Everton's pragmatism their downfall against Liverpool

Moyes's inferiority complex laid bare.

Why can't Moyes see it?

We conceded two whilst playing defensive, it might have been four if we'd have piled in there.

There's nonsense again that it's all Moyes. It isn't. It's better players being more clinical or better players than ours.

Joe Royle knew how to play them and wind them up (I don't believe he lost one). Other teams with less skilful players go there and win; I just can't see why we can't. Surely Davey doesn't want this on his CV forever.

I think you probably know I was just being silly.

I'm sorry, Robert, I didn't properly read your post!

The low block and no press was so successful that the gameplan was dumped at half-time. After the players intervened.

Big test for Moyes 2.0, and we got Moyes 1.0.

Saying that, it would be interesting to see how many bruises on his legs Grealish has. Every time he got the ball and started forward, Bradley was in. Not fairly, but kicking, pushing, kneeing Grealish, taking him down by fair means or foul, and yet I can't remember the referee giving him a card. He should have been off, or a yellow at the least.

And the booking for taking a free kick too quickly... I've been watching football for over 60 years and I have never seen anyone booked for that.

Also, 2 Everton players were fouled and brought down seconds before they went and scored their first. It definitely shouldn't have stood.

I thought that one of VAR's remits was to advise the ref to revisit the lead up to a goal if it was scored as the result of an illegal action by the team that scores. The ref's red shirt was definitely showing.

What is he supposed to do, do a Martinez and set us up to get battered?

To quote Apollo Creed, "It doesn't take a man to stand there and get your head beat off".

It might not be all down to Moyes but 3 wins in 27 derby games home and away makes me think Davie has made a mistake now and again in some of them with his tactics and keenness -- not to lose much outweighing his will to win.

I think Moyes picked the best available team he could. Better teams drive the opposition back -- it's not necessarily a wish or a plan to be defensive.

Second half, they might have thought they had done enough to win already and could have tired... who knows?

That's not to denigrate our efforts second half because we were the better team then.

O'Brien has done very well thrown into the first team out of position, he's a centre-back for the near future because it seems to me that Branthwaite is picking up injuries too often.

Time will tell but it could turn out that we would have been better selling Branthwaite when his value was high.

I remember that cup semi-final. Jelavic scores early in the game and Moyes "restructures" to hold a lead for 70 minutes. Faint heart wins very little.

Moyes pragmatically was avoiding a heavy defeat and, with Beto and Barry as his strikers, he hasn't much going for him.
Perhaps he could have played Dibling as a different kind of central striker.

Then he leaves our £40M signing sat there until it was too late to make an impact. Just saying.

The very modest Dibling fee was £35M.

It was €40M (Euros).

The RS spending by comparison is astronomical. They are part of a superleague that has existed for some years now -- and it is different level.

Some say Liverpool started with intensity, I didn't see that, I thought they were quite slow in build up, it was just their movement, and our inability to pick it up that brought about their goals. If you sit back completely against good players, chances are they will eventually pick you off.

2nd half different (did Moyes or the players convince Moyes to change tactics?). We moved up the pitch, pressed higher, won balls, and got our better players on the front foot. Liverpool's only 2nd half chances came from their customary cavalry charge breakaways.

Had we started this way, who knows what the outcome would have been. We might have been hit for 5, we also might have won.

We have the players now who are comfortable with the ball and can hurt teams. It would have been nice to have started with a bit more self-belief and ambition.

It will be more than £40M with add-ons, if we ever play him... if you want to be pedantic.

I'm being harsh, I know, because, overall, the incomings have transformed the team and yes, we're way better than we were. I think we're still missing a true box-to-box player who can really mess up an opposition's shape and hence cause big gaps for the above-mentioned to exploit.

Liverpool came flying out of the blocks, then they got edgy and we grew into the game. They're the phases and cycles that games go through when there are two decent teams on show.

Ultimately the game got decided by them scoring two good goals in their 25-minute strong spell to our one good goal in the rest of the match. They took more of their chances than we did. And the Gravenberch one was really a half-chance that he finished exceptionally well.

We've gone out and improved our team. They've gone and spent a small fortune on players who can make a match-winning difference in a close match.

I thought it was a decent effort. It's about as tough a fixture as exists in world football. Sometimes you have to acknowledge that (after the fact).

Looking forward to the next futures. We have a left-back at left-back again. Midfielders in midfield. We might even get our star centre-back in the team again soon. And the attacking 3 midfielders are as good as anyone else can put up.

We're making progress. It's so clear to see. That doesn't mean we won't have some shitty results along the way.

It was not pragmatism it was fear that was the motive. To play Leeds or Liverpool, Everton had to be amongst them, not sitting back off them, Really, it is the difference between ball retention and ball progression.

In Everton's case under Moyes, ball retention does not work because he has given up on ball progression. In the Premier League, a target man to hold up play and lay off the ball is old hat. It slows the attack and better quality defenders who are oriented to support play can easily get back into position.

As for handling a lone unsupported forward, do I really need to answer that question? Everton in the Premier League need to play as a unit defending and attacking. The interchange between the two has to be of immediate command.

Liverpool are not a great team once the play is amongst them. They struggle and even resort to time-wasting and fouls, which they seem to get away with. It will be a sad indictment of other teams in the Premier League if they are allowed to progress by default, as of last season.

After all this time, that game was predictable from Moyes; in fact it was expected. It was the very reason in calling for his appointment, I could only hope it was for an end-of-season career cameo. He did the job I hoped he would.

But, now his feet are under the desk, he has reverted to type. 11 men behind the ball, in front of our own penalty area, the playing down of expectations, the fact that -- with our main central defender out, no recognised full back for O'Brien, a clearly unfit one on the other side -- he set up to contain.

That went to hell in a handcart in 10 minutes. For the following 35, we still played hoofball to a striker who, god help me, is an atrocious footballer. Conceding another one and still no change in tactics. (Why wasn't it changed after 10 minutes???)

No, he waited until half-time before rightly removing the hapless striker for a wannabe and moving the midfield up to contest in the middle of the park. The damage was done, though.

With a makeshift back four, sitting back was never going to work, ever. It didn't. 10 minutes. Hoofball continued. The tactics had to be "Get after them and hassle from the off." Defensively, we are not good enough, so we have to stop them by attacking. We did, in the second half.

Second half came and they sat back; we took the game to them by harrying them and being first to the ball. A great goal too, and some good moves, but it wasn't enough. We lost the moment before the game started because our manager reverted to type, the very reason for my own reservations on his appointment.

So flipping predictable. Forget the injustice, the faux outrage of 3 minutes added time... Moyes knows he stuffed up.

We now have Wolves tomorrow, then two very winnable league games at home. Let's just move on.

But this is what you get with Moyes, his good points over a season or more - all things being equal - will get you anywhere between 10th and on a really good day 6th or 7th.

His bad points will stop you going higher, because to go higher you need to win the big games that higher teams win.

Its the one off big games he can't do, Moyes doesn't do 'must win'

Just as some people are hammers and see all problems as nails

Moyes sees must win as don't lose.

If he's still here 2yrs from now we'll all be having the same discussions about the same problems.

But he's better than Dyche - which was all he had to be...and all he is.

Three bleedin' wins in 27 derby games home and away proves it for me — he is less than an average manager but has got very rich despite it!

The Premier League / Champions League era is all about money. That's your class ceiling.

Even a brilliant manager like Simeone at Atletico has had easily the third biggest budget in La Liga, a magnificent academy etc, but only outperformed a couple of times in his long tenure when two normally richer clubs both had a bad season.

If this was our plan, then something must have been lost in translation, because I saw no pragmatism in the way Everton were set up defensively when I watched the highlights on Saturday night.

You'd think by now, with all his experience, just once he'd get it right from the start.

Off topic, watching The Football League Show each week you see some brilliant goals from the lower leagues, very often better than anything in the Prem.

Granted there are many more games to choose from and the defenders might be suspect but they would be going wild if they were scored in the Prem.