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2020/21 Carlo Ancelotti

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GrandOldTeam said:
They're 23 and 24. They're not academy boys.

This is Mason Holgate's 5th season playing in 'the top flight' - our fans and players player last season.

We've just paid 20 odd million for Godfrey, who is coming up to his 50th appearance in 'the top flight' - he made 30 premier league games for Norwich.

I'll repeat my comment that if both aren't to the standard to play against Fulham in their preferred positions then we should pack their bags now.

Sure, he could have played Mina and Keane - but that's not why Everton played so abysmally yesterday.

We also scored 10 goals in the previous 3 games before yesterday - we never should be going into playing Fulham at home with "keep the big fellas on - we'll only get a sniff of a chance of a set piece"
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Last season doesn't matter though, it's this season! Their age doesn't matter either, they have not played together at CB before last night and it showed. That can happen to anyone. Two vastly experienced pros would struggle too if they had never played together as a pair before. I used to play CB myself and it was always a nightmare when another player was thrown into the mix, took 5-6 games to get used to them and their quirks, strengths, weaknesses, when to push, when to stick etc. Obviously I wasn't a top flight player (not yet anyway...) but the basics will always be the same.

It's not a case of he could have played Mina and Keane, he SHOULD have played Mina and Keane.

Yeah you are right we should never be going into playing Fulham thinking that but look what happened? That's exactly where we ended up.

No they are not the reason we lost, it's a team game but It's fiddling for no reason.
 
Papa Shango said:
Last season doesn't matter though, it's this season! Their age doesn't matter either, they have not played together at CB before last night and it showed. That can happen to anyone. Two vastly experienced pros would struggle too if they had never played together as a pair before. I used to play CB myself and it was always a nightmare when another player was thrown into the mix, took 5-6 games to get used to them and their quirks, strengths, weaknesses, when to push, when to stick etc. Obviously I wasn't a top flight player (not yet anyway...) but the basics will always be the same.

It's not a case of he could have played Mina and Keane, he SHOULD have played Mina and Keane.

Yeah you are right we should never be going into playing Fulham thinking that but look what happened? That's exactly where we ended up.

No they are not the reason we lost, it's a team game but It's fiddling for no reason.
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We only have two cb who are dominant in the air. Will tempted to bring one in and probably sell Holgate.
 
Jim Hopper said:
It is. The whole right hand side has needed sorting for a years now. With Coleman getting on and James incapable of getting back to help out it should be priority this summer.
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Yes.

however, for now it has to be Holgate or Godfrey there. Personally I prefer Godfrey at Cb alongside Mina or Keane.

james central just shouldn’t happen. He gets too bogged down and drifts too deep. That’d be fine if we had runners around him, but we rarely do.

Doucoure has looked his best for us when we’ve played 4-2-3-1 or a variant of a 4-3-3. James, likewise, has looked better for us there on that right side.

with Allan nearing a return, I honestly think our most solid midfield is him, Davies and Doucoure, but with Allan doing that babysitting job down the right to help out Holgate/Godfrey, and Doucoure allowed to push on.
Can always then drop Gomes into games, when he seems to have more impact, and we can hopefully see Gbamin integrated towards the end of the season
 
GrandOldTeam said:
I don't think Sigurdsson was 'in the middle' yesterday.

He was pretty much upfront.

It was as though Richarlison, Sigurdsson and Rodriguez were told just to do whatever they wanted up top.

Gomes and Davies were in the middle, Doucoure seemed to be in the middle/covering the right.
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I don't know if he was supposed to be a false 9 or out on the left. Some people thought he was out left but I thought he was in the middle and Richarlison was wide.

You're spot on about the midfield though. The three of them all sat far too deep and did not push to get involved past the halfway line. When the ball did find its way to the front 3 it went backwards every time.
 

Papa Shango said:
Last season doesn't matter though, it's this season! Their age doesn't matter either,
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Come off it...

You say Holgate and Godfrey are inexperienced and "never going to be enough to play against a top flight team"

Papa Shango said:
An inexperienced pair who have never played at centre back together is never going to be enough against any top flight side.

To make it worse, because we played like crap we were relying in set pieces to score and we chose to not start our two set piece threats.
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I then demonstrate their experience and you rebuff that with "last season doesn't matter" and "their age doesn't matter"?!

With regards to their understanding playing together - they've got to pickup the games somewhere.

Everton didn't play so badly yesterday because Holgate and Godfrey were given the nod over Mina and Keane.
 
Personally I’ve been looking forward to seeing Holgate and Godfrey play together as I thought it might be an opportunity for us to play higher up the field and dictate play...against a team like a Fulham that’s exactly what we should be doing.

Ultimately it didn’t happen and they spent the entire game bar last ten minutes camped on the edge of the box more or less.

I think our lack of ability in winning the ball back yesterday in midfield and our lack of pace out wide were the biggest issues in our performance.
 
BlueToff said:
I think yesterday was the perfect game to get rich back in form by playing him up front in a proper three - James and King were available and should have been up there alongside him.

then go with a midfield three of Davies, Gomes and Doucoure, with Sigurdsson, Iwobi and Bernard to bring on as attacking options

4-3-2-1 is a horrid system for the modern game, especially this Everton side
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its maybe different when you have Gattuso, Pirlo, Kaka, Serdorff and Ambrosini as your midfield options.

Richarlison has been an absolute car crash this year. Unrecognisable in any way from the player he has been since his transfer. It’s like he’s playing on beta blockers or something.
 
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Bob Latchford said:
its maybe different when you have Gattuso, Pirlo, Kaka, Serdorff and Ambrosini as your midfield options.

Richarlison has been an absolute car crash this year. Unrecognisable in any way from the play he has been since his transfer. It’s like he’s playing on beta blockers or something.
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Well at the start of the season he wasn’t - he was playing well without the goals

Wednesday he was back at his best

he was crap last night and really has been poor, but it happens. Yesterday felt like the chance for him to prove he was back at it and he failed, but he wasn’t helped by the system
 
Why would you set out your stall to play so deep at home against a team in the bottom 3?
why would you invite pressure on like this? I get they can have bad games, but this wasn’t just that.
I just don’t get it.
 
Thomasc said:
Why would you set out your stall to play so deep at home against a team in the bottom 3?
why would you invite pressure on like this? I get they can have bad games, but this wasn’t just that.
I just don’t get it.
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I don’t think we set out that way. We’re forced into it because our players are so much slower and weaker than theirs. So whenever we get the ball we’re under pressure but they can play around us with ease. It needed a formation change but Carlo didn’t do it. To play the 433 we have to have pace along the back line and in midfield to cover the fullbacks as they bomb on. We don’t have pace anywhere. That’s why the flat 4 has been working effectively having 5 players defending and a front 5 attacking. As soon as we try to move towards a more advanced system it falls apart because the players aren’t good enough.
 
I didn't watch the Fulham game so I probably shouldn't comment. But why not just play 4CBs? Everytime they go to more attacking fullbacks, we somehow lose the game.

We've done the whole two attacking fullbacks with Martinez and it didn't work back then. It's a nice idea, its just asking a bit much of the fullbacks to attack and defend.
 
Saint Domingo said:
I don’t think we set out that way. We’re forced into it because our players are so much slower and weaker than theirs. So whenever we get the ball we’re under pressure but they can play around us with ease. It needed a formation change but Carlo didn’t do it. To play the 433 we have to have pace along the back line and in midfield to cover the fullbacks as they bomb on. We don’t have pace anywhere. That’s why the flat 4 has been working effectively having 5 players defending and a front 5 attacking. As soon as we try to move towards a more advanced system it falls apart because the players aren’t good enough.
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So basically we aren’t as good as Fulham? As that’s what that sentence says to me.
 

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