OK, we were shocking. Passing, movement, confidence, all shot to pieces.

Now factor in Arteta, Pienaar, Jagielka, Heitinga, Saha, a fit Yakubu. Do you reckon it would have made no difference?

There is absolutely no point in drawing any conclusions from Everton’s results at the moment. We are skimping by week by week until we get the main men back. There’s one time and one time only to judge a season, and that’s when it’s finished.

Oh yes, and Benfica just happen to have a truly class side right now, screaming away at the top of their league and playing excellent football. And where on earth do you get the idea that their players will be on £4k a week? possibly in 1977, is that what you meant?

It wasn’t an even contest. Pointless debate.

"Pointless debate"? Listen, Mr Kirwin, I’m getting just a tad miffed at your dismissive attitude to other posters and your belligerent attempts to dictate what is and isn’t discussed on this website.

In fact, if it’s pointless, you won’t mind that I’m going to delete your post, will you?

I agree with much of your comments. In the papers today it said there will be a City and Utd bidding war for Jack. Now I’m ready to get shot down but bring it on... £20M — I’d snap their hands off.

Billy however is just about winning me over. At least he puts his foot in. All-in-all, if we get past the group stages with players coming back, unlike last season we may end the season on a high...

Semi’s of the Europa... FA Cup win....... and 19th in the Prem... LoL.

Theres every point in drawing conclusions from our results at the moment. There's no fucking excuse for the inability of the players to do the basics right or the team to affect any plausible tactics. What do we draw our conclusions from then if not from the dire shite we are being seved up, the fucking price of fish!

The only good thing today was the 2:2 draw between AEK and BATE.

We are indeed skimping from week to week Alan and as this is the Europa League, 2 losses (but not a 3rd) will see us through to the knock-out stages for which we will have everybody (including Neill and Heitinga) at our disposal (bar Arteta as it seems). So, like you, I still retain some optimism.

Alan - How can you say "There is absolutely no point in drawing any conclusions from Everton’s results at the moment."

Why? do these games not count? Should these players never be expected to play for the first team again? Of course there is point!
I think you will find yours is the pointless post.

To John, yes, in a lot of areas you were correct, misplaced passes, lack of control and not moving into space. One of my worries was that there seemed to be a lack of passion from a lot of the players.

One incident early on caught my eye when Fellaini, who was the best of a bad bunch, should have laid it off to Yakubu but I think had a shot instead. I watched Yakubu just waving his arms around to Fellaini and after that hardly broke into a trot as well as being booked for a bad tackle.

In my opinion Moyes should have subbed him a lot earlier for young Agard who at least showed some ball control when he came on. I thought it was one of Everton's worst performances in a long time and I’m not very happy having to say that.

As regards player payments, I do think that even though Everton do not pay the highest money in the Prem, on average it would be quite a bit higher than Portugal, and even though you can't buy Passion, it should just come with the territory. Once again, fingers crossed for the Blues.

We were shite tonite, as we have been all season. No football, no passion and as soon as the 1st goal went in it was game over. Again, when we needed our manager to change things, he didn't.

Benfica were superior in all aspects tonight: passing, movement, control, management.... Until some of our fans take their heads out of the clouds and accept we are crap, we will put up with this rubbish we see every week.

All I hear is excuses. Tonight's team was pretty strong. Arteta, Pienaar and Jags missing. Of the others, none are guaranteed first teamers. Rodwell for Neville is what most people were clamouring for after we had beaten the mighty Blackburn and Hull.

We blew it in the summer big time and, as many of us predicted it's coming back to haunt us right now. If there is any Everton fan happy with things right now or thinks we are playing well, they are blind. It's the most boring football i have seen in many years and a million miles away from winning anything and our manager doesn't seem able to halt it.

I see the word ’passion’ used frequently by other posters. At the end of the day, passion alone will only get you so far, especially in Europe.

Our major downfall was our technical ability, or lack of. Stray passing without any pressure, poor ball control, poor decision-making, poor positioning, one-paced and one-dimensional. It doesn’t help carrying passengers like Hibbert, Gosling and Jo in the team either.

I agree that our football will improve with the return of our more gifted players but this should not excuse our performances of late.

Ok, I honestly wouldn’t say that today’s performance was all that bad in comparison to the last 4 games. We controlled much of the game and should have scored a couple times.

Yea, we could have moved to space and made better runs and we should have finished on at least one of our opportunities. But what lost it for us was a couple of defensive collapses. I think that we have even had more opportunities than them but like I said, there were a couple mental lapses that led to their goals.

Were we outplayed? Yes. But to say that we were dominated throughout, I think, is wrong. We controlled the game for much of the first half. But, for whatever reason, whether it be a lack of good passing, lack of passion, or even lack of shear quality necessary to compete at this level, we couldn’t finish our opportunities.

At the end of the day, they capitalized on their opportunities, we didn’t and that’s why we lost.

I, like everyone else here, am not happy with the way things are going. We need Pienaar back for that creativity. We need Nev’s leadership. We need Jags to play some solid center half for us. Saha was out for this game which might be why we didn’t score. And as good as Billy has been, he is not Mikel Arteta, not yet at least. So, until we have those guys back, I’m not ready to blame it on Moyes.

That said, the squad on the field should be playing better than they have been, specifically with passing and going to space to create passes. That’s basic football, stuff you learn when you’re 10 years old. Maybe we’re just tired, I don’t know...

I think one thing Mr Kirwin was trying to say was that these games haven’t really shown our true quality as a team and, therefore you can’t say that we’re mediocre crap. I don’t agree with everything he said or, more specifically, how he said it, but if that’s what he was going for, he has a point.

Gosling was awful and will never be good enough. Would he get a sniff at the top 4, Villa, City, Spurs?

Jo is woeful.

Captain Cahill was non-existent, and when we conceded the first heads dropped, where was he? He never got involved. People can say what they like about him not playing in his favourite position, but he is still playing in center mid!!! Is it too much to ask one of our top earners and captain for the evening to have some positional sense, ability to read the game, control and pass a ball.

We played not to lose again, at home, playing aimless long balls that kept coming back at us. In the second half when Benfica got out of 1st gear they looked liked scoring every time they counter attacked.

A few observations from last night:

The radio phone in queried why Yakubu ended up on the wing as our only recognised striker and some trying not to blame DM, I’ve said it before and will again if that wasn’t DM then can I have his job please - useless tactic

Referee was abysmal, two Benfica players stayed down reeling up until the final second they were about to be put on the stretcher by the umpa lumpas that bimbled on the pitch with it then suddenly rose like Lazarus - surely a case of simulation? I played against Portugese players whilst living in Jersey a few years ago - they go down like a sniper shot them and roll about the pitch screaming for cards, cheating bastards but nothing the world doesnt already know - for EPL think back to Ronaldo and any of the Chelski lot

Hibbert running the full width of the pitch to make two great tackles near the end showed at least he still gave a shit with the game already dead and buried - my hat raised to him

Jo is a truly terrible player, his first touch loses the ball followed shortly by a theatrical fall.

Gosling is not ready for this level, he looked like a little boy lost against Benfica.

The smallest squad in the EPL even with the number of injuries we have is an absolute disgrace deserving a public apology from the club, if you havent got players to rotate and rest then this is an eventual outcome - not rocket science.

Can someone at Finch Farm teach Baines or anyone else that a cross needs to beat the first man?

Shite match but not unexpected and that lot aren’t the strongest team in Europa.

Where are the usual aplogists besides Alan Kirwin now? Come on Daffy Dodd lets hear your pearls of wisdom today.

Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush, the Mulberry Bush etc et bloody cetera. The same well worn arguments being played out, and largely I agree with the postings above and on other threads- excluding the knee jerk Sack Moyes Now! ones. Yes, we have injuries, yes we had another screw up summer, yes we should still go through this group etc.
BUT.......perhaps the worst thing about last night for me was watching Fulham in Rome earlier. The Cottagers were robbed, by a shocking sending off, a double deflected goal, after completley outplaying Roma IN ROME, certainly for the first half. No real stars, no big money transfers, Hodgson has only been there five minutes, and took over a team heading for the Championship. But he is a good coach.Fulham played football- passed to the same colour shirts, looked for space,, tried to use the flanks, LOOKED INTERESTED. I’ve never gone along with the idea that a team is a direct reflection of the manager- Hodgson is hardly Bill Hicks reincarnated after all- but Moyes for me has not been there this season, and I think the same of the team. No, I don’t know who we would replace Moyes with if he went(Martinez? Hodgson?Jol? ), but for the first time under him I truely think we’ve gone as far as we can. Yes, Jags/Arteta/Pinnear will help on their return (although I have a feeling we’ve had the best we are ever going to get from our favourite Spaniard).
I despaired watching them last night. I’ve seen some crap Everton teams in my time but they looked spineless clueless and actually largely uninterested- and that is not something you can say that often about the team since my first match in 1967.
Hope this isn’t too incoherent- night matches and 6am work starts dont mix !!

Fucking hell Kirwin, if we all had your attitude we’d be watching Everton play conference football. Do you have any passion towards Everton? You don’t seem in the slightest bit arsed when we lose bringing out the same shit excuses that moyes brings out. It’s like listening to Wally Smith.

That team were well capable of a better performance than that last night. They lacked any organisation and pattern of play so Moyes must take his main share of the blame. We didn’t even compete and only some wonder saves by Howard stopped us being thrashed again.

From Mr Motivator himself on the OS:

"Tonight we did lack quality (going forward)," he continued. "But we knew that before the game, it wasn’t something that surprised us.

"We are trying to talk about the players in the team and give them some confidence and some of them did okay, there were one or two good performances."

We’re trying to give them confidence? By saying they lack quality?

I could imagine what Benficas coach said before the game and at half time.
Before
Right lads , these where shit last time but they have got some players back and there at home so keep it tight and test the fullbacks.
Half-Time
Ok these are still shit, but the fullbacks are better, attack through the middle on the floor as the centre halves turn like the titanic. scoring 5 again is not beyond us.
Later on
Right Mr Aimer go for it

Steve
I agree with you, this is the worst I have seen us since Moyes took over. I know that we have players out, but surely if Moyes is so well thought of, then the quality of the rest of the players should be better than it was when he first arrived, thats why I was so angry last night. As others have already said, when the first goal went in, I knew that was it. We seem to be there for the taking at the moment. Why do our defenders panic when we are under attack? Distin, Yobo and Hibbert have a lot of experience behind them. Is it asking too much to expect the ball to be collected, then PASSED to a teammate and not booted either into space or straight bact to the opposition? I do accept that perhaps our main problem ( among many others) is midfield. With Arteta and Pienaar back, perhaps there will be more scope for the clearing defenders??
I just felt so despairing watching last night. It just seemed so ominous whenever Benfica moved forward. West Ham wont be easy on Sunday and their confidence will surely be a damn sight higher than ours after a draw with Arsenal and beating Villa.
Youve got a lot of morale raising to do Mr Moyes, time to earn your corn methinks.

Truely woeful performance, completely agree with Mr Love above, no change from Baines or Hibbert so attack the two in the middle, who both had mares, but as usual with lady luck pissing on our chips in bucket loads, the ball lands at a strikers feet when pinging off a few players, in the second instance an offside player.

The 18th lino missed the shirt pulling just before their second, what do they actually do if not notice things like that?

Rodders is heading for burnout and will end up getting sent off as he is acting his young age when putting a poor pass in he runs after it and risks giving away many fouls.

Bily needs to know where he is playing and start moving, FFS he dawdles about and hardly finds space for himself.

Yak was deciding to move to the wing, gets it......and then what? no one shows for him and there is no one in the middle to cross to.

Gosling was worse than useless, the tough of an elephant and lost the ball immediately prior to their first goal, I was made up when he was subbed......then I realised who was coming on a Brazilian in name only, check his passport, probably says Slough.

You can blame Moyes all you want but those useless fookers in the middle should not be able to get away with that kind of performance and Moyes should rollick them publically, as thatkind of performance is simply not good enough. We could have played all night and not scored.

I actually felt a little sorry for Moyes last night, as I could imagine him turning around to look at his bench for a game changer and then asking Round to pinch him, as he must have been in some wacky nightmare.

Can’t add anything to the above as it’s all been said. Our season can only really start once Pienaar Jags, Neville (yes Neville !) and Arteta are back. Hopefully we will still have qualified for the second phase and still be on the coat tails of the top six places.

On a bleak evening it was good to have my heart lifted by the sight of Valente in the stand, or rather his missus ! :-) Someone did alright for themselves !

Yeah - ok - let’s Sack the manager. Afterall, we were beaten by Benfica at home in the Europa League having finished fith last year, reaching the Cup Final and are in Europe again having been fighting relagation for years before he came.

Get rid of him yeah - forget the fact that the numpty is operating with the same budget as Stoke, Hull, Portsmouth, West Ham etc - those high fliers who always do much better than us. Let’s throw the club into dissarray and sack the manager.

A club like Everton without a ’Billionaire’ cannot cope with losses of their major playmakers: Arteta, Pienaar and their no1 defender - Jags. Similarly, your top teams would also struggle. The fact is we are skint, we have the worse injury crisis to our creative players that I have ever known but we are still in Europe and I’d expect a pickup towards the business end of the season when creative players become available - it is just a case of hanging on in there - Moyes’s hands are tied - did you see the bench last night? Anyway - Sack him - good idea,

Injuries apart, we were just not good enough last night. And i know you will say that we cannot just dismis the injuries, they are a big factor, but I put the blame firmly in other areas. Like it or not, DM has been sold down the river by Blue Bill. We did not react quickly enough during the summer, as we have not done for the past two summers. Had we not sold Lescott, we would not have bought anyone of note, but thats another debate. We had Heitinger and Neill both looking from the stands last night, because we bought them to late once again. I am not saying that they would have made a difference, but each game we play we are chopping and changing, there is no continuity. A more settled team would, I feel given Benfica a more stern test. Having said that, Arteta, Pienaar, Jagielka, Heitinga, Saha, and fit Yakubu will make a difference, but I hope it will not be to late by then. We need I feel one more win to qualiffy for the second phase, then hopefully we should see the true Everton.

Agree with most of what has been said. Benfica was the better team on the night. That being said the brand of football we play time and time again is so negative and one-dimensional that its painful to watch. At least at home we should have made a game of it.. instead of the hoofball crap that we persist with. Also, i hear a lot of talk about passion, but then we see players like Yakubu and Fellaini (whom some people seem to think was our best on ground???) strolling around instead of closing players down and trying to win the ball back. I’m no big fan of Hibbert, but at least he had enough bottle to fight till the end. Fulham may have lost as well, but at least the Fulham fans can take pride in manner of which their team played. How many of us can say the same? Or when was the last time we could truly say we were proud of our team’s performance?? I honestly can’t remember and frankly i’m getting sick of it all.

For me, the team that played last night...is effectively only 3 players short of our most effective team....and that includes replacing the Yak with Saha..

SO I don’t see how anyone can dismiss it as irrelevant on the basis of missing players...Of course they’d have made a difference...but the way certain players performed who are repeatedly played by Moyes - is very pertinent..

Oh and by the way Alan....who exactly are you taking off for Heitinga?

Alan Kirwin,

Why do you keep posting in Utter Shite !!!

If the game was still going on now, we wouldn’t have scored! Benfica are a good side, but we made them look like Brazil (good Brazilians, not our loaned ’£20m’ striker).
Can someone tell me what the point is of packing a midfield with five men, and then resorting to long balls (and so bypassing the midfielders?). Why play a clearly unfit Yakubu up front on his own?

As a fan of decent football it was nice to watch some decent play at Goodison last night. Obviously it wasnt by the team in Blue but beggars can’t be choosers these days.

Can someone tell me why for the past 7 years Moyes has based his formation on 451 to plug the hole in front of the back 4 yet when it comes to playing Benfica whose forward line contains a player who loves to drop off (Saviola) we play 4 in midfield and neither of them seems to have been told to cover the back 4?

And also, can someone tell me why Moyes, who is a manager who puts the team ethic before individual merit, continues to play Cahill when the poor guy is so out of form that hes contributing zilch to the team. Alot of us have said that if you took the goals out of his game then he is a poor player and I think its proving our point at the moment.

The ironic thing about last night is that quite a few players played well individually but because the coaching is so clueless the team just doesnt gel and has no idea how to create chances other than to launch the ball into the box.

I can live with losing to a better team.
My main gripe is our lack of real leaders, real voices on the pitch.
PN is by far the most influencial player in our squad and in my eyes most worthy of the captains armband.
Looking past him though, who else stands out as someone who would scream and shout at the players, aswell as motivating them.
I guess this could be down that we buy players who have actually achieved zlich and thus PN is actually the only true "winner" in EFC.

I only got to see the seond half last night but my god we were shockingly poor. I thought Fellani (and im not picking on him) was very poor with his wayward passing as was the rest of the team, as is the norm I guess these days. What is it about Everton players and their inability to pass-and-move??? Benifica made it look oh see easy!! Moyes should watch this game over and over he might fudging learn something!! agree we are missing some key players but there is no excuse for that sort of performance. There was absolutely nothing about Everton at all on the pitch, we couldnt even tackle.

I was there last night. It was embarrassing to watch, worst display I have seen for a long time. No fight, no heart, no nothing.

No more excuses about injuries we should be able to put up a better display than that, I can count the amount of chances we had on one hand....shocking!

The whole team looked like they weren’t interested.

’I was there last night. It was embarrassing to watch, worst display I have seen for a long time. ’
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Have you missed the rest of this season?

The coaches aren’t coaching, the few footballing players we have are being dragged down to clogger level as opposed to having our cloggers strive to be footballers.

No cohesive unit ANYWHERE on the pitch this season, the famous team harmony and playing for each other, has also gone from our squad. Injuries? Hettinger shattering the wage structure? Moyes treatment of Lescott? I spy another one of those clear the air team bonding session coming up.

Ciarán. No I haven’t but they seem to be getting worse.

’I was there last night. It was embarrassing to watch, worst display I have seen for a long time. ’
------------------------------

Have you missed the rest of this season?

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From what I've seen of Everton this season, lasts night game was the most shameful display of ’football’ I've seen by us with no real excuses forthcoming. Lack of enthusiam and effort and actually been up for playing in the Blue jersey is the managers fault entirely. Its his job to motivate the players he has at his disposal and clearly the 11 on the pitch were headless chickens who hadnt got a clue what they were doing or what was expected of them.

Stev guy, re Mrs Valente, he’s certainly done alright there. I wonder what first attracted her to the multi millionaire footballer.

Which brings me to my point, surely the 5th best team (last year), in the premier league could attract better players than the portugeuse league. They surely wouldn’t have cost more than some of our lot.

Anthony, To say last night was the worst performance this season is pure crap...

There’s at least 5 other games where we’ve played worse football...starting with the 5-0 thrashing in Portugal — and including some games we’ve won.

I was just left empty after last night's performance, it’s fair to say we were out-played by a better side, their link-up play up front was at times superb.

But enough about how good they were, I was disappointed with our performance but really disappointed in the attitude and lack of passion of our boys. We may be missing our creative players, Pinnear and Arteta but where was the leader on the pitch last night. Phil Neville may not be the most talented player in the world but can you remember that feeling you had when he went through Ronaldo...it was like someone had lit a fire in my belly.

Last night I only saw two players with any kind of fight or desire: Cahill and Hibbert, Hibbert's tackle was my highlight of the game, he got booked for it but at least he showed some true determination and desire.

I really hope the boys can pick themselves up from this and get that much needed win to get their confidence back. We need to find some of that fight and team togetherness that we’ve seen and loved over the last few seasons.

Even though times are hard now I really believe that Moyes has built a squad that we can be proud of. If we had this amount of injuries 5-7 years ago we’d be putting our boots on ourselves. It wasn’t that long ago when we were playing Steve Watson as our make-shift striker up front.

It is going to be a very difficult period from now up until Christmas, this is the time we need to get behind the lads and be the 12th man and give the boys all the support we can at the moment. Once we start getting some of those injured players back we should have a first 11 and a bench that will give Moyes the options he needs to change and win games.

People may be feeling the doom and gloom, but the lads and Moyes will turn it around and put that big smile back onto our faces. We had a terrible start last year and look how well we did. COYB’s

“I think tonight we should take the positives out of the first half, we really put them under the cosh but they showed their class and really they are a Champions League side so I think we can hold our heads up high and say we have given it a go." Hibbo, The Post

I was at the game and we didn’t put them ’under the cosh’ at any point. I also don’t think we ’gave it a go’. We played without any obvious passion and that is the biggest disappointment.

Hibbo can be accused of many things, rightly or wrongly, but never of lacking passsion.

Therefore, I hope this is just an aftermatch comment from a footballer, and not something he truely believes. Moyes cannot allow the players to believe last night was one of those ’we gave it our all’ occassions.

As for ’they are a Champions League side’ so that’s OK then ...... if this is an indication of the team’s belief in themselves then that will have more impact on our season than any injury list. They should be angry, they should be burning with desire to make amends — they shouldn’t be saying ’well they where a good side.’

As for Moyes and his ’we’ll settle for a draw tonight’ commenst before the game .... hardly the rousing send off to inspire a bit of backbone!

Ciarán Last night's game was the worst I've seen this season and we could have easily being spanked 0-5, agruing whether or not it's the worse game we’ve played this season really does tell what a state we are in. I for one was really upset at what I saw last night, it was really depressing stuff.