Still feel a little bit strange about the whole Koeman thing.
Under Martinez I think one of the things I liked about him and that contributed to me supporting him longer than most was that it felt like a long-term plan. I got the impression that between him and the club, we were building towards the future and that Martinez would be around to see the fruits of his labour.
With Koeman - this all feels very short term. The signings he has made have been experienced players and he doesn't have a track record of hanging around anywhere for too long, so it feels to me like we will inevitably be starting a whole new cycle again within 2 years or so.
Now, like most Evertonians, what I'm most bothered about is winning games, so if he carries on the same way he has started, I'll probably just push the suspicion that it's all very short term to the back of my mind, but because he's not the easiest guy to warm to (maybe this bit is just me?) and because I doubt this is all going to last too long, I'm finding it hard to get too attached to him like I did with Moyes and Martinez in their early days.
Having said that, you can't argue with what he has done so far. I find quite interesting is that Koeman is managing to play with two genuine wingers and still seem quite solid, whereas whenever we did this under Martinez, we struggled.
I think, although I'm not sure yet, that this is down to two things. Number one, his use of our full backs. Under Martinez both full backs pushed on when we had the ball - they created the width and the wingers were often tucked inside (one of the reasons I think Martinez preferred having a central player playing from wide most of the time, despite buying loads of wingers). Koeman doesn't seem to place this emphasis on our full backs - they're allowed to go forward, but only one at a time and they don't join the attack with anywhere near the frequency that they did under Martinez, meaning our centre backs aren't pulled out wide when we are countered.
Secondly, wherever possible we seem to be trying to play the ball forward quickly - the slower build up under Martinez almost forced us to commit full backs forward to open up the opposition. Happening far less at the moment.
My slight concern (the pessimist in me) is that teams will spot our emphasis on getting the ball forward quickly and will just get men behind the ball. Last night was a good example - Sunderland played like the away team for large parts of the game until we scored. We opened the scoring because they were forced to commit men forward for their own corner and we countered them and scored. After that they had to come out a bit and we picked them off. I still think we lack that bit of guile to open a team up who are sat in, expecting this to be a problem at home particularly - but, Koeman has had an answer for everything else so far, so we'll see.
If it hadn't been for a very disappointing end to the window, you'd say things have gone perfectly up to now. I'm never comfortable when it's all going smoothly...
