2021/22 Rafael Benitez

[Cork Evertonian]

Tell you who is a massive [Poor language removed]. That cork evertonian, I’d laugh if he died. Everything that’s wrong with the fan base

edit: ban me I’m [Poor language removed] sick of Everton and it’s “fans”

Oh and Johhny we have legislation put in place in Ireland, with regards to that sort of thing. Basically that kind of online abuse is a criminal offence here, and if you are a resident of this country, then that post would be considered a breach of those laws.

 

[Zatara]

He managed that game woefully today. I'll be honest, in the 25+ years of watching us, I'm not sure I can think of a game that was managed worse in the last 15 than that one. I'd love to know what his thought process was when he brought Iwobi on too.

Its up there with the very worst ineffective managerial displays ive ever seen from an Everton manager.

That was prime Mike Walker, perhaps worse.

We were getting really overrun in midfield today though mate.

I'll try to put my anger towards Iwobi to one side for a minute, and say there may be situations for him, but today wasnt one. Thats as kind as I can be. I dont know why he didnt bring Gbamin or Holgate on to give us some control.

If Gbamin cant do a 15 minute cameo in a game like that, hes done.

Gbamin must be finished if he isnt being brought on at 2-1 or even 2-2 when we were falling apart.

Holgate could have come in as a 3rd midfielder. We could have chucked Dobbin on for Rondon just to add some pace to the forward line and get the ball down the pitch.

This is what I find utter bizarre. Ancelotti served up diabolical football, but I fancied us in most games because of how tight we were. He knew we had nothing going forward, so the best option was to ensure you don’t concede.

Ripping that up shows a very arrogant approach

Changing away from what worked last year is stubborn or arrogant or both. Its irrational to persist with something that doesn't work as well as you did it before.

If you come into an organisation and see that something is working while other things are failing...

...why do you cancel the things that work?

I genuinely dont think he even watched tapes of us last season.

14 from a favourable 9 games is substandard. In fact its below whats acceptable when you consider he also lost to QPR.

His in game management today was the sort of rubbish I'd have expected from Koeman. I'm convinced he planned the subs in advance because they were illogical and baffling.

I had us down at 24pts from 13 games. After that its mostly downhill for the next 6 in terms of teams were playing and fixtures piling up.

To achieve that we now need to beat Wolves, Spurs, Brentford and draw at City.

Yet this bloke thinks weve made a good start to the season

Bring someone in who is young and hungry and doesn't alienate over half the fambase.

Potter was who I would have gone for.

We also need to decide who recruits players. It cant be a combo of board, chairman, DOF, and manager. Its either the manager or DOF.

Id have gone for Potter of those we were linked with.

Ruben Amorim is the one though...hes really the best young manager out there at the moment.

Bad interview post game, saying he couldn’t explain what went wrong.

I‘ll never be a fan of his, but i like to helpful, bin zonal marking and drill defending set pieces.

I thought the main thing he was known for was defensive displays and a solid midfield.

Not seen any of that this season apart from when players like Mina and Doucoure put in top performances.

 

[LABlue2]

Sack

 

[Zatara]

No because Klopp/Pep/Poch etc wouldn't change their style for anyone same as Potter who many want to come here - LOL imagine seeing our squad try play Potterball that would be fun.

Sanchez
Veltman
Dunk
Burn
March
Gross
Lallana
Moder
Cucurella
Trossard
Maupay


How many of those players get into our team?

Potter has them playing beautiful football.

He could have tried keeping Gray and Gordon on the pitch and took off the hopeless Rondon and not sent on Iwobi.

He could have also tried matching them in midfield. The subs he made were almost certainly premeditated. It was like a kid on championship manager. I've never seen such poor decision making since the Martinez days.

It certainly looks premeditated.

Martinez wanted us to play on the front foot and dominate posession with players who werent good enough.

Benitez wants players like Digne and Godfrey to play deep on a leash and rely on Keane to head balls away.

It must be the most bewildering manager and defensive system alot of these players will have suffered under.

Benitez:

"Ben, youre lightening quick recovery pace wont be used in a higher line, we'll have you sat back defending crosses and covering for Michael's errors".

"Lucas, youre great attacking play will need to be held back as i need you to stay within this zone of the pitch and block crosses"

"Michael, you stay back and head the ball away, when you have the ball at your feet take it forward and ping passes like Beckenbauer, dont worry if they go to the opposition. Have fun"

"Seamus, you know what to do".



Bloke is a joke of a manager.

Tim, along with myself and a few other posters, was one of the only ones in here calling Ancelotti out. We regularly got told we couldn't expect too much etc.

Ancelotti wanted to play better footy, he just had no idea how with the players at his disposal when we came out into the run-in last season. That's a failing of him, totally. It was either backs to the wall stuff (which did work, btw, because we were defensively sound in those matches) or he went the other way and chucked all of our fit attackers on the pitch.

Benitez is definitely setting us out to be a counter-attacking team. Okay. But to do that you need to be defensively sound (we aren't), good from set-pieces (we aren't) and, at least, be able to mix things up which we cannot do. We've averaged 40% possession, Brennan, in nine league games. We've played one team from the 'big six', and played four teams at home that I'd expect to be in a relegation battle come May.

Now I'm not obsessed with having the ball. But there has to be spells in games where you can control it and set the tempo. We've done it in tiny, little flashes, but they've been too few and far between. The 10-passes stat from last week was revealing. Second-lowest team in the league for passing moves of over 10 passes. And 10 passes isn't a lot.

Alot of people forget that Ancelotti had stated he would make the team more attacking this season.

Last season we got a taste of it in the first games. We then became very defensively solid and sacrificed alot of forward play.

After having that foundation in defence im confident he would have gradually added some more quality going forwards.

At the moment, we have a far more disjointed team which plays well for 10mins a game.

Theres a huge gulf between Benitez and Ancelotti....theres even a huge gulf between Benitez and Davide Ancelotti.

Should be after Ruben Amorim or another progressive young manager... instead we get this

 

[2xpetes]

You cocked up Rafael Rondon shouldn’t started if Richarlison fit Gordon shoulda stayed on Iwobi shouldn’t come on You’re to blame

 

[Igrok]

Today proves the old adage, you can't polish a turd. Fair play, Benitez has managed to roll the Everton turd in glitter early on. The true lack of numbers and quality is now blatant

True question is how we ended up like this after spending hundreds and hundreds of mil….would be a good guidebook for Newcastle…

 

[gorgeousgeorgeEFC]

Was listening to the radio last night and one kopite-esque moronic so-called blue was saying that R.A.F.A. should be SACKED!! We are one point behind 5th place after spending just £2million in the summer and he should be sacked?! God spare us!!

Yes it’s concerning to lose at home when you’ve got the 12th man of the fans. They say that teams that can’t win their home matches are condemned to mediocrity. However, we have been plagued by injuries in a way that no other club has. We’ve been without our main frontman (DCL) for months and even Richarlison was only able to play part of yesterday’s match after months out injured. We miss Doucoure acutely, too. Take Keita, Salah and Firmino out of the RS team and see how well they do.

 

[LocalNative]

Don’t care who the manager is or what players are available. You can’t get hammered by Watford in your own backyard.

 

[Sagar]

No. Just just start with noticing how little Rondon offers. And then after noticing how bad he is, stop playing him! I couldn’t believe he wasn’t substituted today. Both Gordon and Gray being substituted today instead of him, was baffling to me. We played badly, defended badly and got punished. But Rafael has made a bad call with Rondon, and doesn’t seem able to change his mind on him. We’d be more effective with an extra midfielder, and our spare options there aren’t great!

He substituted them, when we were 2-1 up, and Gordon was really tired, and gray seemed to have a slight knack. You wouldn't want them to be injured as well, when we are 2-1 up at Goodison, and in just 15 mins our defense crumbled, who would have expected that? Look at those mistakes, last 4 goals, look at the position and touches of davis, Godfrey, Keane , Allan...this is beyond any hope till Rafael goes in market for atleast two -three seasons with decent backing.

 

[MikeH72]

The nuremberg trials style inquest we will need to undergo after this dark period of the club's history is over will not be kind to some.

It is not too late to join the right side of history.

Benitez will not see Christmas. This run coming up is going to be tough.

Hopefully the inquest looks into the people actually eating the club from the inside, the root of the evil rather than focusing on someone who just happens to be a short-term employee like they want us to.

 

[Sagar]

They are real reasons.

You and your mates will have a long long wait if you want Benitez out.

A loooooong wait.

No mate, if I was Rafael, I would be off to Newcastle if there is an offering, by now he must have realised two things ,no matter what happens, certain section of fans would never back him, and remainder would turn on against him in no time, he knows the squad is in utter shambles, that will take time atleast 2-3 seasons. He won't be given that much time by the fans..

 

[Moonlight dribbler]

Hopefully the inquest looks into the people actually eating the club from the inside, the root of the evil rather than focusing on someone who just happens to be a short-term employee like they want us to.

Totally agree, we need to get rid of the guy who hired these inept managers. Silva, Koeman, Allardyce were bad but Benitez is just a different level of bad. It's like someone is playing a game of who can hire the worse manager. This guy will take us down.

 

[MikeH72]

Totally agree, we need to get rid of the guy who hired these inept managers. Silva, Koeman, Allardyce were bad but Benitez is just a different level of bad. It's like someone is playing a game of who can hire the worse manager. This guy will take us down.

There’s many more layers to it than just hiring bad managers. The entire structure of the club is wrong. Marcel Brands, why is he still in a job? I’d love someone to sit Moshiri down and have him explain that decision to extend his context. “But muh continuity” isn’t an answer, we’ve been getting worse since the man came in, why would you want that to continue?

 

[JLW]

There’s many more layers to it than just hiring bad managers. The entire structure of the club is wrong. Marcel Brands, why is he still in a job? I’d love someone to sit Moshiri down and have him explain that decision to extend his context. “But muh continuity” isn’t an answer, we’ve been getting worse since the man came in, why would you want that to continue?

This. The mis-management goes right through every layer of the club.
We need to be very careful or this could go horribly wrong even before we get into that shiny new stadium which right now i couldn't give a toss about.

Regarding Brands how can anyone at the club looking at him and thinking he's the man to take us forward?

 

[Eggs]

That's not going to happen though.

Let's assess the ACTUAL situation:

8th with £2M spent and hit by an almighty injury crisis.

Some of the haters might be demanding a change, the board wont budge on Benitez this season. Not a chance. They know he's been hobbled.

….the problem they (the board) have with Benitez is that he’s an appointment that could turn the whole club sceptic very quickly. They knew he divided the fan base, we are already getting a flavour of how nasty the situation might get even after a reasonable start. A prolonged run of bad results will result in as bad an atmosphere as we’ve seen.

i don’t understand this call from you and the couple of luvvies ‘to get behind him’. Fans on a forum will criticise the manager if he deserves criticism, they are passionate about their club. It doesn’t matter if he’s only spent £2m, a top manager organises his team, a top manager manages games effectively, a top manager makes us difficult to score against from set pieces. Basics.

Benitez won’t be allowed the same wiggle room as other managers, the Board surely knew this. Where we as fans have real responsibility is to keep criticism proportionate. He’s a local man with a family who live local, criticism should not stray into threat, it shouldn’t be hidden behind anonymity on social media and daubing on walls.

Only Benitez can turn the situation around. I didn’t want him appointed but I sincerely wish him well.