Doddistas! Now that brought the coffee up through my nose.

Phil, we have taken four points from Spurs this season, four points off Manchester City, three from Manchester United.

Get depressed to Leonard Cohen when it's the four points Norwich take from us not today.

Time to put on your Famous Blue Raincoat.

Phil, the substitution had nothing to do with Spurs' equaliser in the same way that it had nothing to do with Anichebe not scoring the winner at the other end.

I think we were lucky that Mirallas managed 85 minutes – more time than he has managed since returning from injury, I think – after straining his groin last week but the decision to remove him was made when he conceded that unnecessary foul in a dangerous area that got him booked a few minutes earlier. Yes, it's great to have the outlet if he still has the legs but he wasn't much of a defensive presence all game.

Unfortunately, the bench being as thin as it is, we have very few options when it comes to replacements, particularly when we were two starters down to begin with with Pienaar and Fellaini suspended.

I'm sick about giving up the late goal but even though it was a little bitty and sloppy at times, I was pretty happy with our performance overall today and I don't see much to criticise Moyes for for this one.

Don`t slash your wrists,Phil, cos I`ve put a pint behind the bar for you at the Freshy and you don`t want that blue blood spoiling a pint of Abbot ,do you?
Just ask Luke for your liquid valium!

Only your other half would know if you were premature, as for Everton, would have taken a point there all day.We did give a sloppy goal away at the end, but had nothing to do with the Substitution.

Just my point, Gary! It`s because the Everton mindset is `to take a point there all day` that it`s become totally acceptable to finish `seventhish`!

Have to agree 100% with Lyndon the substitution had nowt to do with the equaliser. Just can't kill off teams or see out games.

May have been an error to upset a team playing OK but who knows.

In the end we are disappointed by a good result.

That is a pisser

Hindsight's a wonderful gift which gives us all 20/20 vision. Make a sub, they score, it was a terrible error. Don't make a sub, they score, that was a terrible error too. It's only actually a terrible error if the guy who comes on does something stupid and whatever you think of Naismith .... he didn't!!

Seems to me we simply can't defend a lead, play out time or (even better) get a killer goal that ends the game. That's whoever is on or off the pitch.

Don't lose sight of the fact that Spurs are a good team even without Bale. And just as they led at Goodison and we came back to secure the points, here they came back at us and got a draw which, however blinkered you are, they probably deserved. In my opinion anyway.

The flow of a game going in our favour was needlessly interrupted for the introduction of a player whose contribution is never anything but embarrassing.The substitution of Mirrallas a few minutes from time has become just another Moyes fetish!

Just back from the game. We nearly grabbed all three points but spurs deserved point - they had us defending like crazy for the last half hour. Original poster is talking crap - there's still plenty to play for.

Agree, Karl. Sixth!

"The flow of a game going in our favour was needlessly interrupted for the introduction of a player whose contribution is never anything but embarrassing."

We were getting battered about 25 minutes before Naismith came on.

Philip - not sure the game was ever going in our favour I would have left Barkley on and subbed Anichebe for Jelavic this would have allowed us a lot more flair and time on the ball Anichebe is so slow when he gets the ball he allows the whole of the opposition to get in place. Osman also very poor again today.

Jamie #928
I'd agree. I thought we were comfortable until Huddlestone came on with about 20 minutes to go. After that a Spuds goal seemed inevitable...the Mirallas substitution was irrelevant

Ah I see Phil's a glass totally empty type of guy. Can we get top 4? unlikely but not impossible. Chelsea play Spurs next week therefore they can't both get maximum points and there's not many games out there that are gimmes Plus we play Arsenal with Felli & Pienaar back, so it's one game at a time-First we take the Arsenal, then we take The Shite

7th would be a par finish for me when you look at the teams below us, 6th has to be a good League season, if we finish above those fuckers.

Did anyone really think 4th was on the cards after the last transfer window - "quick, phone cash converters, his knee is goosed, see if they'll accept my second hand Rover, a brand new telly, and all put yer IPhones in the kitty."

Or, David, is it Closing Time ?

To get 4th/5th it was never going to come down to winning ALL of the big away games. We could have won this (probably undeservedly) and then had a frustrating draw at home after battering QPR. It was always going to be that to give ourselves a chance we'd have to win all of the so called lesser games, not get beaten in the big aways and hope to win one or two of them. It was an opportunity squandered today by nothing more than poor defending and lazy finishing (story of the season). Blame the sub if you want but we've conceded last minute even when there hasn't been subs. We were defending most of the game and playing on the counter, a tactic that put us in the position to win at the home of a really good side. All of this without two of our better players. You can't say the sub sent out a signal for our players to sit back, we were already as far back as we could go and created more chances after the sub than before it.

For my mind this will always be a season of what might have been and until a defensive back 5 can be assembled that can concentrate from the first minute to the 90th + then more in the future will be like this. Moyes deserves some blame for some of the lost points this season but its not him that takes 5 minutes to remember how to defend every game and forgets it in the last 5 minutes, its not him that misses guilt edged chances in lots of games, its not him that can't defend deep crosses or balls hoofed straight down the middle. This season is not over it could all so easily change around in one week with one unexpected result anywhere, lets just see what happens.

You are right,Kevin. A mate just rang to tell me I`m a miserable bugger,Right again!
He also said that if we are sixth,we`ll miss out on Europa but if Shite do it the powers that be will find a sequence of events to give them a place.
Talk about conspiracy theories!

I thought that it was a solid performance today and I cannot see anything about the substitution to criticise Moyes for.

We were playing an excellent team and we had to do it without two of our best players from an already threadbare squad.

Spurs had been pressing for most of the half although we probably had the best of the clear cut chances.

If Vic had capped an otherwise excellent away striker's performance with a goal at the end then that would have been a classic away victory for me.

Yes it's gutting to concede a late goal but it happens and we do it to other teams just as much.

I think there is still a lot to play for, you can't predict the outcome of too many games in the Premier league, but the next difficult nut to track is getting 3 points from the banana skin that is QPR at home.

I don't even think they will have to finish above us to gain a place in Europe Phil, you got me worried so I looked up the Fair Play League and guess which 3 teams head that particular table, Spurs, Arsenal and our neighbourss so there is an outside chance they will sneak in by the back-door. The table is a bit behind though as it only reflects positions after 27 games, we are lying in 10th place. I also didn't realise that it takes into account how the crowd behaves and how players show respect to their peers and the officials as well as yellow and red cards. Also if in the opinion of the assessors you play attacking football and not defensive you can gain bonus points. So many subjective things to be considered in order to come top of that particular league. .

http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/matchday/fair-play-calculation.html

How can they be in the top 3 of the fair play when they have the dirtiest player in the league?

the mind boggles

Sean seeing which teams are in the top 3 shows that it is a get out of jail card for the monied clubs it has little to do with 'Fair Play' in the true sense of the word, it also highlights why we pick up so many bookings for nothing fouls when others can walk away scot-free after putting in poor challenges.

By your reasoning Phil, it could also be said that the Barkley - Jeli substitution by Moyes led to the Miralles goal. Miralles was probably running out of steam by that stage so I wouldn't criticise the substitution.

I still think we`ll finish on 64 points.Wheter or not that`s enough to gain Euro qualification it will prove Moyes has given us yet another excellent season.

There's been plenty of talk on here about the lack of victories at the Shite ,Arsenal, Utd etc., but that wouldn't matter if we hadn't dropped all the points against Newcastle, Wigan, QPR (A), The Shite (h), Fulham (a), Reading, Norwich (h) and (a), Stoke, Swansea, Villa....in all these games we were in the driving seat but threw away the points due to lack on concentration, poor defending od rubbish refereeing, as in Newcastle at home. We would be comfortably in third at least. I know football is a funny old game but we shouldn't be losing/drawing in those circumstances.

Doddistas — nice one.
I guess the other mob are MARSHians?

Anyway, one thing that has intrigued me re the team selection is why Moyes went with Barkley over Oviedo? Oviedo is a fairly experienced International and has impressed me when he has played. He is good defensively (providing cover for Baines) and a natural left sided player. Kyle Naughton had a field day down our left side yesterday and it was no surprise that was where the goal came from.

Also, I think that starting Barkley at WHL was throwing him in at the deep end. For now, he is much better off the bench with say 20-30 mins left.

The very best we can hope for this Season is to finish above the RS and with the way they have been playing this season that will be no great shakes if we do and complete humiliation if we don't.

Finishing 6th/7th each year is a bit boring, but surely we can be happy with the majority of our performances?

I'm an exile, emigrated to Australia after having a season ticket in the street end right through the 90s. I left just as the team started to pick up under Moyes.

I loved the match, even though we were generally shite. It must be fkin brilliant to be there now. The City win was brilliant - I'd have given anything to be there for Jelly's goal.

Point is - its not just about the finishing position is it? We witness good footballers and some great games. A lot of you even do it with 35k of your blue brethren.

Boring?

What is more depressing is that United have signed a 15m per season agreement with AON for naming rights of their training ground, we don't even own ours!!!

Our board are a joke!

All this stuff about finishing in the top 4 is and always has been nonsense. We're a top 6 side at best and the reason for that is nothing to do with beating Spurs or Arsenal away, or the RS or Chelsea either - it's all down to our inability to beat the teams in the lower reaches of the league.

13 draws? Many of them against teams like QPR, or even defeats to Norwich from a winning position. These are the games that have cost us.

We've blown 21 points from a winning position this season - even allowing for say 2 of those to be wins, and we'd be right in there. If you think winning away at the top teams is what's cost us, I would argue against that point entirely.

We won't get the results we need now, and even if we did, with our paper-thin squad and no money, we'd struggle in Europe and the following Premier League as well. I'm not convinced that Europe is the holy grail everyone makes it out to be.

One season in the Champions League where we get humbled by teams like Basel or hammered by Barcelona/Milan/Madrid/Bayern etc would probably just ruin us. OK we'd have a few quid but it would be crack-papering for a season, then back to struggling in the league post-Europe and would we really be able to improve our squad quickly enough to compete? I would suggest not.

"We've blown 21 points from a winning position this season - even allowing for say 2 of those to be wins" - is this the new "haven't beat the Sky 4 away stat"?....even though we have beaten Spurs and Citteh away.

Tony the most important stat is that we have only won 9 PL games away from Goodison since the start of 2011-12 if you go back another season we have won a total of 13 games away from home. This is our real achilles heel and it undermines a lot of the good work that has been done. So even though the football this season has largely been better on the road the win ratio hasn't improved with Sunderland questionably being our most realistic chance of 3 points that would mean that we still won't beat last seasons tally of five, but we live in hope.

Did we win at the Etihad, Tony? Or the Lane? Nitpicking, I know, but you mean at home.

What irks me is that we will probably never know what Moysie would have done with the £30-50 million we have needed for the last five years.

If he stays it will be Groundhog Day, and if he goes, on the basis of the success to date with the 24/7 initiative, there still won't be any money for his successor.

Groundhog Day is exactly right - we've been treading water, albeit on a decent level above everyone else but just below the top teams, for years.

I can totally empathise with David Moyes position because we're not a team that's improving any more - nor are we on the way down as such....

The tactics employed by Moyes yesterday were dire. Both Spurs goals came about because Everton did not employ a back 3 of Heitinga, Jags and Distin. Both Coleman and Baines were wasted, so was Barkley on the right. But even with 5 minutes to go in ordinary time, 2:1 up, he should have crowded Everton's half with another midfielder or defender by taking off Jelavic or Anichebe off. That's 2 points lost.

Karl #914 we were defending like crazy because we sat back and invited them to attack as we usually do the last 20 minutes of a game.

Leaving nobody forward when you're just hoofing it out of defence means it will come straight back and the Law of Averages tells you one attempt will be successful.

You sound like a very boring loser. As for the tosspot of all tosspots remark....Lay out your list of achievements and we will see if they match up to those of BK. In fact, I challenge all the usual eager to impress,inferior complex Toffee Web Knowalls to lay their achievements next to those of BK.

Of course, we know you won't, because when it comes to being smart he's in a different league.

He certainly fooled you,Harold!

You're quite right Harold. Who amongst us could claim to have promised so much & delivered so little, have any of us lied to so many for so long? BK's 'achievements' dwarf anything we might put forward in comparison. The really frightening thing is - he's not finished yet! Who knows where the club will be if we suffer another decade or so under his, er, leadership?

If I had been smart enough I would have mortgaged the family home and bought Everton FC mind you I don't think it had enough equity in it to raise enough capital, but BK is smarter than the average bear and has his hands firmly gripped around the club.

Eric - we had Miralles, Jelavic and Anichebe up front for almost all the final thirty minutes. Hardly a defensive line up. Moyes went for the third goal, but eventually our midfield got overrun. We so nearly grabbed a third a couple of times.

This was NOT 'dour Davey' tactics. I was at WHL and myself and my friend were both commenting on that during the second half. Usual,moaning, negative posts from some. You're wrong on this occasion.