Silva not second-guessing his team selection

But I have to admit he's not alone in down-grading this competition — it's exactly what a significant proportion of fans do by not attending these games. Or do they not attend in their thousands (we were ~8,000 down from our average Premier League crowd) because they know the expectation is that a weakened team will take the field?

Chicken or egg? Either way, the end result is we are out, and it's simply not good enough. I hope someone in authority over Silva (Brands?) has made this very clear to him. Although it's of course a little late in the day...

It seems unlikely the answer to our dreams is going to be available in January but we have to hope or this season is ending very early. How we ended up without one competent target man in a game in which the point is to score goals is beyond me.

His remarks, such as they were, are a familiar refrain from a club and any number of previous incumbents that the selection was good enough to win the game.

Silva gets the stick and deservedly so. He chose the team. However, the issue is the board and now, to a point, Brands. The lack of pressure on an Everton manager to win something is laughable. Made even more poignant in a season we as a fan base filed away as transitional. Pfft!

The lack of ambition at the top of the club is ingrained and it shows on the pitch. The selection was weak, it translated to the players and the fans. You get what you deserve, which ain't at all much. Very sad.

They either don't have enough quality, or they're not being coached well enough.

Otherwise they would have won...

It's a farce, of course. The fixture list includes both domestic cups every year. And the aim of a club should be to win football games. Cup football gives more opportunity to win more football games – yet is held in contemporary wisdom to be a distraction. How winning football games becomes a distraction from winning football games is something that has yet to be properly explained to me...

However, I digress. And it doesn't change the fact that the League Cup is gone for this season. I believe Silva needs a triumph, a performance, to point to and to get some supporters onside. Or at least less hostile than they are already. Where this will come from, God only knows. It's better to be lucky than good; better again of course to be both. A loss on penalties at home tells me Silva's luck might be a little bit out.

This tournament is a good opportunity to get some fringe players onto the pitch. It didn't work out this time but, in the words of a certain Dutchman, ‘That's football!'

I did not watch last night's game. But for me, the problem we have is up front. Tosun is just not doing it. I would play Niasse instead of him now because, even if you never know what you are going to get from him, he does score goals.

The lack of a decent striker is going to trouble us this season.

Regarding fans' attitude, I was faced with a 180-mile drive after a long flight to get to the game, and chose not to as I feared Silva would do what he did: downgrade the fixture. I would have had no hesitation making the effort for a League game.

Many of us have our doubts about Silva; my view is that he is with us now so we have to give him time to show us what he can do. But he hasn't helped to endear himself so far.

Yes it is, Marco, if the keeper coming in actually has half a chance to stake a claim and challenge the number 1 but Stekelenburg is a 36-year-old reserve with no future here whatsoever so what did we hope to glean from that?

It's all well and good rotating in this competition if you are like Manchester City or Liverpool with far bigger fish to fry, and are in with a realistic shout of lifting the Premier League title and even the Champions League.

I've never banged any drum to see our squad players because many of our current starting team should be nothing more than squad players anyway!

Tosun, Davies, Schneiderlin, Kenny, Niasse, these players are not going to move you forward.

It's a huge failure last night and again, Evertonian interest in this season has been limited to awaiting the FA Cup draw to see who knocks us out in that.

It's so exciting isn't it?

Let's focus on the league to win a battle for 8th or 9th, wow!

Patience.

Why can't we take this Cup seriously? As others have said, it's probably our best (only) chance of silverware, and it's gone for another year.

Some of us have been calling for Lookman to be removed as far away from our squad as possible and sold, because he is a sulking little brat who delivers no end-product on the pitch and costs us possession all the time.

I warned in another thread that, if he started, we would be in trouble.

The point is, that winning small trophies leads to the habit of regularly winning bigger ones, take Man City, that's exactly how they started to become the number one team in the Premier League, Everton need to learn this, and take this competition seriously, but as normal they probably won't.

We have England's #1 and a 36-year-old has-been who doesn't need to be playing in the first team unless Pickford picks up an injury and even then, I would rather see us blooding the new lad we signed in the summer who apparently already has a stellar reputation. If Silva wanted to change the keeper he would possibly have had the fans support if he'd picked the lad for the future rather than the yesterday man.

As it was, Hughes outflanked him by playing his strongest team because he has enough Premier League experience to know that his team might be struggling in the league but, if they can string together four or five good results in this competition, he could be leading his team out at Wembley with the chance of winning something.

Silva, sadly, doesn't seem to have the nous to realise that and instead he has succeeded in already turning some of the fans against him. Let's face it, his win record since joining us isn't very inspiring, is it?

Lie to the fans all you want Silva about having a clear goal to make it to the next round and not making wholesale changes. We've seen it before from the likes of Koeman.

Be honest that it wasn't a priority and you might get some respect.

I hope this is not the signs of things to come as we were meant to be seeing a NEW Everton emerge. This is very typical old Everton at the mo.

All change Saturday...
FFS

We didn't do that bad in the first half, some good play, until we dropped off around the 40 minute mark? But as I've just said on another thread, once he replaced Dowell (correct decision imo) with Niasse, we just lost any semblance of an organised football team.

Terrible change, especially once we never just went back to basics and just played 4-4-2. I was shocked by this and it now gives me some serious questions when I look at our new manager.

With a bit more thought I'm sure we would have overturned the first half 𝐒core, especially with the attacking players we already had on the pitch, just needing a bit of help, with the introduction of a bit more quality from the bench?

I left Goodison angry, and frustrated, but also a little bit concerned about the ineptitude of the manager last night, because the footballers needed more footballers, and he kept on Tosun, and I'm still trying to work out what he asked Nissan to do?

We had the continuation of the Keane - Zouma partnership and Kenny continued at right back. Baines has over 300 games in an Everton shirt and Davies and Schneiderlin have played together a fair amount as well.

We also started Dowell who needs minutes and Lookman who many have been crying out for Silva to play. Tosun started because so he could build up confidence and momentum after his goal against Fulham and Bernard played his first 90 minutes after joining.

This team had more than enough but failed to deliver so that isn't because of Silva's tactics but because, quite simply a lot of our players are Dog Shite. Baines has been past it for years now and his set-pieces have been shite too.

Kenny won't ever be a top full-back but he's our only other option at right back when Seamus is out. Stekelenburg is a solid keeper but not spectacular.

Up front, Tosun may be a good finisher but is too slow for a team with aspirations for the top 4 while Niasse isn't good enough and neither is Calvert-Lewin.

Lookman is completely overrated based off his performances for Leipzig but most of his appearances were off the bench, plus he doesn't want to be here so it means he's a sulking bad egg. Dowell has had fuck-all time in the first team and he drifted in and out of games a lot at Forest last season plus is he a No 10 or a winger?

Davies will never be a defensive midfielder. He's a box to box midfielder who's full of energy but seriously lacks in his strength, pace, passing and shooting for now while Schneiderlin has been a shit signing from the word go.

The last couple of management regimes have left Silva and his team a lot of dire footballers on long contracts with huge wages. It'll take more than one window to get Everton up to the level we want to be at.

Look at Klopp at the Shite. They were so inconsistent and were leaking goals left, right and centre till Van Dijk and Robertson came in. I remember they were well thrashed against the Saints under the Dutch fool and the hilarious celebration after the West Brom draw. Their fans thought he was a joke and the team was going nowhere but look at them now after he was given time to assemble the team he wanted.

We need to give Silva time just like we did with Moyes. Silva is only here a few months ffs and we have yet to see Mina and Gomes in the team. Richarlison looks a good signing and Zouma is too on loan while Bernard looks a class apart and wouldn't look out of place at Barca or Real.

This League Cup has always been a shit competition and we have never done well in it, apart from 3 seasons in our whole history where we finished runners up twice over 30 years ago and got to the semis under Martinez.

Every side makes wholesale changes in it apart from lower league clubs. I'll be more concerned if we do shite against Leicester and Palace than getting knocked out on penalties in the League Cup. It's the FA Cup which is far more important and one competition we generally do better in.

I'm guessing the Manager and the clubs custodians don't see the League Cup as a priority, because the winners cheque (𧴜k, if my Google search is accurate) is a pittance compared to even a single final position in the Premier League.

It's only value is the entry to the Europa League but essentially It's a weekly wage for some of our 'esteemed' footballers. The competition needs to be revamped and given some modern-day credibility before it'll be taken seriously, even by mid-table teams such as ourselves.

EFL Cup 2017 Prize Money Breakdown

Round 1 - ٣,000

Round 2 - ٥,000

Round 3 - 㾶,000

Round 4 㾻,000

Quarterfinals 㿀,000

Semifinals 㿅,000

Runners-up 㿞,000

Winners 𧴜,000

We play the next seven months “concentrating on the league” to celebrate patting ourselves on the back for finishing 7th or 8th and maybe reaching, yep you guessed it, the Europa League.

If we are getting in the Europa League, wouldn't it be better to do it by winning something rather than finishing 7th or 8th? Does anyone remember who finished 8th in Spain, Germany, Italy? No, me neither because it's nowt to celebrate.

And as for the old complaint when we are in Europe of it hindering our Premier League form, another lame excuse because we never achieve anything in the Premier League any season.

I'd much rather a cup run in this competition and a trophy at the end of it; but what I'm saying is that the club's custodians don't necessarily share those same priorities with the returns on offer in the Premier League.

Unfortunately, managers these days don't see this Cup as a priority and historically it has been an impossible dream for us, we have never won it.

Ultimately, our manager has put out a team to win and has gone down with a penalty shootout.

To be fair, apart from one page on BBC, I was struggling to actually get any proof that this game went ahead. I searched through every dodgy channel I could and not one stream to watch.

Maybe it was all a dream.

9th place finish, no Cups, and the same shite next season, folks.

Maybe one day!

Every time this happens, you get pundits and fans banging on about how this is a chance for the fringe players to stake a claim for a 1st team spot. It's all rubbish.

The changes have been made because those players have singularly failed to stake a claim for a 1st team spot. They have been picked because the manager doesn't care if we win or lose. They are unmotivated because they know, even if they score a hattrick, they will be back on the bench or worse come Saturday. They have barely played together so they have a ready-made excuse for playing lousy.

On Saturday, Baines, Dowell, Lookman, Stekelenburg, Niasse, Schneiderlin, will be back were they belong. On the bench or out of the squad altogether. If we win all will be forgiven. If we lose who knows.

"Silva will be sitting in his office today wondering why he did that."

More likely he will be laying on his office sun bed working on his tan while the maintenance guy paints "MS" on his parking spot. Bet Morgan Schneiderlin won't have the balls to park there.

It wasn't a stupid jig before he started his run-up like Pogba, it was even worse, instead he stopped half-way in his run up to do a dance. No wonder he missed.

I think most realistic Evertonians would have been OK if we improved the style of play from last season, gave every team from across the league a tough game, finished in the top half, utilised another transfer window and added some further quality to the squad.

However, this does not mean we are complacent – we want to compete – we want to win something and we want to see our team challenging in every game to win. We want our best side on the field every game – there is no need to rest players as we are not in Europe!

Winning generates confidence, confidence generates results, it is a cycle. We can't win the league this year but as so many have said, the cup competitions are often maligned by the top teams, so they offer a chance for a team that is rebuilding to still win something.

Everton had a chance to progress last night but the manager decided to make seven changes to a team that won on Saturday.

I will not castigate or denigrate any of our players – I take the view that just like no one on this site wants to screw the company they work for – our players want to do well.

The manager miscalculated last night. I like Marco Silva, I think he is a good young manager, but being young he has much to learn – last night I hope he learned that at Everton we will give time to rebuild but we will not be happy if he does not learn from the mistake of putting out a team that had not played together before in a competition which we could potentially have won if the draw and other results went our way and we fielded our strongest side.

Frankly, if you are not going to try and win it by playing your best team, no matter who you are playing, you lose the impetus to win the competition.

Play to win, Marco – every time – by playing your strongest team every time. That way, you may not win it but you will have no regrets and you will have our undying support.

On another thread, someone called him the Portuguese Martinez.

He would've gotten a lot more respect if he put his hands up and said maybe 7 changes was a mistake. He has a lot to do.

I can understand the teams expected to be fighting for relegation resting players in the League Cup; their priority is to stay in the league.

I cannot understand teams like Everton, who (unfortunately) are unlikely to qualify for the Champions League or (thankfully) face relegation, resting players for the League Cup or FA Cup.

This competition is our best chance of winning something. A trophy win would give confidence to the players and help in the long-term goal of joining the top six.

Changing the goalkeeper for the League Cup is just daft, plain and simple, when Pickford is clearly a better player. I would have accepted two changes but making seven changes on the back of a win is inexcusable.

I have seen improvements on last season so far under Silva but last night's team selection was the biggest mistake he has made since taking over. All we can do is hope he can learn from this mistake.

We will find out when the FA Cup comes around.

I'm not sure how we can justify so much tinkering when even our first choice 11 have struggled against Premier League opposition.

I can forgive Lookman, Tosun and Bernard but the rest seems too much at once.

So, unless you're a massively thick, herd-following, weak-minded wanker of a manager, you play your best team in the trophy you have the best chance of winning.

I can understand him wanting to try out different options but why didn't he say that to start with? I can't be done with managers telling us what they think we want to hear then doing something completely different.

I like Marco Silva and still think he may do well but he had gone down in my estimation, that is for sure. Another thing he can be sure of is he will lose the fans very quickly if he continues to act like a complete bell-end.

So, come on, Marco, learn from it and don't lie to us again.

I don't think that is the case but I fail to see any advantage in not choosing the strongest team possible for any game, never mind one early in the season against a team that Everton are capable of beating.

As I said, seven games into the new season. They should all be fit and raring to go (well most anyway) and wanting to play in every game.

Gutted to be out but, unless the wheels totally fall off, Silva has a while yet till I make a firm decision on how he's doing.

As I said above, I like Silva but he really needs to learn from this or risk losing much valued respect. Evertonians, in my opinion, are very knowledgable and respect honesty.

Silva talks about consistency but he doesn't know how to achieve it if that is the case. Would he make seven changes to an Everton side playing in the Premier League? No way. I bet if he got another chance at that League Cup tie, he wouldn't make seven changes.

So Silva is prioritising the Premier League and appears to have the short-term Premier League survival attitude of his two unsuccessful predecessors when it came to the League Cup.

This is never going to be the attitude necessary to implement a long-term plan to get Everton into the top four. By his mis-management of this League Cup tie, he has set such a plan back.

That's if he did have the ability and mentality to implement such a plan in the first place. He needs a win against Leicester now, as a result of a consistent Everton team performance. Let's hope that his mis-management hasn't destroyed the green shoots of consistency shown in Saturday's second-half performance.

I'm predicting we will not win (and therefore will be out of the cup); best, worst, experimental team – it doesn't matter. Dissatisfied at not winning... yes, but we move on.

Football is a results business, I get that. But when starting out (rebuilding as we are), my expectations are set to a lower standard in the hope we can quickly climb upwards.

Players, coaches, managers, physios, marketing, finance, recruitment and everyone else is undergoing a lot of change and scrutiny. At the end of it, I'm a fan and I want my team to win and watch good entertaining football whilst doing so but it takes time. I'm satisfied with the progress over the last few months. We have a long way to go so we march onwards and hopefully upwards.

I asked on the forum would the team named have been picked had it been a quarter-final at home to a Premier League team – the answer is obviously No; no way would that team have lined up to play Southampton at home in a quarter-final. Pickford would have been in goal Walcott and Richarlison would have started. Morgan would have been on the bench and Sigurdsson and Gueye would have been in midfield. Silva should have kept the mood music positive after Saturday's result against Fulham.

Now we go to Leicester were if we get a draw we will be relieved and then an International break. All momentum lost. Koeman did it against Norwich and that proved to be a turning point for his tenure in the hot seat.

FFS, Everton, please realise that putting silverware in the cabinet once in a while is what football is all about... or is it? Am I wrong and just plain naive in these days of Premier League millions?