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Everton News

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Should Everton be prioritising the League Cup and FA Cup? via EvertonAlerts

There was plenty of optimism surrounding Everton over the course of the summer, with many asking the question whether Ronald Koeman’s side could break into the Premier League’s top-six after a multi-million pound spending spree saw a host a talent arrive at Goodison Park.

Wayne Rooney’s return to his boyhood club was special in its own way, but Everton fans were overjoyed to see their club spending big on some top talent, with the likes of Jordan Pickford and Michael Keane arriving for around the £30m mark, with Gylfi Sigurdsson also costing the Toffees a reported £45m late in the summer window.

A number of new arrivals meant that expectations have significantly risen on Merseyside, with Evertonians hoping that Koeman now had the squad to break into the Premier League’s elite and compete for the major honours at the top of the English game.

However, the Toffees have endured a difficult start to the 2017/18 campaign, with Koeman’s side showing no real signs of bettering last season’s seventh placed finish in the league. Everton are clearly missing the goals of Romelu Lukaku, who left Goodison for Manchester United, with Rooney and co failing to fill the goalscoring void left by the big Belgian.

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Whilst it is ridiculous to rule Everton out of a place in the top-six at this stage of the season, should Koeman now be placing more focus into winning a trophy during the 2017/18 campaign? Everton will be competing across four fronts this season, but should focus on two domestic trophies – the League Cup and FA Cup.

Everton’s League Cup campaign began recently, with Koeman’s side breezing through the third-round of the competition, making short work of a disappointing Sunderland side, who have more pressing issues in the Championship. A goalscoring brace from Dominic Calvert-Lewin combined with a Oumar Niasse goal handed the Toffees a 3-0 victory and moved them comfortably into the fourth-round.

Koeman’s side was significantly weakened from the usual suspects who line up in the Premier League when they faced Sunderland, and Everton’s supporters will hope to see a stronger side selected for the fourth-round in October, after their side were dealt a difficult tie against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.

Chelsea did not take the third-round lightly, with Antonio Conte naming a strong starting XI, who dispatched Nottingham Forest with ease, beating their Championship opponents 5-1. Everton will still look to use some of their fringe players in the competition when they travel to London in late October, but Koeman may be tempted to play some more senior figures of his squad, if he is serious about ending Everton’s trophy drought, which stretches all the way back to their 1995 FA Cup triumph over Manchester United.


Everton are priced as 20/1 outsiders with Ladbrokes to lift the League Cup in 2018 following the fourth-round draw, with Oddschecker offering a series of free bet offers for customers looking to place a bet on such an unlikely wager.

Of course, Everton’s hopes of a successful season do not rest on the League Cup run they go on from now, but that particular competition offers Koeman’s side chance probably their most realistic chance of silverware at the beginning of the campaign, and it will certainly a surprise if the Dutchman does not select a strong team to take Chelsea on at the next stage.

Too much emphasis in modern football goes on the success of qualifying for the Champions League, and at Everton that has undoubtedly been the case, with a lot of focus on breaking into England’s elite.

Last season we saw Tottenham Hotspur challenge Chelsea for the Premier League title, but ultimately fall short and finish the season with just guaranteed Champions League football, whilst Manchester United and Jose Mourinho took a different approach.

United finished the season in sixth, but picked up three trophies along the way – the Community Shield, League Cup and Europa League, the latter that secured their qualification for the Champions League this season.


Winning the Europa League certainly helped Manchester United. https://t.co/wUZXNAyCdE pic.twitter.com/EHdPEDFlwp

— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) September 15, 2017
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Winning the Europa League would be a big ask for Everton, but success in either of England’s domestic cup competitions is realistic, and as others have shown before them, it helps everybody associated with a club look back on a year with fond memories.

Undoubtedly, Everton’s priority after a big summer was to break into the Premier League’s elite, and that should be admired. However, a slow start to the season has left that in jeopardy and Koeman’s main focus must now change to ending the club’s long wait for a trophy, first of all by focusing on their League Cup clash with Chelsea, before targeting success in the FA Cup.

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Why is Sigurdsson struggling? via Sky Sports

Gylfi Sigurdsson is yet to shine for Everton following his club-record move from Swansea. What's behind his early struggles? And is there a change of fortunes around the corner? Nick Wright looks at the stats ahead of the Nissan Super Sunday clash with Burnley.

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Koeman, Stupid. via Everton Arent We

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Do songs ever pop into your head at certain moments that seem to be a manifestation of your exact state of mind at that particular time? Happens to me all the time for a variety of reasons. Pop music is weird like that for those of us who grew up clinging tightly to music to soundtrack our lame lives. The occasional intersection of moments like these with the perpetual pain of sport—one of life’s truly poor emotional investments—is often a sad bit of magic.

Yesterday as the third best football club in Cyprus headed in a gut-wrenching equalizer after having just gone down to ten men, that old familiar Everton disappointment felt like someone pushing ‘Play’ on the jukebox of my internal bitterness.

“[Poor language removed]. This. Band.”

Unlike most of the other songs on the now defunct Welsh noise rockers Mclusky’s magnum opus, “Mclusky Do Dallas” and despite a title—“[Poor language removed] This Band”—that would suggest otherwise, lead singer Andy Falkous doesn’t scream these words out. Instead, he quietly and slowly articulates each word—full of beaten down exhaustion to drive the point home in a way that his normal trademark howling never could.

That was my immediate, overwhelmingly raw response to yesterday’s latest chapter of Everton theatre.

[Poor language removed]. This. Band.

My Everton balls hurt. Like so much.

The last time I wrote for EAW, I discussed the idea that it was time to deal in the reality of the current situation as opposed to what ideally ought to be the case—especially in light of so much conjecture regarding what this all could’ve been if only we’d gotten all our transfer business right. I somewhat hopefully claimed that the person who could do the most to influence how things went from now until January was manger Ronald Koeman.

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Well, he sure is “influencing” things at the moment, eh?

(Can you imagine how much Southampton supporters must be loving this?)

Problems in a sport like football are rarely ever simple to comprehensively define or solve. But if we have to capture the soul of the problem, it’s the manager. Ronald Koeman is the problem with Everton Football Club right now.

Managers often find themselves being the problem or part of the problem, but if you have faith that the manager can find a way to become the solution—or at the very least facilitate one—then you find yourself willing to be a bit more patient because if you’re honest, sport isn’t always logical and certainly isn’t always fair. So if you’ve got a leader who can see a negative situation for what it is and take steps to remedy it —even if doesn’t happen as quickly as you’d prefer—there’s a way forward.

Yet for the first time—even based on such a modest and rational bar as articulated above—I’ve got my first real doubts about Ronald Koeman’s ability to right the ship. And as much as the tactical choices have bothered me, it was yesterday’s post-match comments from Koeman that took me to a darker place than I’d been in quite a while when it comes to Everton and the manager.

In a post-match abdication of leadership for the ages, Koeman obviously and repeatedly blamed the attitude, the confidence and general mindset of the players as if he carries no role in it or responsibility for it—a BAD color on a man whom we all believed to be the walking embodiment of footballing accountability.

This triggered a series of disturbing questions and thoughts about Koeman that I never believed would enter my head.

The players lack confidence? So what exactly IS Koeman worth if he can’t at least get his players to be confident? His tactical acumen? He’s certainly poured gasoline on that fire of late.

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Simply stated, Ronald Koeman was supposed to be the anti-Roberto Martinez. But they may be more alike than we thought. They’ve got a personality “brand” they stick to. And both seem to look at bad football and not recognize their role in it and/or be unable to industriously find a way out of it. For all the annoying, misplaced sunshine of Martinez, it was his unwillingness to change in the face of overwhelming evidence that his tactics were ineffective that was his ultimate downfall. Did we ever think THIS would be a problem for Koeman? Koeman was the guy who could look at situations, diagnose them, and make changes accordingly. Where did THAT guy go?

The absence of “Pragmatic Koeman” this season was bad enough without him throwing his players under the bus. But to look at a team that desperately needs to find a way to play together while integrating new players and believing that calling them out in the media without a hint of shared responsibility is the proper approach is utterly reprehensible given the role Koeman has played in the start to the season.

And while a man like Ronald Koeman has forgotten more about football than I’ll ever know, there are things that I and anyone with two eyes can plainly see. I may not know what he knows, but I do understand the concept of insanity.

His players can certainly stand to perform more effectively, but it’s HIS lineups without a wide threat and 2 defensive midfielders to start (AT HOME! AGAINST AVERAGE TEAMS!) that continue to doom us to the kind of slow starts that allow fluky, ridiculously Everton things to happen like yesterday and/or bury us so quickly against good sides that we don’t have the chance to get back in the game. It is NOT that he has started ineffective lineups. It is that he has started ineffective lineups, makes changes late that seem to have a positive effect, and then proceeds to start the next game with the same previously failed philosophy—expecting to do the same thing and have results magically change. That is insanity, kids.

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Average Everton player positions vs Apollon Limassol

Some people claim that Koeman is too conservative. I don’t mind conservative if it wins games. But Koeman isn’t conservative. He’s illogical. And maybe most damningly, he just doesn’t have the imagination we all thought he did.

Being pragmatic and conservative aren’t the same thing. Pragmatism is looking at what you have, what’s working and not, and proceeding accordingly. Koeman’s inability to look at what he has and create a lineup that accentuates his squad’s strengths from the FIRST whistle week to week is confounding—and is the albatross hanging around the neck of Everton at the moment.

When you’ve got a squad full of new players, you’ve got to tinker until you find something that works. I get that. It’s that Koeman often finds something effective after yet another poor team selection mid-match and doesn’t appear to be learning anything from the experience. It’s like he’s getting his brain wiped a la Men In Black and he’s starting from scratch each game—not the kind of learning curve you’d expect a manager of his experience and alleged caliber to constantly rely upon. He either doesn’t appear to be learning what his squads strengths are and adapting accordingly or he does and is more concerned about doing things “his way”—either of which are shockingly concerning. What’s sad is that I was under the misapprehension that Koeman’s “way” was to figure out what works and go with it.

The most obvious blind spot that Koeman seems to have right now is the inability and/or unwillingness to put his players in their best positions/formations to succeed. And there may be nothing that better illustrates this issue more than Wayne Rooney’s role in Koeman’s current plight.

Rooney is both a blessing and a curse to this particular version of Everton. Because no matter what you think of his handful of goals and the fact that he’s been far better than the hyperbolically dour assessments of his remaining abilities before he returned home to us, his continued inclusion and the impact it has on others in the XI having to cede their natural positions to accommodate a system that runs heavily through him deserves questioning.

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And it’s not that Rooney CAN’T contribute. It’s that the free license he’s given to play “positionless football” and roam around midfield or wherever the hell he wants compromises any effort to develop a coherent or cohesive offensive plan of attack—which is only further exacerbated by having no wing players to create an outlet and the other formational decisions that serve to slow things down to a crawl with everything flowing through Rooney. Rooney’s adventuring around the pitch also really sold out Sandro and any chance he had to be truly effective. And what happened? Sandro started dropping back to try and get the ball and thus the formation and any semblance of a plan or a philosophy was further undermined. I’m sure Wayne Rooney has plenty of “winning mentality” to provide to young players, but can we honestly say that the free license he’s given and then exercises sets a good example?

And It’s not a coincidence that the team became more dangerous when Gylfi Sigurdsson was playing centrally, he had a winger to play with (how great was Vlasic?!) and one less defensive midfielder slowing the attack down. Playing your £45m acquisition in his best position. How [Poor language removed] novel.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some hard choices to make, but Ronald Koeman was supposed to be the emotionless, hard as nails Dutch football manager bot that was paid the big money to make the tough decisions. Decisions like tightening the reigns on Rooney. Or playing a real wing player even if he isn’t 28 (and a “man”) and full of experience. Or acknowledging that Schneiderlin looked better without Gueye on the pitch and seems generally like he plays better without a defensive midfield partner. I’m conflicted about this particular development. I’m not sure what to do, but it does seem like having two defensive midfielders play hasn’t been working. Like at all. But it isn’t about what I’d do. It’s about what a manager who is supposed to be one thing and has completely turned into another these days wants to do.

Koeman’s approach to start a season with so much promise is at best flawed and at worst completely negligent. A football season is like a vast ocean with a variety of opportunities to re-examine the map and right the course. But vast oceans can also be a graveyard for ship captains who continuously and stubbornly invite mutiny at every turn. Your move, Skipper.


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Ronald Koeman given time to solve the Everton crisis he largely created via The Guardian

After receiving a vote of confidence the Dutchman must use the international break to turn round a disjointed side which veers between defeated and dull

From the biggest investment in Everton’s history to a vote of confidence in the manager by 2 October: this season was always liable to test Ronald Koeman’s managerial skills, given the number of new faces, the sale of Romelu Lukaku and a punishing schedule, but few would have anticipated him floundering so badly, so quickly. It is he, not Everton, who must implement change during the international break.

Related: Everton’s Farhad Moshiri: Ronald Koeman has my total support

Related: Everton still need striker despite record Sigurdsson signing, says Koeman

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[WATCH] More Than A Club via GrandOldTeam

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Adam Partington recently joined Carling and Sky Sports to discuss the work Everton do in the community.

You can watch a snippet below, and/or the full feature here.


WATCH: @PartAdam looks at the work @Everton do in the community. Watch the full #CIOTB here: https://t.co/5YfBCJF0PR https://t.co/jtodmjy2Hp

— Sky Sports
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(@SkySports) October 2, 2017
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The post [WATCH] More Than A Club appeared first on GrandOldTeam.


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To Unexpected Losses via GrandOldTeam

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Burnley was the first unexpected loss of the season”
Farhad Moshiri 1st October 2017.

“In proving foresight may be in vain, the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry”
Robert Burns.

It has been an eventful two months for Farhad Moshiri. It has also been an eventful 24 hours for him. Perhaps for the first time in his leadership (as we are told he now has complete control of the club) he faces some pressure. This pressure is coming in part due to poor performances off the field, in part due to a lack of competency from his own board and an increasingly frustrated fan base who have until now been broadly supportive of what he is trying to achieve.



Had we scanned back 2 months to the start of August the mood was largely positive. The club had acquired a number of good younger players, sold Lukaku for what at the time seemed a world record and were hoping a to add Olivier Giroud and a central defender to the side. It looked almost certain a replacement for Lukaku would come, given the speed and efficiency of the previous signings. If this is what Moshiri’s Everton would look like most would be fully behind this. There was some talk that we could be dark horses for the top 4, with several of the sides above us struggling to complete the business they needed to be done. Lots what have to go right for that to be the case, and thus far very little has.

You scan forward two months and Everton could be faced with the very real possibility of being out of 2 of the 3 competitions they could have realistically won and be facing a struggle to remain in the division. All of this could be a reality within the next 4-5 weeks. I have seen Everton sides who are playing better than this one flirt with relegation. While this is certainly not the time to push the panic buttons, but it also remains important that complacency is not maintained.

To his credit, Moshiri has come out and made a statement following the Burnley defeat. It is important to say there is much in the statement that is fair and are good points rather than solely focus on the negative. Firstly I would agree with him that managerial projects and need time, very few clubs will succeed on the back of changing managers after a 10 game poor run. Koeman’s Everton last season had a similar run that was turnaround against Arsenal and saw an uplift in performance. Likewise, we have faced a difficult start, in all likelihood the most difficult of all the sides in the league and have been very unfortunate with injuries. Jagielka, Bolasie, Coleman would make a huge difference to this side. The statement that remains most alarming though is when he says “this is the first unexpected loss of the season”.

To me, there are two clear difficulties with this statement. The first is that I don’t think we should ever be expecting to lose a game, particularly at Goodison Park. Secondly and perhaps more importantly as a leader you have to think about your choice of words very carefully and this feels deeply problematic for a club that has ambitions to improve.



Most will get bogged down in the first element. There are arguments either way for this. I can understand we have played 4 sides who are currently well ahead of where we are. 3 of them have turnovers, spend on players wages and transfer fees that go well beyond our own. That for some will be evidence to say they expect Everton to lose to those teams, even at Everton. In truth I have little to say to this, other than to say last season we lost 2 games at home all season, so we have shown we are able to compete with anyone at our own ground, and any defeat to me is unexpected. Likewise Spurs had not won at Everton in the previous 4 visits. If we are now saying defeat is not unexpected what does this say about Moshiri’s first 18 months in charge? That we are expecting worse results than before he arrived? If this is truly his belief it should be causing him enormous concerns.

The second point is far more black and white to me. As a leader or an organization, you have to take enormous care of not just what you say but how you say it. Everything you say, in every detail will be analysed and good leaders are able to use words to transform the mindset of a company. If you were the manager, players or staff reading those words two things would hit me, firstly that it is acceptable to lose against better teams and secondly that this season is going ok we have just been a bit unlucky. I am not sure that is the message that I would be looking to convey to any of the constituency groups following a defeat at home to Burnley leaves us perilously close to the bottom 3.

Such comments are ladened with difficulty. You are always trying to balance the expectations of supporters against the concrete reality of what a club with the 7th highest turnover and wage bill in the league can achieve. I understand that and understand that and also understand that Evertonians and scousers more generally expect the very best from their football teams. That weight of expectation can lift players or swallow them uphole (which looks to be the case for Ashley Williams who looks to be desperately missing South Wales). It is a fine balance and if you demand things that aren’t realistic you will ultimately lose people.

My point would be, that nobody is sacked over losing games against the top 4-5-6 teams. We go into those games underdogs but we should always look to have a plan to get a result. It is only through adopting that attitude that you give yourself a chance to achieve that eventuality. When I was a schoolteacher, though it often seemed counter-intuitive I would start every lesson with the expectation that every child would not only behave appropriately but also would learn. This was a goal that was very difficult, but unless you started from that point children would never be able to learn. In the same way, unless you start from the position you expect to win, it’s unlikely you will win. Currently, at Everton we have 0 wins in 22 years at Chelsea & Arsenal, 0 in 17 years at Liverpool and 1 in 24 years at Old Trafford. We were gifted a golden opportunity to win at the Etihad which was wasted, you could say even choked. It is not unreasonable to suggest there is a connection between the grim records we have at those grounds and acceptance at the top of the club that losing is not unexpected.



What was poignant on Saturday was there was a remembrance of Alan Ball. Many years ago I asked my dad to tell me about the sort of player Alan Ball was. I was expecting him to wax lyrical which he didn’t, but what he said was far more poignant. His remark was that Ball was “a short*rse narky git who would not accept defeat”. It tallies with stories that Ball would cry in the changing rooms when Everton lost. Brian Labone the Everton captain at the time would remark he was part of the only 3 man team to win the league (alongside his other 2 midfield partners Colin Harvey and Howard Kendall). Colin Harvey attributed Everton’s success down centrally to Alan Ball remarking “that we lost 1-0 to (champions) Liverpool in the Charity Shield, we signed Ball and within a few weeks we beat them 3-1 which was down to him. He gave everyone the confidence that we could do it.” The idea that Ball would accept there was an expectation any side he’d be involved with was expected to lose is unthinkable and that mentality seeped through to the team who ultimately win the league.

I recently read Alex Fergusan’s book about business (I would recommend it to every reader) and one of the key insights is that he expected Manchester United to win every game. A Silicon Valley investor who he became friends with noted in the afterword that this became an effective Mission Objective (MO) in an era where people waste tonnes of money coming up with MO’s that are too complicated to work. It was simple and was a standard he held all players too and would influence how he would set his teams up game to game, all the way through to big strategic decisions around recruitment. Everything led from and too the belief he expected Manchester to win every game of football. It’s unthinkable to believe he would have publically made the comments Moshiri did having lost at home to a side he was expecting to beat. Blame the ref. Blame the league. Blame your players. Blame the opposition. Blame the opposition fans. But never accept the premise you don’t expect to win.



There will be reasonable counter points to this that the Manchester United he inherited and more specifically built as well as the Everton Alan Ball played for are far and away better than the current Everton team. Without doubt, had Everton had Ball, Royle, Kendall, Labone, Wright, Harvey & Morrissey playing for them, they would all massively improve this playing team and it is therefore understandable Ball expected the best from them. Yet how do you ever propose to get to the pinnacle of football if that isn’t your aim? Or how will Everton ever improve on 7th is we won’t start from a position of needing to beat teams ahead of us?

Likewise there is a legitimate question about whether something may be lost in translation in what is Moshiri’s second language. This to me raises far wider points around communication from the board. Why is there no communications officer? Why are we not proactive in communications? Why are Elstone and Kenwright never out defending their choices and decisions? If I am bluntly honest, why have attempts not been made to get somebody of the calibre of Jim White to work for the club full time? While he’s not everyone’s cup of tea (I can’t stand the man) he is the biggest advocate of Everton Football Club in the media without being on the pay role. He is also an industry leader in his role and possesses the sort of excellence the club misses in these moments. If you want a football club that expects to win, such an appointment fits within that broader strategic approach.

We then get left with the substance of the debate, that Moshiri is looking to give Koeman time. I can understand that. You can’t be successful if you sack managers every time they have a two month tricky spell. However the acute feeling with Koeman is that outside of a 3 month spell last season the results have remained patchy. He also feels an uneasy fit, with him viewing Everton very much as a stepping stone, which will be tolerated all the time he fills his side of the bargain (to continue to improve players and results) but if this stops you do wonder how much patience he ought to be afforded. While Martinez and Moyes were afforded time, they had both earned the period of good grace with far more limited funds than Koeman.

Carlo Ancelotti and Thomas Tuchel are currently without a club (though it does look as if Tuchel will be going to Bayern). The reality is Tuchel fits more easily into what the club look to be trying to do, with a heavy focus on youth recruitment. He looks a better fit than Koeman. Ancelotti looks a more uneasy fit, being a manager who organizes elite players to win trophies. We remain some way off that level so there is a question as to how transferable his skillset is (much like the criticism leveled at Koeman). What cannot be doubted though is he is a big upgrade on Koeman, with over 20 titles to his name he is rightly bracketed alongside Guardiola and Mourinho as one of the very best managers in the world.

To me it would be remiss if a discussion wasn’t being opened with either of the above. They both may knock us back and we may talk to them and feel they wouldn’t be right for Everton. However if the club want to get back to being the best, if an opportunity to upgrade a manager comes this is an avenue that needs to be looked at. This is a long way for calling for Koeman’s head, and replacing him with no idea of who comes in would be foolhardy but an upgrade would be no bad thing at this moment.

This is now the biggest challenge of Moshiri’s regime. It is in moments such as this we will get a glimpse as to which direction the club really wants to head in. I hope that the current scenario we see, with the same figures running Everton in largely the same way as occurred pre Moshiri is a long term vision for the club. I hope that it is a transitional agreement before Moshiri acquires all the shares. 2 months ago I would have said that was inevitable though with my faith shaken somewhat in him I don’t think we can rule anything in or out currently. However, whatever Moshiri’s aims are, whether they be to take full control himself, move the club on to a wealthier investor, bring a figure like Usmanov on board or continue as the financial weight for Kenwright to run the club we now need clear direction from him. The next few weeks will provide that test and we will begin to get the answers we crave.

The post To Unexpected Losses appeared first on GrandOldTeam.


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Everton’s Lukaku-shaped hole leaves praise of summer buys looking hollow | Paul Wilson via The Guardian

Ronald Koeman was applauded for his swift summer recruitment but his failure to replace Everton’s most important departing player shows the pitfalls of judging a team’s health by their transfer activity

An ancient cliche was conspicuous by its absence when Everton’s owner, Farhad Moshiri, gave Ronald Koeman a vote of confidence the other day. Older football followers in particular might have noted that in reporting it hardly anyone used the word “dreaded”.

Presumably it is safe to say votes of confidence are still dreaded, because no manager particularly wants one and they still tend to mean what they always meant, that the stay of execution will be terminated anyway if results cannot be quickly improved.

Related: Ronald Koeman given time to solve the Everton crisis he largely created

Related: Burnley’s Jeff Hendrick strikes to pile further pressure on Everton

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