Unsworth proud of battling Blues

They played with confidence and pace. Their keeper made several saves to keep them ahead and got caught with a sucker punch...

Definitely signs of a new dawn and Beni looks a player, but a result at Leicester is a must to keep the confidence levels up.

I thought Beni Baningime had a great game and deserves a huge amount of credit thought he was excellent and my motm. Hope he now gets a start against Leicester on Sunday.

The away fans were exceptional last night and we have the best away support in the Country imo. Hope we produce a similar atmosphere at Goodison this weekend. Overall a lot of positives but we now need to start getting the results in the League.

A good night; with more belief in the club and us, that we can at least hold our own with good teams. A lot to do and a long way to go but it seems now that there's a belief we can make a bloody good start. Well done all; a good start.

15 years of knives to gunfights, phenomenal 4-0 defeats and Dutch tactical ineptitude (ok, that's football), we finally have a manager that understands Everton.

COYB and Keep the Faith.

Also, it just looks right him and his backroom staff in the dugout. I hope the board don't just recognise the results (obviously we need enough wins) but the performances, the introduction of very talented youngsters and the whole feeling around the club.

**Caveat: Niasse could be brought on earlier but he needs the right support so that he can score.** Except for these suitable adjustments, I can't see Niasse being effective.

And any players not getting on board. Are out. No matter who they are. This is Everton FC. We are bigger than any fancy Dan prima Donna footballers.

I wanted Koeman gone. But I also think that a few players were just not performing. I realise that teams need to be set up proper. They need structure. They need a plan. A philosophy. And Koeman fell woefully short on all that. But a number of our players (mainly senior) failed even to do the basics. Players (especially top top players) should have been able to adapt to a situation. Ours did not. Or could not. Or did not want to. Unsworth needs to insure that does not happen under his tenure. If the signs are that it might, then he needs to act fast. With a large broom. We have always been guilty of sticking far too long with under performing players. Players now need pi led on merit. The best player in each position plays. Hopefully no more favourites. No more square pegs in round holes.

Players downed tools with Martinez.I think that they also did with Koeman. (Are we really that bad?).Are our players really that bad? It cannot happen with Rhino and Big Joe. Sorry folks. But I just don't trust some of our players. I really don't. But Unsworth will no doubt sort out who is up for the fight. He needs to.

We need players who will fight. Players who will run that extra mile. Passion. Pace. Teamwork. And just that little bit of thought to detail . A plan. A proper set up. Players playing in their natural comfortable positions. I think that we showed much of all that last night. Its a step in the right direction. Its as a start. Now we need to turn all that into a few wins. Not rocket science.

Maybe another foreign manager might turn this club around. But no guarantees. So I'll stick with Rhino. As the man said .I like the cut of his jib. He will do for me.

Do Rhinos roar? I think that they do. Let's hope that our very own Rhino roars .loud and clear. And our players listen and respond on Sunday. The season starts now. I've wiped out the last few months. They are gone. Thank fook Up The Toffees. The new look Rhino and Royle Toffees .

The bright spots where obviously the new boy who showed great tenacity and could be a real gem but on the side of caution we said that not too long ago about other lads who did not progress as well as we would have hoped.

I certainly feel better about the prospects at Leicester on Sunday but striking is still the problem and may remain so until January.

Also, just a word of caution on the above selection of youngsters.

Unsworth has said that Beni only played because Schneiderlin was taken ill before the game, so I would expect he won't be starting on Sunday with Schneiderlin and Gueye both back available.

It will be interesting.

If you add in the players bought this summer, who I think will look better under this regime, we have reason to be optimistic. If we can uncover a goalscorer, even better.

Hopefully the mindset of the squad has changed and the salvaging of this season has started.

I reckon on Sunday he will keep the same basic formation but will change a few faces especially with the number of games coming up. He will reintroduce the new signings but with care, once they understand what he expects of them and hopefully into a winning team with a winning mentality. It will make it easier for them because they are all potentially good signings.

No disrespect mate but your post doesn't make any sense to anyone that's ever played or watched the game of football

Goals win games, buffer a lead etc

You cannot look at statistics and draw a spurious point

Lukaku is an exceptional striker. Isn't the Lukaku sized hole obvious yet???

I'm not making any claim about the merits or otherwise of Lukaku, merely pointing out that Paul's statement that the squad last season "got seventh down to Lukaku goals" is not supported by the facts. I believe Paul is the one making a spurious point, as we can only speculate as to what else would have happened without Lukaku scoring those goals.

As to there being a "Lukaku sized hole" now, well we all knew he was off at the end of last season & the Club failed to act. I'd have expected another striker to have been signed when Koeman took over last summer & this summer we should have been looking for another one. Waiting until the last minute, with everything seemingly hanging on one particular deal seems very poor to me.

& yes, Kase, patronising comments are disrespectful.

An analogous erroneous argument similar to yours concerns scores. For example, if we are losing 1-0, then score three goals and win 3-1, some people would say that if we hadn't conceded the goal we would have won 3-0. They would be wrong, analogously to you being wrong when subtracting Lukaku's goals, because if we hadn't conceded the goal, we wouldn't know what the final score line would have been. The course of a game changes whether a goal is scored or not, or whether a shot hits a post or goes wide, etc etc.

Your argument about taking Lukaku's goals away has been put on TW a number of times before, and corrected as above.

I disagree with your post @18 that says that without Lukaku's goals we would have been 10 points worse off and finished in 7th place. Without Lukaku's goals, we don't know where we would have finished, because without those goals the course of the relevant games would have been different.

I think we are agreeing that nobody knows where we would have finished. But what you said @18 is inconsistent with this.

To draw an analogy - it's rather like Koeman claiming that he'd still be in a job if Giroud had signed for Everton. The assumption is dependant upon the signing being a success, although I suppose there has to be exception to the rule somewhere (!), & not breaking his leg within the first few matches of the season.

I don' t think he should have a trial period. He should be given the job and time to do it. As it stands, as caretaker, he is on a hiding to nothing. He will have, unlike any other appointee, a vast reservoir of goodwill. He is not, and I use a phrase, again, first mentioned by the admirable Dave Wilson, a hired hand. He is one of us. How much worse can we do by trusting him?

We have had two managers who have flopped and cost the club 㿀m in compensation; let's not rush into a third.
We were awful first half against Chelsea with Rooney as the lone striker, so I'll be reserving judgment until we actually, you know... win a game.

He was a sulky and pretentious prima donna and, for me, stitched himself up in the FA Cup semi and when the ball never stuck with him.

You know when Tyson Fury calls AJ the "body builder", I feel like it is similar to Lukaku.

But he's gone now...thankfully. We don't have to listen to him leaving us in every international break...

Stoke at home 0
Burnley home 1
Spurs home 0
Arsenal home 0
Man Utd away 0
Chelsea away 0
Man City away 1

I'm not criticising Lukaku but don't understand how anybody can blame our poor results and performances on lack of Lukaku's goals. It's not like his all around performance is good in those same games last year either, he didn't play against Spurs and his running stats were weakest in the league! Rooney's record in these game better than Lukaku's. .

Is Romelu Lukaku a flat track bully who is too timid in the big games?

Royle, Sharp and Gray were not prolific goal-scorers but with them in the team we won the league, and the reason for that was that they serviced the team rather than demand that the team service them. They scored a good few too by the way and that's the rub.

We need a centre-forward who looks admiringly around his team-mates in the dressing room instead of admiringly in the mirror in the manner so much in evidence with Lukaku. Finding such a guy seems to be the role of the DoF, or am I missing something?

Put it this way, where would Leicester have ended up two seasons ago with their plethora of talented signings, Walsh acquired - allegedly, had they not also had Jamie Vardy? That begs the question why, yet again, with Walsh's "expertise", did we so appallingly fail in the summer?

Old joke alert; Manager to Centrehalf - 'If that Lukaku so much as moves you follow him. Why boss is he that dangerous, No, it'll be half time and you don't want to miss your cup of tea do you.'

He trailed the Kms. run stats for a reason - he didn't do much bar score (yes I know, but you all know what I mean) There were more than a few times he made poor, but well organised defences look excellent...There was a fair part of him justified the Anichebe jibe - 'built like Tarzan, plays like Jane.'

I was always told, you're making it easy for the defender if you stand still, you're effectively marking yourself. You move off him, you pull him left, you pull him right...anyway he's gone, it is what it is.

Thinking now on Lukaku's run stats, it would be interesting to see how his United stats compare, is he still the lowest in distance?

What are Rooney's distance stats?I wonder is the a site with all this gubbins on - bound to be.

If Rooney could discipline himself (off the field as well, but that's another thread) not to chase all over the place trying to be 18 again, he could play up front - He could play No. 10 or The Carsley Role - quality not quantity - without blowing up after 60 or 70 mins.

Over to you Unsworth.

Sorry but your naieve believing this media view. The whole team performances have been shit this season not because of Lukaku. My view is because we have played shit players out of form and had no goal threat owing to no speed or width.

There is plenty of effort from Rooney, he can't be faulted for that, but his body just cannot do what it used to, he may not look all that poor because the rest of the team have been as bad, if they continue as they did versus Chelsea then Wayne will stand out as poor as he has been, his best days went two or three seasons ago, that's why he has finished up with us.

To be fair to Koeman, I think he hoped (and I agreed at that time) that instead of having one 25-goal player, we wanted to spread that around and hence got Rooney, Sandro (14 goals in La Liga last season), Klaassen (also 14-15 goals in Holland), Siggy (9 goals for Swans), etc. But, it backfired spectacularly because the new players took a long time to bed in (Klaassen and Sandro have really not done it at all).

Remember, we are missing Coleman's 4-5 goals per season, and Bolasie would have scored about 5-6 himself. At the end of the day, it was Koeman's arrogance and poor man-management that did him in.

I have no doubt that Unsworth will get the best out of the players, and we will see a new Everton. Hopefully, he will start getting the results as well, because I sense that Moshiri is skeptical about Unsy's abilities and would prefer a big name manager (Tuchel, Ancelotti, etc).