U23s finally score to defeat Swans

Pretty much his strongest team.

I hate those scam "register for free, give us your credit card" websites.

Link

Deserved win late on.

I wish the first team could display the effort, control and concentration as those boys showed tonight.

I'd love to see him get a championship job and do well and prove himself and come back to our first team.

Last year when appointed caretaker manager for the second time, Unsworth claimed on day one: 'I am ready for this'.

Yet on not being given the gig full-time, other than some rumoured interest from Oxford United, he quietly went back to the U-23s and there he remains.

Now he is doing a great job there, so Everton is benefiting, so I'm happy. But David is 45 now - 4 years older than Silva.

After the bruising experience with the first team last year, has he quietly admitted to himself he isn't cut out to be the main man of a league club and is now happy and content in his comfort zone..?

I don't write this as a criticism of Rhino. Just an observation that if he genuinely wants to manage a league club, the sands of time are running out on him.

This time he has less talented individuals, but still has them playing for one another as a team (Marco Sílva take note).

When he was the first team manager for a short period of time, during the home games he had the players playing for each other as a team.

There's something of a pattern here and it proves to be a successful one.

I'd love it if he got the chance to manage Everton again and got a full season in charge to prove himself.

An impressive performance.

And Virginia is not a keeper who sticks to his line on any incoming.

Comes out and secures the ball very effectively.

I'd have loved to have seen him get a real opportunity to develop our youngsters in the first team and create some real team spirit rather than the spineless take the money and run mercenary outfit we have become.

Three of those are no surprise, but Browning? Could he actually still have a future with the club?

Everyone develops at a different rate but I'm more than happy if the better ones stick around for a few more years, then maybe have a loan or two and by the time their 23/ 24 are ready for first team action.

I know everyone loves a teenager to break through and have hope he'll be the kid to take us to the next level but it's incredibly difficult for any single player to drag his under performing peers forward never mind a teenager with little experience.

Build a solid foundation of a team and squad and then in a few years add the missing ingredients. Watch them play as a team, fight for each other and get used to the graft and hard work before they earn millions, not the other way around.

Good on you Unsy!

Besides we have a transfer ban on youth players so that may help to develop a settled team and winning mentality.

Someone who can get the team spirit back, someone who will test our young players, and who knows how he'd do in the long run, but it deserves a shot.

My God what a really different breed most of those red
fans are compared to us, every L'pool foul wasn't a foul and every thing WHU did was, unfuckinbelievable, it
looked to me Liverpool had more of the play but West
Ham squandered some good chances to win the game.

Sorry for putting the Liverpool game on our site if it offends anyone but those red fans are really not
Earthlings, definitely off another planet.

The way our season has gone I'd much rather see a few players develop than just kick on with the current crop.

Maybe we could try to fast track Fraiser Hornby, Anthony Gordon, Ellis Simms or Lewis Gibson a bit just to keep up the production line of our younger lads.

Sometimes these young lads are not ready but sometimes they just need a chance, look at what it done for Marcus Rashford.

Two have promise but have yet to deliver it at U23s: Gordon and Hornby. Four others who started are decent U23s players, have served the club well, but are not going to be first-team players: Broadhead, Charsley, Foulds, Ouzounidis.

I would say though that three of them I would consider “3rd choice in their positions” so who knows what might happen if injuries occur: Virginia, Gibson as a left-back, Astley as a right-back; though Gibson and Astley are decent centre-backs, I think their first opportunities may come at full-back.

He was a central midfielder, a box to box type, for most of his time in the youth ranks. He always scored goals, but not prolifically so. However, young Fraser had a sudden growth spurt. This meant that he was suddenly a very big lad for his age. He was given games up top as his age group lacked a target man and Hornby had always had a good leap on him. Suddenly he was a number 9 and his midfield background meant he had good link up play.

Hornby is neat and tidy, solid in the air, and has good technique. He has a great shot on him, and if you've heard of him, it's because of his spectacular long rangers for Scotland.

What you won't find much evidence of though, is the striker's bread and butter, the tap in. Hornby just never seems to be in the right place at the right time. He seems to lack the strikers instincts. I fear this will prevent him, in the big leagues, from becoming a top level professional.

I really hope I'm wrong as there's a lot to like there and he seems a really nice lad (he's not Scottish by the way!)

In particular the game in December when I met you before kick-off, then sat amongst them in the Kemlyn Road, they were howling at Klopp during the last 15 minutes, then as I left at the end I was going down the steps as hundreds of them who had left early came running back into the ground.

If it takes a defeat tomorrow then us beating them on March 3 to stop them winning the league, for me it will drag something positive out of this lousy season.

Sorry, I try to be measured with my posts. I'm not bitter, I just loathe them.

We all have a bit of bias, especially in the heat of the game, but to deny that certain parts of the game are not happening when it is right in front of you beggars belief to me, and that is what I saw, in a pub to be honest, and I couldn't act like that.

I eventually said to a fella I knew, a red, “If people who didn't know us, watched us talking tonight, they would think you were an Evertonian and I supported your team."

Mike Gaynes pointed to the scores of red fans leaving that game at Anfield with over ten minutes to go, lots of them shouting abuse at their team, a bit like their manager, full of smiles when his team is winning, the complete opposite when it goes against them.

I echo your next to last paragraph.

Funny, it doesn't seem that long ago that it would make headline news if a first team player refused to play for the 'reserves'.