it would save a heck of a lot of heart palpitations amongst the supporters and not put the defence under unnecessary pressure.

Just got in about 10 minutes ago, after a gruelling day, with it all to do again in 4 days time. The joys of being a football supporter, eh!

The disgrace has gone on too long, we're not even treading water anymore and I'm sick of being embarrassed and disgusted by the non-performance of the club I've supported all my life.

Words fail me. I feel fucking sick.

Sad thing is these wastes of space won't care because they've got a little holiday to Australia coming up while the rest of us are all working our socks off in midwinter.

As I've said before no matter who the manager is or what player personnel we put out there, this club is simply not conditioned for success.

We are set up each year no matter how much money we spend, for failure, it's what we know best and somehow we always end up back where we started.

I hate being told we are in transition, this club never leaves transition.
We never get past the first year of this fabled "3 year project".

Imagine if it was us who had Newcastle's takeover last year, does anyone seriously think we'd be where Newcastle are now?

We all know the answer to that and frankly every new era is just a copy and paste of the previous failed one.

Tonight we didn't just lose that match, we lost to Bournemouth's 4th choice team that will probably never lineup together again.

We had experience out there last night, players that we may need again in an injury crisis and how many of those digraced flops would you call upon to get you out of trouble if that day arrives?

Utter disgrace for Rapid Decline FC.

Bournemouth's team tonight had absolutely no-one that would get a game for us and their coach would never be considered for the job as Everton manager and yet they battered us and cut through us almost at will. I feel like if the teams had simply swapped kits pre-kick off, the team in blue would still have lost 4-1!

I simply do not understand why, no matter who we hire as manager, or whatever players we sign, we remain so toothless and devoid of attacking ideas or cohesion?

For fuck's sake, I'd love it if we played like Bournemouth did last night. I hate being negative and am desperately looking for positives but, beyond Tarkowski, Coady and Patterson, I'm struggling to see any.

Get rid of Keane, Holgate, Davies, Gordon – a disgrace to any football team.

We really should have enough to avoid a relegation battle, but we won't be competing for Europe, so why not give the cups a real go?

We have become harder to beat – perfect for cup competitions – and the Big 6 tend not to take these domestic competitions too seriously.

I'm not saying I thought we would win the thing but we could easily have given everyone a boost with an exciting run and then maybe with a little luck in the final stages, who knows…?

But no. We have to play our reserves. For fuck's sake.

I've watched them for a long time now and concluded that playing 80% of your football at the back limits your goal-scoring opportunities, as we've seen consistently for 3 seasons now.

Combine that with midfield players who become ineffective due to this defensive consistency makes for dour results.
EFC's whole build-up play needs to be reviewed and changed to a midfield and forward focussed emphasis.

I can remember years ago, when central defenders were used in a simple defence role, simply getting in the way of forwards.

If I feel like this, I hope they do and wake up.

John Raftery @ 9 and 10 sums it up pretty much bang on.

Many of us called for a strong starting line-up to get the game won. We put our second string out aside from a player just back from injury and a striker who was there because of injury.

Apologies, I'm still coming down from that and getting myself up for Saturday. I hope they are.

Amorim, Gallardo, Garcia, Low, R Martinez, D Martinez, Rooney, Dyche, or even Big Duncan would be better bets than Frank for us moving forward.

I'd even take Moyes back… and I never thought I'd say that.

I'd also consider elevating Paul Tait. Albeit that'd be a huge risk on permanent. The gap for the World Cup is opportunity for change.

I always wonder about these cup competitions and how they affect struggling clubs like Everton when trying to maintain league form etc. In our case, the existence to stay in the Premier League.

If we go back to Bournemouth at the weekend with an adjusted, stronger team and win this fixture, you just wonder if clubs purposely drop out of these competitions as part of a survival strategy!

I know some fans might see that as unthinkable, but I'm sure this goes on at most league levels in order to maintain league status.

I thought it would be a gamble to make even four or five changes but his wholescale swaps were shocking. He has perhaps exposed his own lack of experience. All he has done is damage confidence and heap extra pressure on himself and the Saturday team.

I think he has demonstrated that he considers our first eleven just capable of winning on Saturday and therefore has refused to jeopardise our chances by tiring those guys or risking further injuries.

If we win on Saturday, most of us will consider his actions worthwhile (apart from the wonderful away travellers, who have been shat-on in no uncertain terms).

We are a bottom-half side with our first team and missing just a couple of those and we are relegation fodder. I think he knows it too.

I think he has made plenty of mistakes in his year at the helm. He is a young coach and learning his trade. I recall Moyes getting us dumped out of cups on a regular basis.

At the moment, we simply can't afford to sack him; we need to hope he can pick up a striker in January, hope that Dominic gets well, and pray that there are three worse teams in the Premier League.

A win on the road at the weekend will keep him in his job but another pitiful defeat with his strongest side will make Moshiri's corroding finger start twitching.

I really don't know what the best thing would be to do. We still only have a handful of players that can be relied on out of an entire squad.

Our reserves and backups were absolutely thumped by Bournemouth's reserves and backups – that shows just how bad things really are.

Ours get vertigo at the sight of goal. Every team copies that boring football, even the women.

In my grandson's junior league, if you pass the ball backwards it's a free kick against you.

Whoever devised the current possession football system – Pep and the Spanish? – have spoilt the game.

Hate to single players out (not really, they get paid to perform, so why not ?) but Holgate must think he is the coolest defender on the planet. News Alert for Holgate: why don't you have a look at yourself, dickhead, smell the coffee, put in a transfer request, then hopefully Fuck Off?

That also applies to Davies (who has lived immorally off that goal against Man City 5 years ago), Doucoure, Keane, Mina (decent but rarely fit and useless last night), Vinagre... I have left out Garner and Patterson for obvious reasons, but still can't fathom why Garner was subbed? McNeil, Maupay, Gordon (very poor 2/10) have at least done a bit in the past, to prove they may be useful squad members.

I don't want to see another manager change, but more performances and team selections like last night and Frank has signed his own P45 request. If he were to go, I hope Thelwell stays.

Get rid of Keane, Holgate, Davies, Gordon — a disgrace to any football team.

You may get your wish? After 11 years at Everton it's possible he could get the sack for the 5th time! Hammers fans have had enough of the slow negative football.

They should be nowhere near the fucking ground on a match day!

Are there any signs of improvement? Not really. Look where we are in the table, 2 points from the Bottom 3.

Okay, Iwobi is immense, Coady and Tarkowski are dependable, the full-backs are good, midfield is better but missing a truly creative player, the attack is sub standard and has been for a long long time.

The upcoming transfer window is so important. Despite everything, a lot still needs to be done before we can be regulars in the top half of the table. We do look very average.

Moyes Mk 2. We know how that went with Howard. Twice.

There's two stand names sorted.

Give me a pass today, Blues. Wounded and hurting and need to pick myself up for Saturday.

Frank's thinking before this game was to use the cup competition as part of the process of building the squad over the season, by giving out-of-contention players match-time to supplement their training. What he has found out is that some of them are not arsed whether they play are not. On the evidence, of this game, there was enough of them to have an adverse effect on even players in contention that where p!aying.

So now we have the situation that the next possible match play for these players is as an injury replacement, after the World Cup break or in the FA Cup rounds. It is not a good situation to be in the Premier League with players who are not putting the effort in and are so behind the curve in preparation.

Ideally they should be all put up for transfer, but probably there are financial permutations for the club that I can only guess at. There have been long-standing questions regarding Finch Farm and how fit for purpose the regime is. Frank's team seem to have found themselves caught unawares by what is actually going on there.

At least he is now under no illusions of their attitude. These players will work against him, not accepting the blame for anything, as they have done under previous managers. For me, even Holgate saying that it would be difficult getting back into the squad, reflected a negativity, rather than a positive commitment to effort. This could reflect a malaise around him, of other out-of-contention p!ayers..

Whatever you think of Frank choosing to make 11 changes, it's got fuck-all to do with not being able to make a 15-yard pass or simple clearing header, or just leathering the ball in any direction.

These were experienced players up against a Championship reserves team, I don't care if they haven't had many minutes on the pitch – they should still be able to do the basics.

We had a shite journey home; I hope they did.

How can a club that was a founder member of the Football League, spend the majority of the 20th Century at the forefront of the game both on and off the field, having possessed some of the greatest players ever to play in British football, fall so far in the last 30 years?

The answer is simple – leadership. It is still lacking now. I have not seen much evidence of Mr Sharp's wonderful football knowledge filtering through to the on- or off-field side of Everton since his appointment – and the other 'leaders' on the management committee are all fundamentally the same people or type of people who have got us into this mess.

I don't want any more of it. I have always supported the manager in situ although I haven't always been convinced about them so I don't really care what Moshiri does in that respect. He probably would be better by sacking everyone at the club who is in a decision-making position and starting again rather than just having a managerial revolving door as that policy has been shown not to work too.

I will watch with interest what happens next, as an interested bystander rather than an Evertonian, but hope that whatever they do restores respect to the name and the long-suffering fans.

However, I am not hopeful.

It is a bit unfair to mention just Sharpie. There are a host of guilty ones in the shadows who keep a low profile at such times and have been doing so for quite a while now.

The whole club is riddled with them from the top down. Why else does nothing change, even after the non-stop revolving door of managers with their initial ideas for the future?

That doesn't work, haven't you noticed yet?

I saw three or four crosses of quality in the last 15 minutes or so, one Everton player at most in the box. Balls out from the back to midfield were too often laid back again without looking up; an awful lot of Vinagre overlaps were ignored.

Overall, it looked like a team fluffing their lines.

One worry for me that does concern the manager though, it is looking somewhat predictable at the moment.

Against Bournemouth and Leicester, we invited a press to get space up the pitch; neither team bought it, instead backing their midfield to break it down from deep and keeping pace up the field so we could be carved open; this will need to be looked at.

I couldn't help thinking last night that a big target to lay off would have helped.

I only had to say to my wife "Everton are playing tonight – what's your prediction". Her answer – as it has been for 30 years – was "I expect they'll lose again".

If I'd placed bets on all her predictions over the years, I'd be a wealthy chap today.

I don't think they'll have had a rubbish a journey as you, I, Rob Halligan and John amongst others I met yesterday. They'll have been in their Bournemouth hotel whilst we were still travelling, with many making the same trip in 3 days time.

Ken @40.

Yes, it's leadership. Something that has been lacking since we last won the league. Forget 27 years. 35 years and soon to become 36.

Peter @41.

Behave. You won't be able to help yourself on Saturday and will never be a bystander.

See you Saturday, Blues.

What will be even more alarming for me, however, is if there is absolutely no reaction and response on Saturday to last night's capitulation.

If they don't beat Bournemouth on Saturday, then you do wonder what's down for a season with 3 wins from 15 matches.

It also gets the players off his back, who are knocking on his door asking to play – he can't tell them they're not good enough outright, but now he can point to this and go "Look!"

Keane, Doucoure and Holgate haven't put in a decent performance for ages. When I say "ages", I'm not talking about a few weeks ago, I'm talking "the season before last". Why the hell are they still being picked? They've let this club down over and over again. They make the same mistakes every time they play, they haven't matched an opposition's performance level in years, and their weaknesses are exploited because every other team know how to get at them.

Then we come to Tom Davies. Fuck me! How on earth is he still getting a game?! He's a shocking player. Can't pass, can't shoot, can't tackle, can't organise, can't read the game, and gets rings run around him whenever he's on the pitch. He knows he's out of his depth at this level and so does every other team in the league.

As for Lampard, he's not sending a message to the board in any way. We're limited because of FFP and our league standing. Picking the same let-downs for a League Cup game tells the board nothing they don't already know. I'm broadly supportive of giving him another transfer window because the signings have been good, but his management after that is not good enough. Last night, he picked a team to:
A. rest some players and B. win the game.

He failed. Again.

We featured about tenth in the procession of games, after the fabulous spectacle (not!) of Gillingham vs Brentford.

Kenwright must be gutted we're still not last on every national TV program of footy hi-lites though. Somehow, Stevenage vs Charlton and MK Dons vs Morecambe were deemed even more boring than us.

How about it, Mr Kenwright?