Even my boy Cocu is off the pace currently, but hes an utter superstar so he will pull it back.
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Even my boy Cocu is off the pace currently, but hes an utter superstar so he will pull it back.
ianefc
Player Valuation: £70m
Koeman is the man. Disciplined and Ruthless and only accepts the best and won't sugarcoat anything less.
If you're not gonna cry-arse when we win, then don't bother cry-arsing when we lose.
NSNO
NSNO
Blue Cheese
Mental Patient, GOT Ward
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Ha ha ha.
My ilk...people who want football from a football team are now 'an ilk'.
It's official: football is dead.
Nil Satis Niasse Optimum
Player Valuation: £20m
I guess half-way to safety with just 10 games gone isn't bad at all. Continue this average of 1.9 points a game and we'll end up on 72 points - definitely a top five challenge.
Blue Cheese
Mental Patient, GOT Ward
Seems like football is actually becoming less and less about the football, I think it was started for entertainment reasons for the working masses, could be wrong like although at least back then if the footy was crap you could get by just on the sheer ferocity of the tackling, another form of football that's died.
I wasn't convinced on him at all.
Still, he's proving me wrong. I hope he continues.
No complaints at all so far - even the bits I find frustrating, particularly work rate and energy in the final third he's trying to address.
We're 10 games into the season, can we all stop being so conclusively dramatic?
Still, he's proving me wrong. I hope he continues.
No complaints at all so far - even the bits I find frustrating, particularly work rate and energy in the final third he's trying to address.
We're 10 games into the season, can we all stop being so conclusively dramatic?
Hangleton
Player Valuation: £25m
Playing 2 at the back doesn't work in the professional game.
I'm sure there's some great football played on the parks.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Thank you Mr Gullit. That last section rammed home the point I've been making on style: he has no set style and he's a pragmatist. There's no attempt to do anything other than get a point - if need be by parking the bus when he thinks it will serve its purpose.Ruud Gullit's been talking about Koeman on the BBC. Nothing mentioned is surprising but worth a look. Sorry don't know how to attach the link, so copied.
Everton boss Ronald Koeman: 'Precise, pragmatic and likes different coloured pens'
By Ruud Gullit
I got an idea of how precise Everton boss Ronald Koeman is as a manager when we did our coaching qualifications together in the Netherlands in 1998, and he got his pencil case out.
I had just been sacked as player-manager by Chelsea and, along with Ronald, Frank Rijkaard and Marco van Basten, I went on a special fast-track course that the Dutch FA had put on for former top international players that allowed us to get our badges in only a year.
Koeman, who had retired in 1997, had always wanted to become a manager when he was a player and you could tell then he wanted to make the most of this opportunity.
We were all enthusiastic but even his note-taking was extremely systematic - it still makes me laugh that he wrote everything down very carefully using lots of different coloured pens.
How you train is how you play - true then, and now
Koeman gives instructions to his players during an Everton training session
That course was 18 years ago but Koeman is still a very pragmatic guy who loves to have a structure in place, which is part of the reason he has made a successful start at Everton after his impressive two-year spell at Southampton.
One of his sayings is "how you train is how you play", which has been his mantra since we played together for PSV Eindhoven and the Dutch national team in the 1980s.
I was always used to that approach too. It was rule number one under the best coaches I played for and the idea is that during the week you mimic the conditions you will play under on Saturday, so you get used to them.
I am sure Everton players have found out already what is expected of them - Koeman will not let them switch off during training games or think they can only give 70% effort. It has to be 100%.
He has increased the intensity of their sessions but there is more to his approach as a manager than just hard work and discipline.
Technically and tactically he is very strong too, and part of that is linked to how he was as a player.
Koeman always thinks ahead
Under Koeman, Everton have conceded from a set-piece on average once every five matches. Under his predecessor Roberto Martinez, Everton conceded 14 goals from set-pieces in 2015-16, an average of one every 2.71 matches
Koeman was a brilliant defender but he was not very quick. If you are the slowest player on the pitch then you always have to be thinking what will happen next.
He needed to anticipate things all the time, but he did it so well he never made any slide tackles because he never had to, he always saw things coming. In fact, he saw slide tackles as a last resort.
So I know he always understood the game very, very well. He was always in the right place so he never got in any trouble.
That made him a very intelligent player and it is also why he is such an intelligent coach - he thinks ahead.
One example of that is when he took charge at Everton in the summer, he knew how they had conceded too many goals from set-pieces last season, so he has been trying to improve that, and it has worked.
Leadership is one of his strengths too
He is quiet, considered and thoughtful and his whole personality is like that - even away from football too - although he is not afraid of raising his voice when he has to with his players.
Those communication and man-management skills were obvious when we were players. I was captain of the Dutch team that won the 1988 European Championship, but we had a couple of players who took responsibility for their area of the team and he was one of them.
Koeman was captain of our defence and leadership was one of his strengths.
Gullit and Koeman celebrate winning the 1988 European Championship with the Netherlands
In that era, we had a lot of strong personalities right through the Dutch team. People now say that we were always fighting but that is not true.
We could argue at times, though, because ultimately we always wanted to win and, if somebody did not do their job at the back then I needed Ronald to tell him that.
How Koeman tried to sting Barkley into action
Sometimes I watch Premier League games here and when people make mistakes they say nothing to each other - they just let it go and it is like happy families. I don't understand it.
If you want to win, you have to wake people up and I have seen Koeman do it already at Everton. With his treatment of Ross Barkley in the past few weeks, he has been trying to sting him a little.
That is also our way - the Dutch way - a little bit. He has high standards and he has been saying to Barkley that if you don't want to listen to me, then you have to learn the hard way.
By leaving him out, or taking him off, then Koeman is thinking that maybe he will learn.
He is trying to show Barkley that this is how you will end up if you don't do what is necessary for me, but for sure he will also have told the player that he is only doing it because he wants him to become better.
Koeman has done it to get a reaction and he got one against West Ham on Sunday, when Barkley scored his first league goal since the opening day of the season.
How far can Koeman take the Toffees?
It was not a great game, or a great performance by Everton but they took their chances against the Hammers and got the win.
They also got a clean sheet, and Tottenham are the only top-flight side to have conceded fewer goals in their first 10 games. That is something else Koeman will have worked on, although you would not say Everton are a defensive-minded team.
In terms of his style of play, I think he is very versatile. He played for so many great teams and had exposure to many different styles, with the ultimate being Johan Cruyff's Barcelona.
But of course he cannot play like Barca did when he is with Everton, and he understands that you have to adapt your style to the players you have got.
As a coach you learn that, although you have a philosophy, that doesn't mean you have a set tactical philosophy. That can be something totally different each week.
You also have to adapt to the league you are in. Koeman has experience across Europe but he also knows the Premier League now after his two seasons with Southampton.
He knows how to get results in England but he also knows to stay calm when they do not come. Before Sunday, Everton had suffered a little drop in form after their good start to the season but he believes in his players so there was no need for him to panic.
Koeman finished seventh and sixth in his two seasons at Southampton and it is going to be hard for him to improve on that with Everton, especially when you consider the other teams above them.
It will be a fantastic achievement if they do manage it and under Koeman I know they will fight hard, so they have a chance.
Gullit is wrong in a couple of respects: first, he states that Koeman plays this way because the players at Everton are not Barcelona class: really? Thanks for pointing that out, but in this league you dont need to have that quality to play attacking football against any club and get a win - see Liverpool this season...a team of bang average players + Coutinho. Second, Barkley - he should know that Barkley has played better than this in whole patches of seasons for the last three of them without any coaching from Koeman. He has not 'stung' Barkley into anything. And he's kidding himself if he thinks Barkley isn't a class of player who wouldn't be snapped up in a heartbeat by elite clubs with managers who wont stab him in the back in public...and it must be very tempting to Ross righ now to get his agent on the phone to swing one of those deals.
By the way: coloured crayons: imagine if Martinez used colouring in books for his coaching courses? Lol.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Mate (and I dont blame you for not knowing this) but people in this city years ago would go one week to see Everton and one week to see Liverpool, not because they had a corinthian spirit but because it was top flight (usually) professional football that they could watch of a Saturday afternoon. Tribalism didn't come int it.
Honest to God, you have this completely wrong. It beggars belief that you think football played by highly skilled men/teams who get paid a fortune for it isn't there to entertain people. It was always thus, maybe the wages and corporate side have ballooned, but the essence of professional football was that it was a paid for entertainment provided by entrepreneurs who corralled thousands into grounds in our towns and cities and the massive rivalries came out of that. The jumpers for goalposts years was a primitive amateurism and was not the golden era that became corrupted...it was a different beast altogether.
Tottenham are the only top-flight side to have conceded fewer goals in their first 10 games.
Fantastic given the previous few seasons.
Fantastic given the previous few seasons.
"We were all enthusiastic but even his note-taking was extremely systematic - it still makes me laugh that he wrote everything down very carefully using lots of different coloured pens."
1996–1998 Chelsea (player-manager)
1998–1999 Newcastle United
2004–2005 Feyenoord
2007–2008 Los Angeles Galaxy
2011 Terek Grozny
Not laughing now are you Ruud you utter trumpet, run along now, ITV needs you.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
There's a lot of spin offs around football now that add to the entertainment (most of it useless and cringeworthy to me like), but if the football spectacle wasn't there that wouldn't exist. There is a core at the centre of this football industry that acts as a power source: that core is the beauty of the game itself - the individual bit of brilliance we all hope to see or the eye-pleasing combinations of a team playing it to feet and getting the ball into the opposition box for a goal chance. That's what we all watch football for - to see that. And that is entertainment.
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