There is something kind of bitter in reading the posts on this site tonight. Sure the team performed fairly badly, particularly in midfield where it showed how much we miss the likes of Arteta and I hate to say it, Tommy G.

Look, lets be fair, it was a pretty crappy performance, there was a lack of fluidity, creativity or anything which resembled.........you know what its late....i’ll cut to chase, we can be so much better, I belive we will be, I just hate the amount of negativity that gets posted on this site - can anyone post the plus points from tonight?

I’ll start, Baines looks like a quality player and a fantistic signing.......actually sod it, I’ve been drowning my sorrows too long to be coherent...appolgese to those who’ve read this post!!!

Rich, I’m trying to figure out, did we actually play well that OFTEN? I’ve watch most of our games, out of 10, maybe 2 good ones... with flair, creativity, bla, bla, bla.

Some jokers are talking about matching the top 4, stop drinking you fools!!! To challenge the top 4s, you play 8 good games and 2 bad ones!

Last season, again, people were so blinded. We didn’t play like a uefa cup team. Yes, we won some, but still, struggled.

It is sooooooo obvious, we aren’t good enough. We have some quality players, but the others are championship standards. (NOT CHAMIONS LEAGUE!)

Maybe Moyes can’t differetiate between Championship and Champions League. It’s hard, my 3 year old kid can’t.

But I am still a blue, always one. Just that my life as a Blue will be shorter after watching my beloved team’s crappy performance week-in week-out.

Moyes, i am not asking for your head. But please remind the players, don’t always F#$%king pump the ball up for goodness sake!

I can well understand the bitterness of many of the comments that have been posted on this site after the abysmal performance of the team this evening. I, like many Evertonians have had concern for a long time, about the tactical ability of David Moyes to win games for this club. I have not voiced this opinion before but I really believe that for the further development of Everton football club, David Moyes has to leave and leave quickly. This is not a knee jerk reaction but a belief that has formed by watching the football we play, if thats what it can be called. Same old story, play one good game, give us hope and then screw it all up with performances like tonights. I felt sick after watching this game. Sick and bloody frustrated at the constant referral this team makes to the long ball philosophy. How many times have fans made this comment. I read it every day on toffeeweb and nothing changes. Top four challenge???, reaching another level???, I’m not laughing...this is just not good enough, end of story. Those who seek glory under David Moyes will wait forever. I like the bloke, but taking us to another level.....truth is I don’t think he can.

David Dafdy

Ever considered that maybe Moyes CANM differentiate between chapmions league and championship but the purse strings at Everton limit him? Short sighted.

Moyes is tactically inept and a stuibborn bastard. Every snigle fan in the ground could see that not one of the midfield or attack knoew were the fuck they were spose to be playing after 20 minutes. He should have gone 4-4-2 half way through the first half and give us some shape and balance. Instead he left us with his 4-?-? and i have never seen a premiership team go onto a feild and 6 of them cont know were there playing. Noone on here could tell me either.Osman, Cars and Neville didnt have a clue and we got overan by a gang of fuckin Ukranians.

You talk about purse strings? Well i dont want him wastin any more of our fuckin money cos last night for about half an hour we had paid £11.25 mil for a left winger!

Moyse is a fuckin disgrace and hes proved that he learned absolutely nothing from our last european debacle. Last night is just totally undefendable.

RE, Andy Baker can i suggest spelling lessons

May I remind you of the sad fact that we had four attacking midfielders injured? If Moyes opted for a midfield of four, that would’ve been Carsley-Neville-Osman-Jags as we had no other midfielders fit, you’d be whinging about the negative tactics.

What was going through Moyes head when picking that Midfield?
Hibbert is grossly inadequate and must surely be one of the worst players in the premeirship,maybe he should head to sheff utd as well.
As for Neville how this man has won so many England caps is beyond me. His distribution is on a par with Hibberts and he gives away needless freekicks around the penalty area,(lets not even mention his own goals).

Moyes is tactically inept and 40000 fans couldnt understand why jags wasnt on in place of neville.
Severely pissed off with a pathetic performanceand i can do without neville and co coming out with their usual excuses and promises in the papers.

Im disapointed chaps but im a realist nothing suprises me with everton moyes really had a stinker with his selection last night andy johnson should have been rested hes clearly devoid of confidence and maybe we could have won the game 3-1 with a different penalty taker but heh ho we will lose in ukraine and then maybe serious changes can be made i like moyes but where are we heading i will tell you no cup runs and a 10th place finish.

He has to go and so does Johnson. Neither of them are up to it. The fact that we can blame the fact that one player was missing says it all.

As for the number of England caps won by Phil Neville, remember where he was before he came to us

Peter Singer we had Vidarsson on the bench and the injuries didn’t happen at 5 to 8 last night they have been on the cards for a while so we could have also called back Da Silva, please stop defending DM’s abysmal team choice and tactics for last night’s game; he fucked up and yet again he fucked up in an important European game.

After forty five years I am still amazed that Evertonians continue to look for positives and excuses when we are served up the kind of shite that we witnessed last night.I sometimes wonder whether we deserve all we get - complete contempt from cretins like Kenwright,Wyness et al.As far as Moyes goes, we all know he’s a decent bloke but as someone has already pointed out, he’s learned nothing from our previous european experience and his lack of tactical nouse was there for all to witness last night. Pitiful.

Gavin, please tell me you’re just taking the piss.


Or are you seriously suggesting that fielding a kid and a holding midfielder with a vast experience of exactly four championship appearances would’ve been the recipe of victory.

The only thing that could (and in my opinion should) have been done is to drop Neville to RB and start with Jags and Carsley in a holding role.

Disapointed with Moyes remarks & said he was suprised how good Kharkiv were.Bollocks they was there for the taking and we gave them more & more confidence with our once again pathetic midfield.Everyone exept Moyes knows Neville & Carsley cant play in a 4 man midfield.I have a bad feeling we have blown our chances to qualify as we HAVE to win or at least get a score draw to get something.

It never fails to amaze me how many Evertonians genuinely believe they know more about football than our outstanding young manager.This is the man who has twice qualified us for Europe in a mere five year tenure and who has restored the respect for Everton throughout the football world.
Only a dodgy ref prevented us from a substantial victory last night when Moyes would have been hailed a hero (which he is)and Phil Neville restored to Captain Fantastic.There ain’t nobody as fickle as an Evertonian!

This is simple, in order to win matches you need to create chances. Chances are created from midfield, not by defenders hoofing the ball up for strikers to chase. To create chances from midfield your midfielders need to be able to pass and MOVE. You need midfielders who are looking to receive the ball from defenders and other midfielders and get into space, you also need midfielders to get their head up and look FORWARD for another midfielder or striker who has created space for himself and is LOOKING for the ball. I’ve had enough of this hoofball, by pass the midfield shite for the last 5 years and midfielders who don’t go looking for the ball, either through lack of confidence, lack of ability, lack of quality training or lack of tactics.

We will never win anything playing hoofball and with Moyes in charge. He’s done a great job at stabilising the club and getting good players in, now for a genuine coach to come in and get them to play, I’ll get ridiculed for this but I want Glen Hoddle, he knows how to get a team to play like a team.

Metalist played through midfield and supported each other with nice intricate passes and good movement, it was only a matter of time before they scored and they created by far the bast chances in the match.

Richard Dodd I have some questions for you? Were you at the same game last night and witnessed what the vast majority of sane Evertonians saw? Is it day release from the asylum today? Start taking your meds again they will help restore your thought process and give your answers some clarity.
Last night was pitiful if DM is such an outstanding manager then why can he not see the same game as the rest of us? It’s the way things are if somebody is not playing well then fine everybody has an off day. When 6/7 of your players are just not clicking in the formation you are playing then for Gods sake you change the formation? Is this so difficult to comprehend? Lets face facts Everton under Moyes have become a more solid team in the league but in cup competitions Everton still try to play the same style of grinding out a result when in any cup competition you have to go for broke to make it through the next round and that is something that Moyes will never grasp. I do like Moyes but why the fuck was he making so many poor excuses this morning? Stop blaming others when the blame lies closer to home it takes more of a man to admit when your wrong but the man has no balls. GO NOW MOYES! Thanks for your work but face facts you have taken Everton as far as you can.

Peter would it have been any worse than Neville either giving the ball away all night or launching it aimlessly even when they went down to nine men and unless Vidarsson ever gets even half a game how will either you or I know what he can or can’t do the players on the park had their chance and were shite, Da Silva although no Ronaldinho would have given us another look at a midfielder with a range of passing beyond hoofball.

Dicky Dodd your fantastic young manager has got us into Europe twice and it looks like he hasn’t learned from his last mistake and we are staring down the barrel of another early exit at the first contender. The same young dynamic manager that has an equally abysmal record in all domestic cup competitions. As fickle as an evertonian or as blinkered as a Dickie Dodd? Oh and Dickie live on Channel Five for lots of people to see can you give us the inside line on the Keith Wyness ticketing fuck up and herding of the travelling away fans who must have been made to feel so welcome as the poor sods outside the ground were shoehorned into the Upper Bullens with no segregation from them?

Yesterday was without doubt a bad day for Moyes, but it’s ridiculous to call for him to go now. Leaving aside all that he’s achieved for the team already, what self respecting club would sack their manager six games into the new season ? (Chelsea obviously have no self respect !) - that after buying half a dozen new players in the summer, most of whom have played no more than 2 or 3 games; and when we are still in every competition and in the top half of the Prem !

Yesterday I think the fans were fantastic. The players showed great commitment and noone could be in any doubt how much the game meant to them. The vitriol that’s being heaped on certain players, Johnson in particular, is totally unwarranted. It’s not Johnson’s fault that those pens proved to be so important. We’re going to need Johnson back to his best, and a good start would be to extend him some sympathy and support right now.

I wouldn’t even blame the ref. While the decision to retake the pen was a baffling piece of nonsense, at the end of the day we still had two penalties and two chances to score, while they had two red cards.

It’s likely that the tactical formation was decided at a very late stage. Moyes would have hoped until Thursday that Arteta would be available, in which case he would probably have gone 4-4-2. Playing 3 up front was very much an attempt to make the best of the lack of creative midfielders at his disposal. By half time though, it should have been clear to him that a tactical overhaul was needed. While hoofing the ball up was leading to some opportunities as balls were laid off, or as Yakubu used his strength to win fouls, we were not getting enough possession, we were leaving spaces in midfield, and we were leaving ourselves exposed to counterattack. An astute manager should have realised the importance of defending the lead that we had : a 1-0 win would have left the Ukranians needing to beat us by 2. He should have talked about being patient and waiting for the chances to come. He could have tried to get the play flowing through the midfield and put the emphasis on retaining possession. He could have told Ossie, Johnson and McFadden to track back more when we didn’t have the ball. He could even have brought on Jagielka for McFadden. But he did none of these things. So in 45 minutes when Everton could and should have consolidated our lead, we ended up self destructing.

Seldom has a draw felt more like a defeat. But we have to somehow pick ourselves up off the floor and bounce back. And the only guy who can do that is David Moyes. I’ve a feeling that the next few weeks are going to provide some of the sternest tests yet of his ability as a coach.

I’m as disappointed as anybody with last night’s performance and result.

The thing is, in life, we all have to deal with disappointments. Moaning and whining wont make any difference. It’s negative. It just makes you bitter. What defines you, is how you deal with disappointment, learn from any mistakes you have made, and move on. That’s positive.

So we only drew. So we were crap. Take it on the chin boys. Suck it up and move forward. I guarantee that Moyes will be saying the same thing to the players this morning.

Lets put it right in the return leg and beat them comprehensively on their own turf.

If Everton don’t t*at them in the 2nd leg I wouldn’t bother coming back if I was them. Another full house subjected to that sh*te!!!! Hang your head’s in shame Moyes & CO.

It could’ve been worse, there’s always worse. Watching Neville hoof every ball upfield was painful indeed. Every time I saw him setting up one of his trademark shot-to-nothing kicks, I cringed. In fact, the only thing more painful was Yobo not hoofing it and giving possession away in our own half.


I agree with you that there were a lot of things Moyes could’ve done better, only our starting midfield was simply not one of them.

Mr Dodd. If you knew your history you will find that Moyes isn’t the first Everton manager to hit the top six. He is the first in my lifetime that leaves us humiliated in Europe.

Being better than the two worst managers in my lifetime doesn’t make anyone a hero or genius.

At the start of the season we had an expensively improved aquad, regarded by some as the best in years. This is Moyes’ team, with no excuses regarding Smith’s deadwood or lack of money, so let’s cut the crap and excuses and start expecting the kind of results and performances that any ’outstanding’ manager should get.

As far being respected throughout the football world, I’m tired of the likes of Hansen, Lawrenson, Ferguson & Mourinho talk about Moyes ’doing a good job’ in that nauseating patting a puppy on the head tone. He has their respect because he doesn’t threaten anyone.

When we were genuinely successful, other fans and managers called us all sorts of names cos’ they couldn’t beat us. That’s the kind of respect I want our manager to have.

Lee,you will accept anything wont you mate, fair play your a sucker for punishment but it does not change the fact that Moyes is not good enough at this level.

I’ve always been pro Moyes, but after that display of tactical ineptitude,

He’s a dead man walking...