I want to play an expensive game like you do. I want to see Everton playing an aggressive, high energy, direct, attacking brand of football because that is Everton football. But we simply do not have the players to do that against good opposition and there are lots of good teams in this league. There are no easy games when you have a team like ours.
You can only play the way you want to play if you have the talent and personnel to do it effectively. Letting philosophy overrule pragmatism in this league will 99% of the time end in failure.
I'll give you another example. When I watch the Packers tomorrow I would love to see Aaron Rodgers airing it down the field for big plays because that's what Rodgers does best. But throwing it deep in the usual Packers manner is not working and will not work with such a lot of talent and experience at receiver. If they stick to that gameplan they will lose the game. If they play a Conservative run based game, which is their strength, they will probably win.
Lampard learned that the only way he could turn things around here was through pragmatism. I'm almost certain he doesn't want to play like this, but if he hadn't changed his approach last spring, we'd have been playing somewhere a lot less glamorous today.
