Koeman: Unfair to blame individuals for derby defeat

4-4-2 - OK
4-5-1 - OK
4-3-2-1 - OK

You need 4 at the Back – No More, No Less!

In my opinion, he looks better with Lookman's movement in front of him rather than Calvert-Lewin's & Lukaku's; Calvert-Lewin is more of a striker so seems to move into the same areas as Rom.

I bet we do though.

The reason for poor away results is the team selection and tactics. Simply pick a side designed to attack and score goals, like we do at home, and the team will score goals. The defeat was down to one person, and that was the manager, for his selection and tactics.

I can forgive his defensive formation, and understand him giving youth a chance due to the thinness of the squad, but I cannot see the sense in not bringing Mirallas on sooner, or giving Lookman a cameo.

Either one could have replaced a midfielder or the extra defender as it was patently obvious from the first 20 minutes that they were finding lots of space with our set-up.

Koeman needs to be quicker on his feet – identify the problem and adjust things accordingly, as the best coaches do.

Barkley just does not have a footballing brain; in football terms, he's a dunce. Time after time, he turns away from a simple forward pass, he can't see the bigger picture. His half-hearted tracking back... he gets so far and stops. I would play him as a striker. We're clutching at straws if we think he is some kind of midfield general.

Saturday was dreadful but we have had a few of them and won this season.

Tonight will be interesting; I fully expect a better performance but a win might be a bridge too far. Nevertheless, Koeman needs to start getting his team, formation, tactics & changes right against the better teams. No better time than tonight.

If he can't step up, then we are destined to stay where we are.

I think Frank Spencer would be a far better manager than Ronald Koeman. Koeman reminds me of Benny Hill too, maybe it's his farcical managerial input, especially at away games.

Still banging your drum about Koeman's away form I see.

It is indeed the manager's responsibility to ensure the tactics get the best out of the players. I don't agree with you that his away tactics 'repeatedly' isolate Lukaku. Nor do I agree that Koeman fails to change his tactics accordingly for away games.

No fair person can reasonably claim that Koeman 'failed' to change his tactics for the game at Anfield on Saturday. No fair person can reasonably claim it was a conservative, defensive selection. No fair person can reasonably claim the line-up isolated Lukaku.

Koeman was bold in his selection on Saturday, given the injuries picked up in the international break. Contrary to your claim that Lukaku is isolated, Koeman clearly played Barkley and Calvert-Lewin in an advanced role to support Lukaku. That was part of our problem. We were, as a result, bypassed and overrun in midfield. As it was, it was a tad too bold and the youngsters in particular down our right flank were badly exposed.

I've already said in the after-match analysis I won't castigate either the selected youngsters, or Koeman on his pick. There were plenty in the week leading up to the game imploring him to go with the kids, especially local lads, play 2 up top and for heaven's sake, don't play Barry. Their wishes were fulfilled.

Where I do take issue with Koeman, as others point out, is that like all of us, he must have seen in the first half it wasn't working. A change of players and tactics was needed. He took no action until after the hour mark, by which time we had gifted them a third goal.

Now he might counter that the first 15 minutes of the second half was possibly our best spell and we were getting a toe-hold in the game. A justification, if you like, that the original selection and strategy was starting to bear fruit. However, a sequence of rank poor play by no less than five players in Blue shirts gifted them a killer 3rd goal.

Like many, at the interval I would have pulled Pennington, dropped Holgate back into the right back position and gone with a flat back four. I would also have withdrawn Calvert-Lewin for either Barry (to firm up midfield and make the side more compact) or, if still feeling bold, Mirallas.

But then, as Koeman comments in his presser, it's easy for me to talk in front of the TV without the responsibilities for my words, actions and their consequences.

As this latest presser shows, Koeman is fighting Everton's corner and accepts that in certain situations, he should be 'the man' taking responsibility and commenting publicly on issues as flared up in the last couple of weeks.

Nor am I ready to label him an 'autocrat' due to his public pronouncements, and a poor away manager based on just 15 away games in his first season at the club. He'll do for me.

Now they can make amends for it and come out to face Man Utd the Everton way as we've seen it. I'm sure we can get at least a draw; thinking of the timing of the match, they and we as fan will be up for it. COYB.

As for people commenting that away games should be no different from home games, that's nonsense I'm afraid. The crowd make a massive psychological difference to games – that's been proven again and again. NIMYou can say that players get paid a fortune and should be above all that, but they're not robots! If you have 30-60k people hurling abuse at you and cheering your mistakes then that's going to affect you negatively.

Tonight I expect nothing less than 100% visible effort, even if anyone's a bit tired. I expect Man Utd to come off well aware that every single one of them has been in a match, and especially De Gea. With that there's some hope we'll get the result we want. Without it we'll know, again, what a bunch of wallflowers we have, for now.

Also, when we had that poor stretch earlier this season, many were advocating that we simply cut bait on Barkley... Then, when we began to enjoy an upswing in form, people started freaking out that we haven't signed him to a new deal and argued that he's more important than Lukaku..

Then he has a poor game against Liverpool and people are ready to write him off all over again.

We'll have the best manager in this league, give him a chance, the guy is class.

Cue the 'Rocky' theme and a training montage of Ron just stood there like a fucking mannequin.