John, the problem is that the league is only 38 games long. That lost points can never be retrieved. Throwing away 9 points at the start of the season is pathetic. It may not get us relegated, but it will ruin our chances for a CL place. It sends a signal, to any and all players, that we are striving for mediocracy. It shows our rivals that we are not a force to be reckoned with.
There is no excuse to be unprepared and sloppy at the start of our season. No excuse to have players unsure of our style. No excuse to play men out of position. No excuse to be tactically naive. No excuse to be unwilling to substitute underperformers. And yet, we manage to come up with excuses.
I understand the exagerated frustrations of T. Marsh. I agree with most of the complaints/observations made by C. Mcglone. I’m not advocating hysteria or mass panic, but don’t expect those of us, that are completely underwhelmed with our pathetic start, to grin and bear it.
I would love to have to eat my words about the CL place! COYB

Is it an over-reaction?

In short no...we’ve been playing this level of football for some time...I guess some people are eventually just getting sick of it...

Good football of a rare oasis at everton.

As for your analysis...a couple of points..

Firstly, there was no requirement to replace Neville with a defensive midfielder...there was already one on the pitch..

Secondly, your suggestion that the new boys new bedding in is somewhat contradicted by the FACT, that he actually brought one of them on...albeit the wrong one - in completely the wrong position.

There’s no point making excuses - it was a bad day at work for Moyes...and a dismal display by players who really can play better when they are managed more effectively...

John - I am loathe to predict that Everton will finish 5th again simply because last season ’turned out alright in your book’ and that was started badly too. Surely as fans we would be better placed wondering why the team has to hamstring iteself by playing like this at the start - why for example is DM saying the team were not prepared for the season - isn’t that his job?

I also see no reason why a team cannot have a 5ft 7 central midfielder - if the player is holding the ball up, playing to feet and moving about and creating an outlet for the ball then his height could be considered to belargely irrelevant. Yes, I know you cannot stop the other team from lumping the ball up the pitch, but football isn’t played in the air, you cannot tackle in the air and the pressure is applied on the ground... positioning is surely more important than height.

Some of the comments may well be perceived to be over reactions, and perhaps they are, however as I expect more from a manager and I would love for Everton to play adventurous football sometimes. I think, given the summer (and the previous 2), the pre-season crap and the poor start to the season - fans have every right to reach fever-pitch in their complaints.

John i hear what your saying and i hope for all our sakes that things work out ok come the end of the season. I have to question you on something though.... Baines poor crossing?! When?! If you meant every now and then fair enough because even Beckham gets it wrong sometimes but on the whole his crossing is superb!!

Size definitely becomes irrelevant when playing pretty, fast-moving football on the ground. But what about winning headers from goal-kicks? What about pressuring the opposition midfielders with physical strength? What about challenging for 50-50 balls and shielding the ball in tight situtations? All of these are key attributes of central midfielders and Pineaar has limited ability at them all. At best he can get out of tight situtations with his trickery but he’s simply too lightweight for the dirty work expected of Premiership central midfielders

I dont see Barca having problems playing small central midfield players, however a good idea it could be the problem is who fills in for his vacated wide berth?

I’m a fan of Moyes and don’t know if anyone would have been able to acheive the results he has with the resources available over the last few years but I don’t know if he has as much faith as others have in his own squad!?

Why, if we are getting beat, replace a striker with a another striker? He had Vaughan on the bench so he had the option to play two up front if need be and still have still have options on the bench.

If he has no faith in Vaughan whether it’s cos of his lack of confidence or match time then send him on loan!!

We were getting beat by Arsenal 3-0 at half-time and he left it until we went another goal down and then he replaced a striker with another striker!

Alla bit confusing to me and people wonder why people post comments on here showing their frustration!!

Arrrrrrrggghhhhh!!!

Rupert,

Can you remember the last season when we had a good start, it wasn’t one it were two seasons in a row when we quickly of the marks seasons 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 , in 2006-2007 we had 11 points after the first 5 games and 10 points after 5 games in 2007-2008, can you find some reasons behind these good starts?

Well in both these seasons we finished our pre season transfer dealings well in time and had a proper pre-season, on 14 June 2006 we had already secured T. Howard, A. Johnson and J Lescott, all key players were together for more than a month, they mixed up blended and the results followed. Next season we drafted early S. Pienaar and P. Jagielka, added L. Baines before the start of the season, who wasn’t expected to be blooded immediately and signed late Yakubu, but the core squad had a good preseason again and again the results followed.

Last season pre-season debacle, was there for all to be seen, I am quoting Michael’s report of Chicago Fire- Everton:” It was all change for the Fire — literally — after half-time, with every single Chicago player being rotated out with someone off the bench. Kinda made Everton’s one and only substitution, Osman on for the feisty Baxter, look rather pathetic”. There were simply no bodies; the pre-season friendlies were played by young reserve team players, without any chance of premiership football anytime soon. – Irving, Kissock, Molyneux , O’Kane Gosling, Baxter, Agard. With no new first team signings to be seen…

M. Kienrick “As expected, six teenagers on the bench, only Turner with ANY Premier League experience, told the story of an abysmal pre-season without a single incoming transfer.” Everton- Blackburn 2-3. One big last day signing, 2 freebies and a loaney were drafted in the last possible moment. No pre-season, no time to bed the new players, missing Cahill… desperation in the ranks – lead to abusmal start of the season.

Fast forward pre-season 2009-2010 Arteta, Yakubu, Jagielka – injured, 4 players leaving without any first team replacement to be seen, Yobo coming back from injury, Cahill coming late due to international commitments, Pienaar ditto having played in the useless Confederation Cup, Fellaini struck by virus, loosing weight and simply not fit enough to start the season, Lescott handles in a transfer request, sulking and undermining his team-mates, in your opinion is the team prepared to start the season?!?!?!?

Unfortunately this isn’t FM it’s the real world but a lot of the peoples here don’t understand what is going on under the surface, there are a lot of circumstances that put together are simply overcoming and no man on earth can’t do anything about it. The people here are only seeing every game as independent 90min performance, whereas there is a meta-game, there are different factors which are influencing the preparation and the performance of the team.

Most of the TW readers think of the players as a robots, it doesn’t matter they simply have to perform week in week out, they are paid big time they have to deliver, but its not like that, they are humans and not robots after all. For most peoples here injuries, suspensions, fatigue, confidence doesn’t matter, although these are very, very important issues which are transformed on the pitch, the basic level of thinking says Moyes is responsible for that and he is being pathetic and naive for extracting 9m GBP more from City for Lescott. That level of thinking for me is a joke.

I’m trying my best to be far more philosophical this season. I felt close to a nervous breakdown over the summer due to the piss poor management of our club.

This is the way we’ve always played under Moyes. Moyes never grabs a game by the balls and tries to win. His philosophy on the game is always keep it tight, try not to concede and see if we can nick one at the other end. It was all going to plan against Fulham until an unlucky deflection. We may have even got back on track had Fellaini or Yobo tried a bit harder with their shots.

Nothing drastic will ever happen at Everton with Moyes and Kenwright in charge. I’m resigned to Everton playing this way. We’ll win some and lose some. We might finish 5th, we might finish 10th. We might get a good cup run. Most of us know, it’s not all the doom and gloom of Marsh’s world and it’s not the happy clappy world of Richard Dodd. Everton sit somewhere in the middle of those 2 extremes. Moyes is not a genius but neither is he the antithesis of all things football. He’s an average manager who acheives things by hard work and graft rather than skill and flamboyancy. This is where we are, a loss brings out all the naysayers and a win brings out the halleluja brigade. To me we’re just distinctly average.

Alan,

Stoicism obviously agrees with you..In fact there’s probably very little alternative if you want to keep ones sanity and ones health..

Your post is as cogent as anything I’ve read on here in a very long time..It captures where we are, and the fact that we’ll be here for the forseeable future....

I’d love to accept that we are average and simply watch our games...Unfortunately I don’t think I’m wired that way....

I envy you.

Stefan, part of my point was in fact precisely what you have stated, that for a club to be ’ready’ then it helps to bring the players in early and ’bed the, in’. The point is is that DM did not do that either this season or last; now whether or not the money was there, it is his job to see that the team are ’ready’. This season, the club indicated that the money was in place - that being the case, surely DM could have done something to prepare the team.

For me he has no reason to complain that the team are not ready when it is his responsibility to ensure that they are. As he said to Hughes over the Lescott saga - the buck stops with him at EFC.

I agree that players are not robots and that they cannot be expected to perform miraculously every week, but I would have thought that the style and formation in which they play is directly attributable to the manager. As too is their level of confidence and fatigue - he is responsible for setting training patterns (or his team) and for judging a player’s mental and physical state - for me these areas are very definitely part of his purview.

Without re-hashing the transfer window, EFC let go several players and for weeks brought in no-one who would add to the first team strength. Whether or not delaying on the Lescott deal was a good idea to me is not relevant, what is relevant is that DM did not prepare the team.

"But what about winning headers from goal-kicks? What about pressuring the opposition midfielders with physical strength? What about challenging for 50-50 balls and shielding the ball in tight situtations?"

But John, if there are 2 defensive midfielders playing behind him, then they can take care of that side of things surely?? Playing 2 defensive midfielders is not necessarily bad if you have a 3rd midfielder who’s capable of putting his foot on the ball and dictating play.

We desperately need a footballer in midfield whilst Arteta’s injured.

I read in a previous post that Bily can play centrally too. Can anyone say whether he can operate as a playmaker, or is he more of a box-to-box type?

Ciaran, I’m just worn out from it all. Every season seems to be the same, it’s like Everton have inhabited some kind of Stephen Hawkins type worm hole where the same events keep playing over and over. There is this feeling of deja vu or groundhog day and according to the majority of Evertonians we should be grateful for that.

I could type out exactly what will happen this season, how we will play and where we will finish. Then I can type out that next summer they’ll be a protracted transfer saga involving Arteta. He’ll be sold after the season begins and Moyes will then sign some players then not play them until Christmas. We’ll all just have to lump it and try and convince ourselves it was good business.

I bet even Tony Marsh doesn’t even have to type anything new anymore, he can just cut and paste from last season’s posts and the season before that.

I still look forward to us playing and winning. I’ll still get pissed off when we lose but I’m feeling more and more cut off.

"that for a club to be ’ready’ then it helps to bring the players in early and ’bed the, in’. The point is is that DM did not do that either this season or last"

"This season, the club indicated that the money was in place - that being the case, surely DM could have done something to prepare the team."


I haven’t laughed like that for a long time Rupert but I prefer to examine the facts and if you for a split second think that there were money to be spend either last or this season you are leaving in a dream, dream land and there is no point debating.

Facts are last season funds were released AFTER AJ was sold and SHOCKING the amount spend on players mirrored the amount received for - hence the late arrivals. This season all the signings were made AFTER JL was sold and SHOCKING the amount spend on players mirrored the amount received for Lescott. What the club says is irrelevant, watch club’s actions, observe the facts and make your conclusions. Between the news of Lescott’s sale and interest in Billy and his signing there were only 24h, what a timing, is there any connection, how do you think?

“For me he has no reason to complain that the team are not ready when it is his responsibility to ensure that they are.” Again its tough when you are missing the spin of your team – Jags, Arteta, Yakubu, your most influential players after them in Cahill and Pienaar haven’t had a proper rest, do you think that Cahill and Pienaar are looking fresh, your only other senior CD is coming back from injury and you have your record signing hit by virus which caused him loosing weight and being clearly unfit. These six players are your match winners, the players you look up to get you through tough times. The most outstanding player in my eyes so far is L. Saha and funny enough he had a very good pre-season where he hasn’t missed a training…

Alan,

You were philosophical for a moment...The light gleamed for an instant and now it’s night again...

I agree Ciaran, philosophical was not the right word. Immensly pissed off and utterly powerless to affect anything would have been a better choice of words.

Stefan - if one assumes that your logic is correct and that DM only had the money from sales to spend then fine, but how does this serve to absolve DM from his responsibilties as a manager for preparing the team for the season ahead.

Assuming only JL money is available, he therefore has the decision to sell and spend according to his schedule - which would imply that he chose to wait - and is therefore his responsibility.

That the spine of the team were injured is of course something likely to impact pre-season, but these players didn’t drop out in June they have been out for a long time so the core of the team that started this season were the same people who started last season - I don’t remember them playing as badly then as they did on Sunday. Pre-season was organised by DM and I do believe that he has to take the responsibility for its effectiveness. Although I suspect that we are unlikely to agree on this point any time soon!

Either way, I agree that to believe the spin from EFC about money is to enter Wonderland with Alice.

“Assuming only JL money is available, he therefore has the decision to sell and spend according to his schedule - which would imply that he chose to wait - and is therefore his responsibility.”

Rupert again, please observe the facts and then make a conclusion, he didn’t choose to wait he was holding out to extract max value from Lescott, City’s first offer was 15M GBP in The end Lescott was sold for 24GBP, there is 9m GBP difference, which is a huge, huge amount of money for EFC bearing in mind that last two seasons there is a grand total of ZERO investment in the club, all the transfer funds are generated by Moyes, to earn an extra ) GBP is not dithering it’s a shrewd business but on this site its labelled pathetic and embarrassing.

Stefan,

You’re assuming that if Moyes hadn’t been so stubborn and began negotiations with city earlier in the summer..that we still wouldn’t have got 24mill...

No point basing your conclusions on the sand of assumption.