Match Thread Everton v West Ham. 5th March at 1500.

[Milk]

Welcome mate, always good to see fans getting involved.

Especially with a well reasoned post

 

[LAToffee]

I'm not a hater, didn't realise the lad was being genuine, he was agreeing with everyone, thought he was taking the piste,
Sincere apologies Carlos, my mistake, thanks for pointing it out LAToffee.

Ah honest misunderstanding. Carlos works on vibe management which the forum desperately needs this season

 

[Fletch]

Mate you can't blame him for that.

Had Mirallas being subbed off RM would have been slaughtered on here and by fans for 'taking our best player off'...

But you would have understood it knowing he was on a yellow and his previous. I ma nage at semi pro level, we have a great striker who's 38 now, Ive managed him for ten years at various clubs, I know when to sub him off, when the red mist is descending on him, I know his body language, I know him as a player. I always give him a shout, he knows he's going to come off, I havent always got it right but being a good manager is knowing what makes your players tick, Martinez doesnt care if he gets slaughtered or not, if he did he would have dropped Howard months ago etc

 

[Jimmy Grimble]

Mirallas is responsible for Mirallas being sent off. Mirallas stays on, we probably win that game. The 10 men did really well, but couldn't sustain the energy levels for the whole 90 minutes and West Ham took advantage in the last 20 minutes. Martinez obviously felt that Niasse with fresh legs, could occupy their defenders, support Rom and give us an effective out ball so that we weren't inviting them on to us. It didn't work, but I get why he did it.

 

[BlueToff]

But you would have understood it knowing he was on a yellow and his previous. I ma nage at semi pro level, we have a great striker who's 38 now, Ive managed him for ten years at various clubs, I know when to sub him off, when the red mist is descending on him, I know his body language, I know him as a player. I always give him a shout, he knows he's going to come off, I havent always got it right but being a good manager is knowing what makes your players tick, Martinez doesnt care if he gets slaughtered or not, if he did he would have dropped Howard months ago etc

I can understand that.

I think that you're right in that there were signs Kev might be doing something stupid, but overall he had been tracking back well and giving us a threat on the counter.

Lets not forget it was a good move from him to link up with Rom who gave a heavy pass back.

Mirallas lunged in stupidly though and he didn't need to do that. I won't blame RM for not taking him off as we were 30 minutes into the game.

 

[BlueToff]

Mirallas is responsible for Mirallas being sent off. Mirallas stays on, we probably win that game. The 10 men did really well, but couldn't sustain the energy levels for the whole 90 minutes and West Ham took advantage in the last 20 minutes. Martinez obviously felt that Niasse with fresh legs, could occupy their defenders, support Rom and give us an effective out ball so that we weren't inviting them on to us. It didn't work, but I get why he did it.

I agree about Kev mate, but... and this is coming from somebody who has and still does want Martinez firmly in, the manager made an awful change with that sub.

The theory you state would be sound but, that wasn't actually the situation of the game at that point.

When Lennon went off, we were still creating chances and pushing W.Ham back. As I've said - either in here or in the RM thread - Song had come on and was having an awful time of it while being harried and hassled by Lennon and Besic, meaning he was dropping deeper and deeper and thus becoming less effective - same for Payet who was then dropping back as well.

We literally had them well in our pockets mate. They were lumping crosses in but they were no danger as our defence was being helped out by McCarthy - who had a superb game.

However, our shape completely changed when we made that sub - and remember this is a forward coming on with no PL experience with 15 minutes left in a game we have 10 men in.

If it needed changing, he could have come on for Lukaku. If Lennon - our best player - had to be taken off, then there was no viable reason for RM not to bring on a player like Barry who can retain possession and knows how to organise.

 

[BlueToff]

This is my first ever post on GOT guys. Been an avid reader for a number of years but never felt the need to post until after yesterday's game. Having gone to the game here is my take on the most salient points.

Starting formation. Where the hell did three at the back come from? RM tried it for the last 15 mins against Villa midweek and it didn't work then. Why on earth did he then decide to experiment against one of the in form teams in the premier. The only two players who knew their role in the team were Joel and Rom. Everybody else looked uncomfortable with the system, which just lends itself to the tippy tappy nonsense that I thought we had, to some degree, moved away from. It was alarming the number of times we gave the ball away in our own third and it was down to pure luck/poor hammers play that we weren't punished for our mistakes. Indeed I thought we took the lead in spite of, rather than because of, the system.

John Stones. The lad is clearly suffering some sort of confidence crisis, and I thought it was a terrible decision by RM to bring him back into the team in an experimental defensive system that none of our defenders are comfortable/familiar with. Having said that, I was both startled, and deeply saddened, by the number of fans who have so obviously turned against him. I was in the street end, and it wasn't just the odd fan shouting abuse. The amount of vitriol the young man had to put up with almost every time he touched the ball was astonishing, and I've no doubt we are driving away from our club, potentially the best defender ever to have graced our famous ground. I believe he really will be that good, and we are going to lose him.

Kevin Mirallas. I'm a Mirallas fan but I believe he deserved his red card yesterday. I absolutely hate simulation so he deserved his first card, which made the tackle for the second card total lunacy. Having said that, I felt that he was also guilty of trying too hard, which I would much rather see than somebody not putting in a shift.

Ten Men. The sending off actually worked in our favour. Reverting to a flat back 4 made us more defensively sound and, more importantly, provided a balance to our play that we didn't have with 11 players on he pitch. I thought for that last 15 mins of the first half and the first 30 of the second, we played some of the best football seen at Goodison all season. Credit RM for switching Besic for Stones at half time, although I think there were probably 35000 Evertonians in the ground who would have done exactly the same thing. We defended sensibly, fought for every ball all over the pitch, broke with pace and purpose and controlled the game without really looking under any great pressure, despite all the endeavours of the excellent Payet. The players even got the much maligned home crowd completely behind them and I was even singing myself at one stage. It's why we're Evertonians and I admit I had a lump in my throat at times during that period, because I was so proud of what the boys were doing on the pitch. I could even take on the chin Rom's penalty miss and his excellent chance soon afterwards, as we were still in control and, for once this season, I couldn't see the opposition getting back into it. Then RM made his second substitution!

Substitutions. One of my biggest issues with RM is how he manages (or rather mis-manages) games in progress. Yesterdays second substitution was probably the worst example of mismanagement yet. There have been many times this season (and last season too) when the game was crying out for change, whether it be formation, personnel or both. Yesterday though, all we had to do was keep things the same. We were in total control and were still looking dangerous on the break. Everybody looked full of energy (especially Lennon). If anything, I would probably have brought on fresh legs for Barkley, but even that would have been reluctantly as he was the springboard for most of our breaks. I was totally gobsmacked when he took off our best player and replaced him with a second striker (who incidentally doesn't look remotely like a professional footballer to me). In which football manual does it instruct you to replace a midfielder with a striker when you are 2-0 up in 15 minutes to go and own to 10 men? I think it's possibly the most ridiculous substitution I have seen in 40+ years of watching football and, along with almost everybody else inside Goodison, I was not surprised when we started to surrender our lead and ultimately lose the match. Have I ever experienced so much mixed emotions watching Everton before? Probably just the 1985 F A cup final, but that doesn't make it any easier.

Everton that though.

Hi mate. First and foremost welcome to the forum.

Agree with you on a few things but I think you're maybe being slightly harsh on other factors.

- Starting formation:
I actually - and so do many others on here, including people who firmly want and have wanted RM out for a while - think that the idea to go with three at the back was a sound one. Barry wasn't fully fit and W.Ham were playing 3-5-1-1. So what we did was match them and you have to say in the first half an hour we were by far the better side. They had obviously prepared for us to go 4-2-3-1 and there was plenty of space that we exploited on the counter. What adversely effected us was the dismissal of Kev (but touch on that later). Overall though I think the system worked fine up until that point and it was the best we have looked at home in a while.

- Stones:
Again, I don't see where this idea that he's lost all of his confidence. It's just a matter of giving the lad time to regain his place and refind his form. He had a shaky month when some of the fans, and like you I don't get this at all, turned on him - claiming he wasn't arsed about Everton and 'NSNO LAD'. It's ridiculous. He's still one of our best players. What again was detremental to him in the main was having to be moved over to right back after Kev's sending off. It was a necessity though as we needed to get to HT and then make the reshuffle.

- Mirallas
Agree 100% on Kev. For his first you have seen them given either way but you don't always see (in fact rarely) a player booked for it. Total inconsistency across the board and it's extremley frustrating.

- Subs
Couldn't agree more on that mate!

RM - and I've been one of the biggest advocates of his on here and will defend him to the hilt if I believe he deserves it - got it totally wrong with the Niasse sub. As you said, we were in control at that stage and nothing needed changing, and, if it had to be done (lets be honest Lennon could well have told the coaches he was feeling the pace a bit) then he had much simpler and better options on the bench than a foreign striker with no PL experience.

He deserves all the stick he gets for that sub and it's gutting as I think in the last month or so - and mainly since the turn of the year barring one or two anomilies - we seemed to have got away from the bad habits that saw us collapse on Saturday.

I also was disgusted with the defending in that last 15 minutes though and I'm as mad at the players for that as I am RM - though you have to say it was clear fatigue had come back in.

There's obviously other factors like the penalty miss etc, and RM is right to say if that goes in then we have the points. But the thing is is we still looked sound after that both in defence and attack until he made the second substitution, after initially he and the team had put in one of our best displays of the season.

 

[bcblue1878]

....he might score the next few but I'm not a fan of the way Lukaku takes penalties. He's got a kick like a mule and I can't understand why he tries to be fancy.

Shout heard in Upper Gwladys St when he missed - " Jesus Christ Lukaku, I hit me kids harder than that"!!

 

[Ashtonian]

So as it stands for the future. We have to beat Arsenal, get beat could lead to....

1) no change
2) west brom opening a gap on us
3) Watford win we drop to 13th
4) Bournemoth Win we drop to 13th
5) watford and Bournemouth win we drop to 14th
6) Swansea/ palace win and we get dangerously close to dropping even further.

Obviously we are never going down this season, but the question right now is, how low can we possibly drop? Are west brom / Bournemoth / Watford / better than us? Have they got better players? Better managers?

Chelsea game is the season in a nutshell, a cup game and potential cup win in the balance, once that goes then the horrors of the league have nothing to cover them up any more. Said it weeks ago, we need to start winning games against teams that aren't getting relegated this season, the fact that away from the mini league at the bottom, the lowest team not going down have beat us recently, palace drew, watford drew, bournemouth drew, west brom beat us, liverpool yet to come etc It isn't like we are beating the teams around us either.

 

[oldblue]

Definitely wrong in hindsight to take Lennon off but for Martinez to be getting more stick from this game than Mirallas does show that some people are looking for problems now.
We were substituting from weakness as tiredness was going to be a defining factor at two nil. It feels comfortable but when players are tired one goal changes their adrenalin and you often see more goals straight away when fatigue is a problem.
Sadly I think till the end of the season anything that goes against us or any gamble Martinez makes that doesn't work is going to be presented as part of a long term problem, and wins are just going to be what we should be doing. I still feel we have a great squad and a progressive style that needs working on so the manager gets a pass because I've seen too many teams who would have played horrible desperate, hoof ball going down to ten men, lost three one and talked about how they were better than the sum of their parts.
For the record Bilic would have been my first choice as manager after Moyes and I was convinced Martinez was a mistake right up till this season. So I think I'm allowed to say Martinez needs time and the judging after each setback is bad for the club.

 

[bcblue1878]

I still cannot believe their isn't a Martinez out thread yet!!!!!!

Maybe I should start it.....

I'm starting to get the impression this is it!

 

[Barnfred 55]

Hi mate. First and foremost welcome to the forum.

Agree with you on a few things but I think you're maybe being slightly harsh on other factors.

- Starting formation:
I actually - and so do many others on here, including people who firmly want and have wanted RM out for a while - think that the idea to go with three at the back was a sound one. Barry wasn't fully fit and W.Ham were playing 3-5-1-1. So what we did was match them and you have to say in the first half an hour we were by far the better side. They had obviously prepared for us to go 4-2-3-1 and there was plenty of space that we exploited on the counter. What adversely effected us was the dismissal of Kev (but touch on that later). Overall though I think the system worked fine up until that point and it was the best we have looked at home in a while.

- Stones:
Again, I don't see where this idea that he's lost all of his confidence. It's just a matter of giving the lad time to regain his place and refind his form. He had a shaky month when some of the fans, and like you I don't get this at all, turned on him - claiming he wasn't arsed about Everton and 'NSNO LAD'. It's ridiculous. He's still one of our best players. What again was detremental to him in the main was having to be moved over to right back after Kev's sending off. It was a necessity though as we needed to get to HT and then make the reshuffle.

- Mirallas
Agree 100% on Kev. For his first you have seen them given either way but you don't always see (in fact rarely) a player booked for it. Total inconsistency across the board and it's extremley frustrating.

- Subs
Couldn't agree more on that mate!

RM - and I've been one of the biggest advocates of his on here and will defend him to the hilt if I believe he deserves it - got it totally wrong with the Niasse sub. As you said, we were in control at that stage and nothing needed changing, and, if it had to be done (lets be honest Lennon could well have told the coaches he was feeling the pace a bit) then he had much simpler and better options on the bench than a foreign striker with no PL experience.

He deserves all the stick he gets for that sub and it's gutting as I think in the last month or so - and mainly since the turn of the year barring one or two anomilies - we seemed to have got away from the bad habits that saw us collapse on Saturday.

I also was disgusted with the defending in that last 15 minutes though and I'm as mad at the players for that as I am RM - though you have to say it was clear fatigue had come back in.

There's obviously other factors like the penalty miss etc, and RM is right to say if that goes in then we have the points. But the thing is is we still looked sound after that both in defence and attack until he made the second substitution, after initially he and the team had put in one of our best displays of the season.

Cheers mate.

Think we have to agree to disagree on 5 at the back. To some extent I understand the concept and RMs reasoning, but feel the players are neither sufficiently comfortable with or used to the system to employ it in such an important game. I also thought the side lacked balance during that opening period. But hey, the game's all about opinions.

I think overall we agree on Stones except what you put down to form, I put down to confidence. I think we both agree that when he get's back into the team it should be as a CB in a back 4 though.

Disagree on the defence during the last 15 mins. They had a huge team on the field at the end and, with the right delivery, we were always going to struggle in the air. We had to stop the delivery which we had done fantastically well for the first 75 mins. That all went to pot when we effectively surrendered territory when Lennon went off.

I'll leave the RM topic for now and make a post on the appropriate thread when I get a spare hour or so. Love him and hate him in equal measures though.

 

[bcblue1878]

These days I have a 280 mile round trip to games, more and more often the 140 miles home feels a lot longer than the 140 miles to what originally was home!

On the positive side...........
For 50 minutes, with 10 players on the pitch, we were magnificent, and quite honestly I almost forgot we were playing with a man down!
Aaron Lennon, MotM by some distance.
Goodison was a great place to be again, particularly when that 2nd goal went in.
The Besic substitution was a good one.

On the negative side..........
County Café has closed down!!!
Kev, dear me - why give the ref any chance at all to send you off after that first booking.
Rom's penalty - not only did he stop in his run up, the then topped it. Barkley takes a far better penalty!
Cannot figure out why Niasse comes on for Lennon? Barry or Baines would have been far better options.
The atmosphere turned from amazing to toxic in the space of 15 minutes, going to be interesting to see what happens if Chelsea go ahead early in the cup on Saturday!
Same as in the Leicester game it kicked off in the Upper Gwladys St, Everton fans v Everton fans is never good - just shouldn't happen!

Once again the negatives out weigh the positives, can't see Mr Moshiri putting up with this inconsistency and under achievement for too long once he's got his feet under the table!

 

[Ashtonian]

Definitely wrong in hindsight to take Lennon off but for Martinez to be getting more stick from this game than Mirallas does show that some people are looking for problems now.
We were substituting from weakness as tiredness was going to be a defining factor at two nil. It feels comfortable but when players are tired one goal changes their adrenalin and you often see more goals straight away when fatigue is a problem.
Sadly I think till the end of the season anything that goes against us or any gamble Martinez makes that doesn't work is going to be presented as part of a long term problem, and wins are just going to be what we should be doing. I still feel we have a great squad and a progressive style that needs working on so the manager gets a pass because I've seen too many teams who would have played horrible desperate, hoof ball going down to ten men, lost three one and talked about how they were better than the sum of their parts.
For the record Bilic would have been my first choice as manager after Moyes and I was convinced Martinez was a mistake right up till this season. So I think I'm allowed to say Martinez needs time and the judging after each setback is bad for the club.

I disagree mate, i think most, including myself have burned their bridges with Kev, they just aren't banding it about. Personally i have spoke in support of mirallas this season, and he has let me down in that respect, i wouldn't mind never seeing him pull on a blue shirt again. To be sent off once for petulance in a season after coming off the bench is forgivable, to be sent off when finally getting a run in the team isn't.

 

[banno]

Hmm, it would be a tough call to get rid of any of Coleman, Jags, Mori, Oviedo, Baines, Galloway, Browning. It's the midfield that needs sorting imo. An attack-minded LB and RB wouldn't be such a liability if we had a bit more defensive ability in midfield.

I am just going by the 3 crosses against W. Ham The cross from Villa in the last 2 games has seen us concede 4 goals because they are not dealt with. We have only Fune who has a better chance of winning those headers whereas the rest are not good. This is how West Ham played us in the 2nd half by putting Carroll on and getting as many crosses in the box....our Achilles heal. We have to look at the defensive qualities of Baines, Coleman and Oviedo and nothing more and you then see we are lacking defensively. I do agree that the midfield go awol and don't press the ball enough. I am saying that with the money we now have I think we need better quality defenders first and foremost rather than average defenders with good quality going forward.