First trip to Goodison in years today. Some thoughts:
Pickford: didn't actually have to do that much that I remember. Couple good saves, out off his line well a couple times. Some great kicks, some awful.
Tarks/Jake O: Played ok. Tarks got caught out by how clever/cute the Roma forwards were a couple times, but overall solid. Great long raking balls to the opposite wing. OB did quite well, but nearly played us into trouble getting caught out going for a ball he shouldn't have early on.
Gueye/Tim: co MotM. Tim looks really good. We rinsed Villa hard in the PSR trade war based on his performances so far. I think he'd be better than Doucs playing the advance cm role. Can run with the ball, hold off defenders and make decent passes. He just plays good football.
O'Neill/Harrison: ON was only good when he was running left to right across the pitch. If these two are still starting by the end of the season we will struggle. Neither of them really takes a man on or gets enough decent balls into the box. The one time Harrison did impress me was when he floated inside a bit more, then nearly played in a lovely ball over the top for DCL. Was thinking that might be a better position for him, then he moved there when the subs came on.
DCL: did pretty well, took his goal very nicely. Good strength to get onto the ball, then finished well.
Ndiaye/Lindstrom: Ndiaye looked very good as soon as he came on. Instantly our best wide player. Lindstrom struggled to have as much impact, apart from taking set pieces. I did like that as soon as he was on he wanted to get high and wide and try to get in behind the defence tho.
Doucs: he's so bad on the ball. I "get' why he's in the team, but if we want to progress we need someone better there who will stop us needing what Doucore brings.
Overall it wasn't a bad performance. Roma did look like they could get in too easily when they really stepped it up and started playing their little intricate football. Second half we did have some nice little moves of our own that nearly got us good chances, hopefully more of that in the future.
On Goodison itself: sat in the Lower Bullens and had a classic restricted view. Luckily it was just the area 5/10 yards outside the LH box. Queued up for food/drink at half time, took til 2/3 mins into the second half to get to the front, and there was no food left then
Was nice to see lots of families around where I was tho
Managed to see Dyche, Myko and Lunds on their way out, and bumped into the Toffee TV lads too
