He's gonna buy Yarmelenko and start we'll drawing 3-3 and winning 5-4. Panic over lads.
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Aar_the_Toffees
Player Valuation: £10m
I actually think Robles could be a top class keeper in the league. He needs to be a given a chance though- start the first game of the new year maybe?
ianefc
Player Valuation: £70m
http://www.eurosport.co.uk/football...the-expense-of-results_sto5042805/story.shtml
The value of results against that of entertainment has been much debated this season and while Monday’s drab draw at Old Trafford continued the theme in one sense, events at Goodison Park earlier that afternoon had already provided a stark flipside to the clamour for attacking adventure that has soundtracked so much of the season’s news agenda.
Maximus Decimus Meridius was compelled to decapitate an opponent to demonstrate that spectators should be careful what they wish for when they demand unbridled entertainment. Louis van Gaal is unlikely to resort to such measures – however much his enemies in the press may tempt him – but those calling for his head need only cast a glance the way of Roberto Martinez’s Everton to heed a similar lesson: results and entertainment may not quite be mutual exclusives, but the middle ground remains a desperately narrow tightrope.
Stoke's 4-3 win, sealed by Marko Arnautovic’s late penalty, meant consecutive home defeats at Goodison for the first time since May. Everton’s five goals across those two fixtures – the first a 3-2 defeat to Leicester – were cashed in for precisely zero points. The Toffees have been a tad too generous to their visitors this festive season – the attack flowing like a fine wine but the defence resembling Swiss cheese.
Everton's John Stones concedes a penalty against Stoke's Marko Arnautovic - Reuters
Going forward, Everton can legitimately claim to own three of the country’s most exciting young attackers. Romelu Lukaku, the Premier League’s joint-top scorer, has spent the first half of this season showing why, of all the division’s forwards, perhaps only Sergio Aguero can be counted as a better pure no 9. Factor in fitness and the Belgian is surely the country’s most reliable goalscorer.
Supplying his ammunition are Ross Barkley, who has started to marry technical finesse with consistent end product, and the riotously exuberant Gerard Deulofeu. Only Kevin De Bruyneand Mesut Ozil, two players whose wild price tags reflect their pedigree, have laid on more goals this term than the Spaniard, who has only started 11 of his side’s games.
And yet Everton are not even in the table’s top half. In should be said that their current positioning of 11th is as much the product of a clustered middle ground as anything else, but for a side as thrillingly incisive to be as many points above relegation as they are below the Champions League spots remains faintly damning. A glance at the goal tallies both explains the mystery and tells a familiar tale: Martinez’s side have scored the most goals bar Manchester City and Leicester, but conceded the most of any side outside the bottom seven.
Romelu Lukaku (R) scores the first goal for Everton - Reuters
To an extent, there is an inherent hypocrisy in lavishing praise on a side’s attacking qualities while lamenting their inability to exude the same class at the back. A football team is a unit, after all, and to commit resources forward necessarily means a certain level of abandonment going the other way. Or to put it in simpler terms: however good a player Seamus Coleman is, he cannot be in two places at once. That said, there does exist such thing as a healthy balance. And it’s a notion that Martinez’s sides have historically struggled to achieve.
The obvious riposte is that the expansive football encouraged by Martinez is risky by nature. A centre-back who prefers a Cruyff turn to a clearance, for example, will always be more liable to cede possession in bad areas. But this would be to ignore the fact that, while the Everton backline are no strangers to a mistake, very few goals against them have come as a result of these sort of possession-hungry dalliances.
That three goals in their two recent defeats have come through penalties, all conceded by fouls, belies a rash streak that blights Everton’s back five. As dazzling a prospect as he is, John Stones is especially guilty of an overeagerness to go to ground: the way Odion Ighalo set him on the deck in the season’s opening fixture was a precursor to Monday’s late lunge on Arnautovic, which, foul or not, was a reckless decision made at a vital moment. And without the experience of Phil Jagielka next to him, Stones’ tendency to get drawn towards the ball rather than holding fort has not been reined in as it should.
Stoke celebrate Marko Arnautovic's winner against Everton - Reuters
Further back, the Goodison faithful’s disgruntlement with Tim Howard has been thrumming along steadily for a while now, and the fact that his last two outings in front of them have seen seven conceded will not have helped. The problem with a crowd’s distrust of one their own is that it tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy and, with his flapping at a cross prior to Stoke’s third goal the latest exhibition of a frequent inability to command his six-yard box, you feel breaking point is not far off. As for Xherdan Shaqiri’s effort, a well-executed lob will always leave the goalkeeper’s dignity as collateral damage and Howard will not have been grateful to the winger for making him look hapless at the time he least needed it.
The man who only last year was taking congratulatory calls from the White House can, though, claim to be worked harder than most: only Sunderlandhave allowed more shots at their goal this season. Defending set pieces, too, Everton are far too much of a soft touch. Howard is far from blameless in this, but it’s a problem which has been compounded by the recent absence of their most aggressive centre-back in Jagielka. Without their captain over the last two months, Everton’s goals conceded has crept up from 1.3 per game to 1.7.
But all the finger pointing risks missing the broader point, which is that the problem is beginning to seem systemic. Everton let in 50 goals last term and are on course to exceed that this year. Martinez’s Wigan side averaged 69 during their four seasons in the top flight (by way of comparison, Hull and Burnley went down last season having let in 51 and 53 respectively). When looked at in that context, the miserly 39 conceded in the Spaniard’s first campaign at Goodison starts to look more like a fortunate legacy of the David Moyes regime than anything else.
Roberto Martinez and Jose Mourinho at Goodison Park. - Reuters
Martinez is clearly a tremendously talented coach but his longstanding Achilles heel is still as soft as it ever was. At 42 he is hardly an old timer just yet – quite the opposite – but there will come a point when his propensity to leave the floodgates unmanned will be less readily interpreted as the product of a young manager’s naiveté and more as the chronic oversight of a wide-eyed idealist.
Henry Ford’s famous adage dictated that “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”, and Martinez would do well to start inflecting his gung-ho outlook with the odd hint of tactical pragmatism. Not an overhaul by any means, simply minor tweaks. Using Arouna Kone more sparingly on the left flank in favour of a more natural winger like Kevin Mirallas – especially when the teenage Brendan Galloway is tasked with defending that side – might be a start.
Such moves may not placate the thrill-seekers, nor advance his reputation as a purist, but Martinez should know that it is results more than anything which forge reputations. And as a quick glance at Gwladys Street end upon the final whistle on Monday would have attested, pleasing the neutrals and pleasing your own fans are often two very different matters.
ijjysmith
Calm
Essentially that just says we score a lot and concede a lot.
In case anyone can't be arsed to read it.
Let's not be soft about this. There will be some of them he'll want though and some who won't be part of his plans. For example he wanted Stones before Moyes, it was only Bobby's interest that made Moyes move.
He obviously likes Baines as he refused 17 mill for him.
He's made Barkley the player he is by bringing him back from obscurity on poor loans and building his team around him.
There'll be plenty he doesn't like though, there will also be some he's signed that haven't worked out for one reason or another or he signed as short term fixes which is the case for all managers.
You don't build your own squad at aub like Everton in 2 years, it takes a lot longer than that.
ianefc
Player Valuation: £70m
No way you read that in 2 minutes. No way. Agenda.
ijjysmith
Calm
Ha. I did. Sniff it.
Thanks for the CliffsNotes Ij!
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
I'm not looking to make up other people's minds, they can make their own minds up. They're well capable. I'm just asking for a full report on who said what and to whom.
I'm not having a go at you personally or D410. Not at all. Neither you nor he created the info I take it, so that's not an issue. My point is that if someone hears something and they cant verify it - then why post it? It's legitimate for those receiving such potentially important info to want detail, or maybe we should just accept what some feller off the interwebs said at face value and not question it?
I ask for specifics because it cuts to the chase of these things: either it's correct and bona fide info, in which case there's a further disclosure and an acceptance of it; or its all hearsay, at which point the rumour falls silent. I think what we have here is a case of the latter, dont you?
ianefc
Player Valuation: £70m
No way. Simple, you've caught the Davek's BSeritus. Get yourself to bed with 2 aspirin, a warm drink and a do not disturb sign.
Night mate X
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Again, I have no problem with that...in fact, I've stated this myself in the days since the Stoke game.
ijjysmith
Calm
Beleive what you like mate. I read it while cycling on an exercise bike.
That's right. An exercise bike.
ianefc
Player Valuation: £70m
OK. You read it all in less than 120 seconds. Of course you did. You didn't even come to an accurate conclusion on what the article is based.... You can get that much from the last paragraph.
njligernj
Player Valuation: £15m
Is your source the director? Isn't Dave asking for the director's name not the source (and perhaps like me not realizing they may be one and the same)? Apologies as I haven't read every last word here. Some specifics here isn't unreasonable -- as he points out without that we don't know if this is a "cabbie rumour" or something of more substance. Sorry.
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