And what is it that makes you so confident that we have a realistic chance of grabbing 4th? Could it possibly be the impressive and on-going progress we have made under Moyes - the man you say is the reason we won’t finish 4th.

We ballsed it up in Lisbon, yet we have just enjoyed back to back victories over last year’s Champions League finalists. If they weren’t big games, I don’t know what are.

You are wasting your time mate. You can look back at the level of opposition we have gone out of europe against over a period of years now, and the manner in which we have shot ourselves in the foot is always the same. Absolute lack of ability to play football under pressure away from home and absolutely zero composure. Unfortunately many of our fans will always reach for the excuse manual and there is always a different one to hand. The simple fact is though, over a period of seasons, Moyes has proven to be completely out of his depth in europe and completely out of his depth in the big games, as you rightly say. In response to Howard, I put it to you that games against Manchester United and Chelsea are not big in terms of pressure, they are pressure free. We are expected to lose. They are big in terms of billing but not in terms of pressure, that is the difference. The Merseyside Derby, now that is a different cup of cha. And Moyes record is truly awful. The pattern is there if you are willing to see it.

Howard if you look at the current Man U and Chelski side they are no great shakes, both having been beaten this season by much lesser sides. If you want to see the sort of pride and passion I wanted to see Everton take on in Europe have a look at Fulham’s previous Euro games this season not the gutless shite we had instead.

Neil S put into words exactly what I think.
It will be interesting to see how Moyes sets his stall for tonights game.
Equally it will be interesting to see how the players react after their humiliation in Lisbon.
6th place will not be ours by default we will have to earn it. The question is, do the players and most importantly David Moyes have the balls for it?

A fairly un-original,generic article,we’ve all read at least a dozen times,but I’ve got a pretty good idea as to why it was published..


A calender year ago,you probably would have recieved universal agreement.Yet in that year,we’ve beaten Liverpool,Man.Utd twice,drawn twice away to Chelsea,and once at the Emirates.

So clearly,progress is being made ! Not a single club in the world finds it easy playing against the deliberately-named Big-Four,and I doubt you would have submitted this article had we earned a draw in Lisbon.

Kevin, let me ask you something then; You say progress is being made, yet we currently sit 9th in the league, with little realistic chance of gaining re-entry into any form of european competition, and the defeat to Lisbon isn’t surprising or isolated at all, it is the latest in a long line of euro-embarrassments that follow a clear pattern of failure.

So, you tell me...how are we ’progressing’??

It looks to me like we are treading water at best, with a very real danger of going backwards at some rate depending on what happens over the summer.

His entire argument focuses on the perceived notion we choke against the big names. The facts say,our head-to-head results are improving against said teams.

We’re talking specifics here,Neil. Stick to the argument at hand..

I am happy to do that Kevin, and it will only show that you are missing the point completely.

Aside from the fact that Moyes overall record against the big 4 is really poor, lets take these recent improved displays and talk about them then.

How are they ’big games’??

If we lost to Man United, Chelsea or Arsenal...what would you say??

You would say what we all would, that is was to be expected.

Moyes himself said that he told the players to ’go out and attack’ against Manchester United, what does that suggest to you? It flies in the face of Moyes approach through 99% of his tenure at Everton and suggests to me that the game was approached with a ’nothing to lose’ mentality.

You see, that is the difference between simply playing a ’big name’, and winning a ’big game’.

The big games are the ones where THE PRESSURE IS ON.

Knock-out ties, Merseyside Derbies, matches that have a direct and irreversable bearing on our league position, be it euro qualification or relegation etc.

The point you are missing, and there is a huge list of examples over 8 years, is that Moyes simply cannot organise/motivate/coach his team to handle the pressure cooker situations where they really NEED to get a result.

Big game bottlers are what I see, from top to bottom. The players go out in these all-or-nothing ties with such a fear of defeat that, as Mikel Arteta commented after Lisbon, they simply "don’t know whether to defend or attack".

Lisbon are a poor, poor side and i’d like you to tell me, if you have any knowledge of them, how many of their players you think would get into our team? I would say one, at most.

The reason we were beaten is very simple; The mentality and coaching methods of David Moyes are completely geared to ’over-achievement’ with a poor set of players.

His results with those methods domestically, in terms of league placings, simply cannot be argued against.

Unfortunately though, because the players are drilled to the point of being robots with this fear of losing the ball in dangerous areas and the fear of conceding goals instead of the positivity they need to go out and win games....we always fall short when the big games come around.

When teams pressurise us high up the park and come at us with intent, we panic. We revert to what is second nature and what is taught to them every day in training and, unfortunately, that is to "hold what you have, don’t take any chances, and get the ball as far away from goal as possible".

In Lisbon we had Saha, Donovan, Osman, Bilyaletdinov, Arteta and Pienaar on the pitch.

Yet we had no composure, failed to string 3 passes together for 90% of the game, and couldn’t muster a single serious attempt on goal until we were 1-0 down and 68 minutes in.

You tell me how that is down to anything other than bad management and I am all ears??

Feel better now ?

The article isn’t about general malaise,he repeats one specific point: That we don’t play well,or get good results against the top teams. The recents facts say otherwise. That is all.

"Poor set of players.." The ones who have finished 6th,5th & 5th in the last three years. There’s at least fifteen teams in that time who have been poorer. Have we cracked on ? No. Villa have,Spurs have,and Man.City have. We’ve gone backwards.

But that’s not what the article was talking about ! I was simply stating facts that contradicted the original point !

Everton being shit this season,or Moyes "isn’t good enough," are valid talking points. Which belong to a different article !! Enjoy the game..

Kevin, we must be reading it differently then, or interpreting it differently at least. He brushes on the ’top 4’ point but mainly centres around Derby games, the cup final and Lisbon. And the article title says ’Big GAMES’, not big names.

Maybe we agree then, I’m unsure.

The way I see it is we have the capability to beat any team on our day when the pressure is off, but in reverse there are few I fancy us to beat when the pressure is on.

I believe the reason for that to be that David Moyes is a negative coach who’s first intention is always to stop the opposition and ensure the players dont take risks.

Well, im sorry but those kind of philosophies fly in the face of what it takes to compete in europe. We need to do more serious ball work,more work on patterns of play and far more development on getting a side out on the pitch that go out with a clear intention and mandate to take the game to the opposition by playing passing football, instead of clearing their lines and thinking foremost about ’not losing’.

I think the fact he blamed Rodwell for the goal in the first leg sums the guy up personally. You can be sure next time Jack will smash that ball down the pitch to nobody and invite all the pressure back on instead of trying a backwards pass. But hey...at least he wont get shouted at by the manager for trying to play football and keep possession!!

He doesn’t "brush on the top 4,",as four of the six paragraph’s in this article dicuss them ! No interpretation required,just read it as it’s written.

If you want to go off on your own tangent,or rant about a wider context,fine. But please don’t misrepresent mine,or the author’s position to suit your general,yet widely-echoed frustration..

Neil - didn’t he blame Rodwell for the quality of the pass to Distin - not the actual pass itself ?