Our build up play is too slow. If you pass it quickly and make your chance quickly, you've a lot more of the goal to aim at. If you're too slow, you're closed down, the keeper gets himself into a good position and you've far less of the goal to aim at. If you look at Cahill's goal against Birmingham it was quick play down the left and a quick ball in from Baines. Cahill had the whole goal to aim at and the keeper wasn't even in the equation. If you take our 12 shots on goal against Wigan they pretty much had their whole team behind the ball before the shot was taken.

Managers of relegation threatened teams always bemoan their lack of good luck. I remember Mike Walker always talking about how unlucky we were. Teams near the top will say you make your own luck.

Define luck

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/luck

I can't see how anyone who watched the match on Saturday can say we weren't unlucky. On another day or another season we could've won that 5-1.

I don't think we are getting the rewards our general play deserves. However, if you play one up front against Wigan then you can't blame luck and just have to blame an over-cautious manager. I love Moyes and always have but i said a couple of weeks ago, if nothing changes, he needs to pass the job on. A positive performace against Chelsea has been undone by his defensive mindset and has cost us a lot of points this season.

Owen Coyle or even Martin O'Neill (who I dislike immensely) would add that attacking intent we need.

Moyes probably has lots of time with the board to get it right but the faith of the majority of fans is wearing thin. I hope he is brave against City and goes with Beckford and Vaughan up top against a team falling apart from the insides ? but we will get Saha alongside Cahill and the nightmare will go on.

Oh please. Bad luck is one lost game or maybe two. 17 games with 3 wins is not bad luck no matter how hard you try to stay positive.

The players haven't performed, but it is Moyes that must accept the responsibility. Good luck, as they call, it more often happens to good sides. We are not one now.

PHEW - That's a relief, there was I thinking how much up effluent creek without manually operated steering devices we are ... but apparently not.

We are just "unlucky".

It's also been pointed out that in an alternative/parallel universe we would have won the Wigan game comfortably and now sit top of the Premier League 12 points clear of our nearest rivals with two games in hand.

Of course Messi following his £100/euro transfer to us from Barca isn't happy at not getting many games. Clearly when we're playing this well how could we possibly accomodate him in the team at the moment?

Or in the real world... are we just being in Denial?

Don't agree. You make your own luck. It's swings and roundabouts. You could say we were very lucky to get a point at home to Man Utd, how often are we ever going to score two goals in injury time??
Stoke and Blackpool had a perfectly legitimate goals ruled out against us. I make that 4 points we could have lost.

£100/euros for Messi? ? In the parallel universe he goes on strike and walks out on Barca at the end of his contract for an admin fee.

Hang on a minute ... this denial stuff makes you feel better !

We are not unlucky, just plain old shite!

Fact: We lack pace
Fact: we lack creativity
Fact: we lack ruthlessness
Fact: we lack ambition
Fact: we are too scared to shoot
Fact: the players "talk a good one" after another crap result
Fact: Moyes is out of his depth
Fact: The atmoshere at Goodison is crap
Fact: Moyes is scared of being an attacking force, he likes teams to be defensive
Fact: We are not going to be a top 10 team
Fact: We play like a Championship team
Fact: WE ARE NOT UNLUCKY

Michael #8 it can't be Denial, I've heard that's in De Egypt.

Andy (#2) Luck (Luk) n: 1. the act of an Arteta free kick finding a football-sized hole in a wall instead of ploughing straight into it. 2. The act of David Moyes making a match-winning substitution.

"So is it just a question of bad luck?"

No it's not - we've got problems that Moyes doesn't seem to be willing or able to address. But we've still been very unlucky this season.

It's not about absolutes is it?

I think bad luck has played an enormous part in our disappointing first third of the season.

We are never the sort of side who will score shitloads of goals, if some of our shots this season had been 3 inches to the right or left we'd be 6th right now.

in 2004-05 we often won by a single goal and finished 4th... were we REALLY playing any better then than we are now? I seem to recall many Toffeewebbers moaning in the seasons we made the top 5 about how dull and scrappy we were, couldn't string any passes together etc. and yet we were beating the poor sides 1-0 or 2-1 or whatever.

A striker who isn't woefully inept would have as well, though.

Quite interesting reading:

http://www.chesterchronicle.co.uk/chester-sport/everton-fc-news/2010/12/13/everton-fc-manager-david-moyes-sticking-by-misfiring-striker-louis-saha-59067-27814624/

So, Moyes worked out that putting Anichebe on the left wing was a bad move. Jesus, haven't we got the sharpest manager in the league!

Selecting the only striker who hasn't scored in the league this season, whilst two others have, is not luck.

Saha can and has been a tremendous player at times but we're carrying him at the moment.

To achieve change you must try something different!

I thought our luck would change and we would batter somebody but now we are in December it must be more than just bad luck! Must be.

Every week Wolves and other relegation haunted teams have bad luck....they miss chances !!!!
We are not making as many clear chances as we think...we lack creativity because Arteta is playing too DEEP......when did we last score a clear three goal win ???? If you watch every premier game each week we are one of the poorest for entertainment value....teams like Blackpool, WBA and Wolves take part in more entertaining games and miss lots more chances than we do !!!!
Every relegation threatened side can point to bad luck excuses and what if's.....

Mike ? if you are a regular TW reader you should know by now that we are lucky when we win (no matter how well we played) and shite when we lose or draw (no matter how well we played or how unlucky we were).

I believe that we are an incredibly unlucky team ? throughout my time not just this season. It really gets on my tits when people say ?you create your own luck? ? no you fucking don?t!! Luck is luck ? if you could create your own luck, Ronaldo would not spend hours practicing his free kicks, he would practice his good luck skills and then, instead of bending it/smashing it or whatever he does so regularly, he would trip over his own ego on his run up, land on his arse and, whilst everyone was falling about pissing themselves, the ball, having been sandwiched between his ugly face and the ground, would bounce up over the prostrate wall, ricochet off the refs heel, hit the post, come back and hit the goalie on the back (see Rob Green this Saturday) and trickle over line ? he would do this ten or twelve times a year due to his intensive training on his luck skills.

I also hate the other bollocks that is said about luck that is ?luck (whether created by yourselves or otherwise is not mentioned) evens itself out over the season? ? again, no it fucking does not!! If it does please show me (something I think TW should do more of instead of just reminding us of how negative and/or shite DM is).

From my recent reckoning, all other things being equal, we have been robbed of four points ? Sunderland ? offside goal for them (not even close). Wigan ? Beckford onside (level at least according to Goals on Sunday ? also see Spurs goal v Chelsea on Sunday ? Defoe much more ?offside? than Beckford but allowed to go on)

I would class these matters as bad luck due to poor (piss-poor sometimes) officiating. the question of fact of whether the player was offside can be established via replays (it?s just the powers that be won?t allow this) and so the bad luck is down to a poor, if honest, decision.

Then there is the ?could go either way decisions? ? eg Tuncay'sfoul on Bainsey ? impossible even with replays to say whether it was a foul or not.

I feel that the former ? provable decisions such as offside goals ? hold more weight in the scales of luck balancing out over the season; however, for the sake of discussion at the moment we should be a minimum of two points better off as we should have beaten Sunderland and Wigan but drawn with Stoke ? not much admittedly but we would have had two more confidence boosting wins which could make all the difference to our general play etc etc.

What I would like is for TW to monitor such examples of luck over the season to prove one way or another if luck does even itself out over the season (at least in Everton?s case) ? I know there is a bookies web site that sort of does this but I think a running tally over the season would be a good (additional) talking point.

I disagree, Trevor.

You`re right when you say missed chances shouldn't be construed as bad luck, but nobody is missing more chances than us.

I watched those "entertainers" Spurs and Chelsea yesterday and besides the two goals and the missed penalty I don't remember a shot on target in this "pulsating" match, chances were few and far between. I don't remember either of them creating as much against us as we did against them ? that goes for nearly every team we have played.

Putting your chances away soon earns you a reputation for being entertaining. We aint doing it, but it has nothing to do with bad luck.

If you got a fan from every team in England, they would roll out examples of how they have been unlucky.

Was the great save near the end Howard had to make, unlucky for Wigan? No, it was a great save.

Just a few stats ? I know they don't tell everything but may give some insight.

In all the Premier League this season so far, only Chelsea, Arsenal & Spurs have had MORE shots on goal than we have (185).

Only Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, Man Utd, Bolton and Liverpool have had more shots on target than us (75).

Yet only Wigan, West Ham, Fulham, Birmingham, wolves and Aston Villa have scored LESS goals than we have (18).

So we clearly aren't negative, but whether you claim this is down to luck I suppose is up to you. I certainly think we have been extremely unlucky in a number of games this season and by no means have the points tally we deserve, but hey you don't always get what you deserve, and that's the beauty of football.

A couple of extra stats to add.

We have scored from 9.7% of our shots on goal (only better than Fulham, West ham & Wigan,

And we have scored from 24% of our shots on target only better than West Ham and Wigan ? Bolton for example have had a similar numbr of shots on target but scored from 36% of them and Man Utd have had LESS shots on target than us but scored from nearly 42% of them!

Totally ans absolutely BAD LUCK by the bucketful. It will change soon and as ever we shall rocket up the league. I`m backing Saha to get 10 goals by Easter!

" I`m backing Saha to get 10 goals by Easter!"

In that case I'm backing Bigfoot to emerge from the wilderness, hitchhike his way from the Pacific Northwest to England, and then go on to win the World Darts Championship before spiralling into a drink and drugs fuelled depression, culminating in the crazy sasquatch committing career suicide by disembowelling Piers Morgan, live on tv, during another episode of his emotionally enthralling 'Life Stories'.

Pretty sure I'd get better odds than you.

We're shit, its down to bad luck, we go on a good run, Moyes is a genius.

"teams like Blackpool, WBA and Wolves take part in more entertaining games and miss lots more chances than we do !!!!"

For crying out loud, can people please watch these teams play football before they comment.

Blackpool may be media darlings right now but they are utter horsehit. They don't play good football. They aren't ridiculously attacking.

What they have is a bit of spirit and a team who are playing without pressure or expectation... things tend to roll for you when you play like that. Their winner this weekend was a classic example. A mishit shot when there was nothing on because they didn't have bodies forward... bobbled through to Campbell who got a flick and it went in.

The difference? We don't take the shot, and if we did our striker has pulled out wide looking for a percentage pass.

We will finish comfortably ahead of all three teams mentioned in the passage quoted above.