Missing new signings could be ready for Palace clash

Not in center midfield or up front, sigh...

As for saying the players he selected were all first team players, that's rubbish. They had little or no prior game time with the rest of the team or with each other so couldn't be expected to play AS A TEAM.

Marco Silva = latest bullshit merchant.

Like others have mentioned, I am slightly worried about his Martinez type mutterings and decisions.

It didn't take long did it!!

That's because they're probably right...if it looks like shit and smells like shit then...

last Tuesday's exit has done a lot of damage and we tend to respond to these events by embarking on horrendous 7 or 8 game winless streaks

The man needs time to get his own players on the pitch before he can truly be judged.

So far th e ones he s introduced haven't d one too bad.

We live in an age dominated by social media unfortunately. One writes it and others will follow.
Do the people condemning Silva expect us to be achieving top 4 this season? And if so, why.

Then there was the one about......

Martin

I think it's a little unfair to have a go at the "moaners", the moaners were 100% correct with respect to our last 3 full time frauds in charge, the moaners have been correct about Schneiderlin and the moaners are correct about the abilities of DCL, Tosun & Niasse.

I am still behind Silva but he did himself no favours the other night with respect to his personal integrity or for that matter his professional managerial prowess (or complete lack of it!)

It shouldn't take moaning fans to point out the obvious like that we were/are utterly desperate for a quality forward but you would expect the experts earning millions of pounds a year to suss this out. Lets see how they respond this afternoon.

I expect the club I have supported for 45yrs to do the following as a minimum requirement:-

1) Play our strongest team...we don't
2) Try to win every game...we don't
3) Try to play entertaining football...we don't

Seriously. Who gives a shit about the Carabao Cup? It only gives squad problems. The statistical chance of winning this cup is 1 in 50, or 2% chance. It is not worth getting injuries and other squad problems to try to win this cup. So why should Marco Silva play his best team?

I would have done the same as Marco Silva.

We have to do it good in the premier league to become a top team and make progress.

About letting Bernard and Lookman play.
What do you want to do? Put Richarlison and Walcott on the bench? The two by far best players for Everton??

What bullshit. That makes no sense at all.
I like to see Bernard play from start but if so, not on the cost of Richarlison on the bench. Maybe as number 10 and Sigurdsson on midfield.

Stop moan about Marco Silva. He has to be the manager for at least 2 seasons. It is too early to come with meaningless criticism.

Agree that Gomes could literally be a game changer . For a long time we have been crying out for quality in the centre . Composure . Quick thinking and some goals from there too. Gomes could bring some of it to the table.

But to really challenge we need Tosun (orDCL) to hit some goal scoring form too . If not the clamour for “Lukaku's replacement” will grow louder.

Without a top class goal scorer top 4 or 6 is a pipe dream.

If Gomes can be a success in the centre of midfield we will be a good step further down the road to being a top 6 team.

I am hoping for a win today at Leicester but, whatever the result, I am treating the first half of this season as an extended pre-season.

There have been massive changes behind the scenes during the summer months and time is required for everything to settle down. Time for Players to gain their fitness, to get accustomed to the new coaches' methods and the head coach needs time to identify the players that he can trust to carry out his plans.

So I am hoping for some good results along the way but an accelerated improvement in the New Year. Everton will soon become feared again and we can realistically look forward to winning on a very regular basis again.

Label me an optimist but I go back to the holy trinity of the mid- to late-sixties and I long for such days to return... COYBs

The performances last year under Koeman/Unsworth/Allardyce were consistently poor, with the level of confidence and creativity within the squad almost non-existent. Watching us last season was classifiable as form of torture.

A new manager and a decent summer in the transfer market - including some exciting creative talents in Richarlison and Bernard - are not going to transform us immediately. I read someone on here say that Silva "just does not get Everton"; he's only been here for a few months - maybe give him a chance to work things out gradually rather than expect incredible returns in record time.

Peter your first two paragraphs sum up why we are shit and have been for years, try in this game but don't try in that one. This is why we roll over at the usual haunts and why players struggle to motivate themselves or can't /won't be motivated by managers or simply don't care whether we win lose or draw. Winning is a habit so is losing, which category would you put us in?.

Consistently going out or throwing ourselves out of this tournament early on which we do nearly every season has not exactly acted as a spring board for a sensational league campaign has it?

There were also 30000 at Goodison the other night who gave a shit too. Maybe just maybe if the club/manager(s) had give a shit about it we might have won a thing or two since 1995.

Expect nothing? Certainly sir here you are!

Things have improved slightly I agree and we are a little better to watch but things couldn't have been much worse under the previous buffoons. And as we only have the three stooges to choose from up front, we will always be defensively vulnerable because we don't score enough. All three seem to have problems with control, finishing and just plain old being lucky.

I have mentioned on previous threads I think our main three 'attackers' are going to struggle to score 10 goals between them and Silva's philosophy appears to rely on outscoring the opposition ie not paying enough detail at the back or from set pieces. Richarlison I think will get into double figures but I cant see anyone else, it doesn't bode well.

I like what I've seen of Digne & Bernard so far, I think Mina will be good and I'm hoping Gomes is a world beater but I don't know enough about him. What we need to take the pressure off is a top notch forward, and this was ignored over the summer and needs addressing in January or this season will be another write off.

We have to give game time to other players in ths kind of game. Whenever are they going to get game time?

It made perfect sense to use the team they used. The problem is that the Everton squad is not good enough. And that is NOT Marco Silva's fault. He inherited players that he would never buy himself. So don't blame him.

Merle, give Silva time and we will become winners. Or would you rather go back to the other clowns running this club? Everton is making progress under Silva's management. Can't you see that?

Quick question. Have any of you actually seen Gomes play? Just wondering.

You need to manage your expectations. He is certainly a fine passer, exceptionally skilled and strong on the ball. He is also sometimes tactically clueless and loses his confidence easily, and played his way out of Barcelona in just two seasons.

He is a capable and necessary deputy for Sigurdsson and the other attacking mids. He is not a game-changer or a world-beater. And certainly not a goalscorer. He scored 3 in 78 for Barca, perhaps the best attacking side in the world.

My driver was a young Galatasaray fan who said Onyekuru was well thought of over here. He also said Niasse was going there in January. Or it may have been Fenerbahce... didn't hear too well as I was screaming.

Haven't had the heart to tell my Turkish hosts that Cenk is not the next Ronaldo. Great news from Leicester! We'll need those points when the points start getting docked!

"..last Tuesday's exit has done a lot of damage and we tend to respond to these events by embarking on horrendous 7 or 8 game winless streaks".

As you say, "If it looks like shit...!!

Come on, mate... acknowledge 2 wins on the trot.

He is fantastic in the air and comfortable on the ball.

Unlikely to create many chances or score many goals, but he may just help with the moment when you think...where has the midfield gone? I often think this when watching Everton this season.

He does commit a few fouls, so be interesting how he adapts in the Premier League.

My wife likes the look of him.

He often seemed to struggle at Barca because more talented players were around him and he would often sideways pass to them.

At Valencia, he was a different player his passing accuracy in the final third was excellent without really creating chances.

He was signed to replace Xavi at Barca, he did not do that and to be honest had a horrible time there.

I am however convinced he will be an addition and improvement to our starting 11.

What he is, is a fantastic ball-playing midfielder. He's a typical Portuguese midfielder. Very good on the ball. Quick feet. Deceptively fast (once he gets going) and can show off an impressive array of skills, lovely flicks, tricks, and can dribble through a tight group of defenders. His passing is superb.

But he goes missing. He can let his head go down easily. He can start giving the ball away (last season at Valencia and all the time at Barca).

But the biggest worry is that he always, always, always, is a few games away from injury.

It might be good enough for the Premier Leaguee though, let us hope so. He struggled at Barca, the pressure on him will not be as intense at Everton.

The rest, I agree with.

We'll see...

Advantage of 'try before you buy'.

When you say 'signed', do you mean taken on loan? If he's no good then he's gone at the end of the season.

A player with few options ahead of him can appear ponderous, whereas with clever players running at pace ahead of him and suddenly he is transformed. A good tackler begind can make him look more solid.

It remains to be seen what Gomes rocks up at Everton. But like Silva, and perhaps Zouma, Gomes is running out of chances at the big time. He needs a good season to reignite his career. Where does he go if he fails here? Back to Portugal with his tail between his legs, and suddenly into his late 20s and his hopes and dreams fading? Maybe this is the rocket up his arse that he needs, certainly if the crowd loves him enough, I think we could polish him into a diamond. But he does need a lot of good luck, and he's only had bad so far.

Steve and Adam, I agree partially with you both. Gomes' decision-making problem isn't on the ball, it's off the ball. He's a great, decisive passer and dribbler. But when he doesn't have the ball, he often has no idea where or when to run, no clue how to make himself available. He drove his Barca teammates crazy – particularly Bousquets, Iniesta and Suarez – because they didn't know where to find him when they wanted to.

He does stick his leg in, Steve – mostly when he shouldn't and from poor positions. That's how he piled up 30 yellow cards in 156 games for Valencia and Barca. That's his biggest issue for me. He gives up bad fouls in bad locations. The one place he uses his size well is on the ball -- he's as difficult to dispossess as anyone we've had since Rom.

But what's most striking is what you said, Steve, about his loss of confidence. In his difficult first season with Barca he wouldn't leave his house after a while. It wasn't like he was taking abuse from the fans -- he was just too embarrassed to venture out. Bousquets described how his veteran teammates were constantly trying to buoy his confidence. It didn't work out. And once the guy starts to get timid in a game, he's done.

Adam, I like your optimism but I don't believe he'll ever be in our first 11 for league games unless Gylfi goes down with an injury. Maybe for early-round FA Cup matches.

Given the chance, he will start counter-attacks better than anyone we have. The man can pass out of the back very, very well.

Several different reports and websites state that Gomes is very good in the air and wins his fair share of aerial duels. Maybe they're not accurate. I haven't seen enough of him to pass comment. I'm hoping he will come in and compliment Gueye.

Sadly, neither Gueye or Davies are good with the ball at their feet when they're under pressure. Davies misplaces far too many passes and loses confidence once a couple go astray.

One of our centre-mids needs to be able to pass accurately and incisively and so Davies or Gueye are likely to make way for Gomes once he is fully fit. Out of the two, Gueye is a far better tackler and interceptor and so should retain his place at the expense of young Tom.

I don't think it will hurt Davies's development to have him play a little less. I think the responsibility and pressure gets to him at times and he seems to panic a little. He's very young to play central midfield in the Premier League. I would like to see him start less games to protect him from the moans and groans that he is already beginning to hear at every home match.

If Gomes is as good as the rest of Brands's buys, then things may get interesting by November.

It's critical that we have one central midfielder who can play a bit. I think it's our weak point and needs to be addressed.

On a separate note, I was in Liverpool to see the Giants event and it was very noticable the loads of shite fans wheeling cases. It made me wonder whether they built the new stand to accommodate a huge left-luggage room!

Everton could well be the perfect place for him. He will be out of the Barca goldfish bowl and I think could thrive here in his own right. When he has played a game or two, shown his quality and felt the approval of the 'Old Lady', he will know he is wanted.

The signings by the new management team seem to have met with approval by many TWers. We will just have to wait and see. Do you remember when you were a kid, cut the top off a carrot and put it on wet blotting paper? You looked at it every five minutes, waiting for it to grow... Patience, lads.

I do acknowledge the two wins on the trot (three would have been even better as well!) but let's have it right: a win against one of the worst teams in the Premier League at home and an away win (albeit against 10 men but deserved) against Leicester doesn't mean all our problems have evaporated and we're on track for a top 6 finish.

The last 4 seasons have shown too that we are quite capable of 7-, 8- or 9-game non-winning streaks (I don't even remember that in the 70s). And just to bring us back down to earth, a poster quite rightly pointed out on one of the other threads that, just before Wes Morgan was sent off, Silva was about to introduce Schneiderlin with 20 mins left, what result would you have anticipated then? What would we have been discussing now?

Pure speculation, I know, but the fact that he even considered bringing him on at that stage is of concern for me. Let's take the euphoria down a notch as well as the "I told you so"s and see where we are after the next few games.

Crystal Palace (H) W
Man Utd (A) L
Brighton (H) W
Chelsea (A) L
Cardiff (H) W
Liverpool A (L)
Newcastle (H) W

I would love an away win in there but I want to be realistic. We also have Spurs and City in December so we are looking at say C+ to B-.

It is probably safe to say that Marco Silva like any manager in his right mind would want to win every game but will be ultimately judged only on the final position they achieve in the Premier League table. A win at Southampton in the Premier League is worth much more to the club than a win in the League Cup and the simple fact that all of the good managers do rest a lot of their players for these minor cup games proves that conclusively.

Supporters want to see the first team out there for every game. Managers have to be a little more forward-thinking and strategic.

Mike, fair enough, this is your view, but I disagree with this particular sentiment. It was not about winning in one game in the League Cup, it was about staying in the competition so that we had a chance to win it.

Martinez orchestrated a brilliant 1-0 away win at Man Utd in 2013-14 but for me our 2-1 loss to them at Wembley a couple of years later overshadowed that result as we lost a golden opportunity to win silverware.

So many good teams have exited the league cup this year and with Leicester away the next hurdle – we had a good shot at progressing.

All that said, I disagree we had a good chance to win this competition. I don't know why everyone thinks that. This competition has been won by the Sky 6 relentlessly for some time now. Sure they don't take it very seriously, but they have big squads. Everyone makes lots of changes, just see the Saints team, and they even changed their keeper.

So the Sky 6 are more likely to stumble through to the later rounds with their bigger squads and there's always 2 or 3 left in the semis and that's when they do take it seriously and we'd be dumped out.

The FA Cup is the one we have the best chance of winning. The Sky 6 play weakened sides in this too. Remember when the 3rd, 4th, and 5th rounds are. It's a massive inconvenience for the Sky 6. Lots of them get dumped out when they play a weakened side prioritising the Champions League and the Premier League, and so the latter stages really can be wide open and fewer of the Sky 6 have won the FA Cup than the League Cup. This is our best chance of a trophy.

Our disastrous last season, I feel, was due in part with us having to start playing in the middle of July without proper training. It actually makes a difference long-term when you are putting out onto the field a well-rested team. Everyone wants to win every game, that's perfectly and completely understandable, but come on, guys – you have to pick your spots and, on the evidence of the display in Leicester, Bernard was able to unwind a bit as one of the lesser players brought on in midweek, and Gylfi certainly benefitted from the rest.

It took just two moments of genius from those two players. Perhaps that was the result of Silva's terrible team selection... you'll never know. He knows more than we do, let's face it.

Some on here go on about the old days, and how many games they played. But they fail to comprehend the reality. The average Premier League player runs 11 km per game, whereas in the 80s it wasn't even half that. Players are running faster, and for longer.

It's not as simple to say a player is “tired”. It's about optimum levels and late-season fatigue. If you play twice a week, then you fail to maintain your optimum fitness level and, later in the season, then your fitness levels drop considerably as you suffer burn-out. It's not that the players complain that they are tired. Usually they don't feel so and so want to play. It's the sports scientists saying they are not at optimum levels and that they need to skip a game or part of it to avoid burn-out.

If you think that's a load of tosh, then why has EVERY side, except for the Sky 6, struggled so badly after playing in the Europa League? Like us last year, Burnley have had a shocking start to the season. They've escaped the groups though and so should recover some and stave off their relegation fears. Sides getting to the groups or better have a nose dive in Premier League position.

There's not much difference between Premier League players these days and so even a small drop in fitness can have a big difference in results.

After the weekend's performance, you would say we are possibly a centre midfielder light of being a really decent team and we have a good one coming in. There are doubts about Keane despite his recent improvements and he has first-team quality cover coming in at centre-back too.

Strikers are harder to come by but I wouldn't put it past Brands to bring in an international class operator there within the next two windows – who's on the bench at Barca these days?

Don't get me wrong – he's not perfect but he's a different player to last season.

I think we would all agree that we need a top striker to get to the next level. I'd be delighted if we could persuade one to join us in January. Finding these guys isn't the problem, it's persuading them to come here.

I'm not saying we should keep Niasse, far from it, but should we let both him and Tosun go, we will be even shorter up front, with only Calvert-Lewin left as a "recognised" centre-forward. I would much rather keep hold of Tosun than Niasse.

The red Echo is reporting, by the way, that we do have a striker lined up for January, a Tanzanian by the name of Mbwana Samatta who plays for Genk in Belgium. Can't say I've ever heard of him.

I'm not so sure of that. Finding a top striker in January is not easy. Lots of sides will still be playing in the Champions League and those type of players will be at an absolute premium in the January window.

"I think we would all agree that we need a top striker to get to the next level." — I don't think we are all agreed on that at all. I'm certainly not.

There is a tendency to obsess about strikers yet the top sides are not relying on one player to score the bulk of their goals. We had a top striker in Lukaku but it didn't improve our position in the Premier League and we didn't win any cups. Lukaku is now at Manu and he doesn't appear to be improving them anymore than he improved us.

What we need is a strike force of several players who can all chip in with a few goals each then the opposition can't mark our striker out of the game. We seem to be working towards that currently. Richarlison, Walcott, and Sigurdsson have scored 11 goals between them and I'm sure once Bernard gets up to full fitness he'll start chipping in as well.

Don't get fixated on this "top striker" stuff. It seems to be more of a status symbol than an actual tactic. We have to look at who is currently doing well and emulate what they do. Barca, City, Chelsea, Even Liverpool are not reliant on one player to score the bulk of their goals and we shouldn't be either. Pace, mobility and fluidity in attack is better than height and muscle. Keep the ball moving and don't give the oppositions defenders any idea what direction we will attack from next — that's the way to go.

Once Morgan walked, I think he just seized the chance to go for it and did.

I for one am thankful for this as, if it was last season, Sam would've still made the change to guarantee one point.

Don't know about the players but I got a lift when Schneiderlin sat down, both Koeman and Allardyce would have thrown him on so Silva gets a brownie point to even out the negative one for even contemplating putting him on in the first place.

I just wish we didn't have the international break now because momentum can never be underestimated, the home games we have are winnable but how many times do we think that? We've already fell foul of that this season.

However we have better players in the side now and we also have players who look like they're coming into form so it's vital we win the home games because with all the starry-eyed optimism in the world we will most likely get sweet FA out of the aways; the Man Utd game could be interesting though.

If he's decent, get rid of either Niasse (couldn't trap a guppy with a whale net) or Calvert-Lewin (couldn't hit a barn door with a banjo), use Richarlison up top with Tosun for the season and see where we are at the end.

If he is not interested in a permanent transfer – and he is only going to serve to keep Davies out of the team and then go back to Spain in the summer – I fail to see the benefit of playing him. I would rather give Davies time and space to develop and improve as a first team regular.