ToffeeWeb - Season 2007-08

The Mail Bag

Idealistic?

For me, entertaining football isn?t solely a product of having skilful players on the pitch. Yeah, sure it helps, but for me entertaining football is a by-product of an ethos of a football club. It is a much sought-after value and in this age of Big Fours it is a necessity for clubs who seek to compensate for a lack of potential silverware with entertaining brands of football.

Let's face it, winning ugly is great of it guarantees silverware. Lose the silverware and there?s no point in playing ugly is there? Who wants to lose ugly? If a football club had a manager for five or six seasons and won a couple of trophies but didn?t play attractive football that would be ok wouldn?t it? If a football club had a manager for five or six seasons, didn?t come close to winning a trophy and still played god-awful football that would be unacceptable. Wouldn?t it? In this age? In this world of punter pleasing entertainment?

To jump back to my original point ? entertaining football doesn?t just rely on the return of injury of one or two gifted individuals. Entertaining football should be a base demand of every individual who plays for that team ? drilled into their mentality and accepted as a standard.
Jon Sellick, Crosby Posted 23/09/2007 at 16:43:47

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Michael Kenrick

I think the same goes for attacking football and scoring goals, which is why Moyes's team was so inept on Thursday. The ethos of attacking football has been absent for six years under Moyes. Not that it was really here before that under Smith. I think the last time I enjoyed watching Everton mount fast slick attacking forays was under Joe Royle...

Chris Marston
1 Posted 23/09/2007 at 17:03:23

Good players turned bad!

What is it with Everton??? Every time the club buys a decent player, the very same player in the space of a year turns to utter crap! Especially strikers!!! Aaagggghhhhh!!!! I'm so annoyed!!!! Moyes to go, I've never seen such dire football.

I don't care if Moyes has turned the club around... to me, it's simple: a better manager would have turned around the club even more! Yakubu, £11M and on the bench, it says it all! Beattie, now scoring freely, it says it all!

Roy coyne
2 Posted 23/09/2007 at 19:18:05

This sadly is what we have become after the years hovering around the relegation end of the table we embraced anything that moved us up the table thus 4-5-1 at home became acceptable to most of our supporters and I include myself in this no more sitting in my seat sobbing with relief at the Wimbledon game but now that we have become a mid table(5th-10th)club our original standards are slowly coming back to us and what we see is not acceptable any more the problem is MR Moyes is still churning out a mid field that will curtail most teams is woefully short of class so either he changes or we change managers in theory anyhow for all Bills faults loyalty to his manager is not one of them and its fair to say Moyes has kept the pressure off Kenwright but now I think the fans are turning more people are accepting that the Tony Marsh type of fan have a point.

Matt Willey
3 Posted 23/09/2007 at 22:54:21

Lets face it the last two games have exposed just how much we rely on Arteta and to some extent Cahill, we have been lucky to a degree in that Arteta has been rarely absent...

Gravesen was brought to address the midfield inadequacies and this was well received by the fans... admittedly Fernandes was a better long term option, the failure to land him was not really the fault of Moyes , it lies squarely with the board and we all know it.

Moyes has had to work with the somewhat limited (in terms of attacking ability) remnants of a midfield. Should we really be surprised that they have failed to create chances for our deprived forwards?

Should we level our criticism at Moyes, the board or the players ... well I think it should be shared out ... but lets be honest a midfield with any one of Cahill, Arteta or Gravesen would have added the necessary guile with which to dispatch Metallist and also give Villa a decent match.

I think Moyes is at fault for not dropping Hibbert, replacing him with Neville... but a midfield of Carsley, Jags, Pienaar and Osman is hardly awe-inspiring either. Looking retrospectively, his tactics show a degree of desperation / exasperation whilst not having any of his key midfield charges available...

I think the board are at fault for dilly-dallying with a crucial component in the new Everton - Manuel Fernandes, a player of rare class and quality.

I think the ’other’ players are at fault, but only marginally... some players seem unaware of their own limitations, attempted 40 yard passes to feet look great when the likes of Fabregas or Beckham play them ... when certain players in our side attempt them they look embarrassing...

But most of all, injuries to key players at key times are at fault. Yes perhaps we should have pursued Vogel, Koumas or someone else with a bit of attacking nouse in foresight of such problems but this goes back to the board and financing again.

Some of the coaching has been poor too, but when you consider the aforementioned limitations of players it is difficult to ask them to fulfill multiple roles with different skills required to operate in them...

harrycharles
4 Posted 24/09/2007 at 00:16:28

We have two players that pass the ball so bad at the moment [Hibbert and Neville, that thirty per cent of are atacking play is lost,put either Valente at right back or jagielki,and play carsley with a atacking midfielder, until graveson or cahill is fit.