I'd also rather take 20 % of possession and shouting at the telly and cursing the day I fell in love with this magnificient club only to be jumping up and down the house screaming "WAZZAAAAAA, fookin hell!" with tears streaming down my face and be cleansed of all this negative emotion.
Just yesterday stumbled upon some of last seasons highlights and though we finished 7th it felt as if we had a terrible squad last year. Lukaku always hiding out in the big matches but acting the messiah because he puts 4 in against Bournemouth. Remember how he tried to nick that magnificient goal off Tommo against ManCity and how he insisted on having caught the ball before it went over the line? What an utter prick. So, yeah, I'd rather watch some good old grinding it out with 3 points at the end (or Kloppo trying hard not to cry or Mourinho getting choked by Allardyce, I can see something like that coming) than watching some pricks playing for their own personal glory and just hiding when there's no easy way to do it.
To be honest, my nickname tells it, I'm no scouser by any means and I don't really care too much about what's going on outside of Everton so I didn't understand the stick Big Sam got right before joining. But I certainly thought he could be the right man for us. I had great confidence in him to turn around our defensive misery. Bainesy and Jags get more and more abuse from some of us and I can't really see why. Of course Bainesy can't run up and down the left flank anymore and still be a reliable defender. But in a more defensive setup he has a hell of a lot to offer still. He knows the game inside and out and is as disciplined as they come. When he returns he'll be key for us. Same for Jagielka. Surely he doesn't fit in with an attacking team that has to deal with counter attacks a lot. He's gotten too slow for that (remember how fast the lad used to be?). But in a defensive setup with a tightly structured back four he can still make a difference. It's not necessarily single players that were responsible for our early season misery. I think all of us could agree that the fault lies in the overall setup, the big problem is the huge difference between what Koeman wanted to do and the players he had. We'll probably never understand how anyone could think it was a good idea to go into the new season with only one healthy experienced winger who unfortunately happens to be an indisciplined headcase most of the time. Also, I get the suspicion Koeman wanted to slowly get us set up similarly to Barcelona with a lot of quality passing, fluid positioning and a lot of tactical intelligence. But the players he got just don't fit that bill. Klaassen for example is more of a Thomas Müller-type of player. He isn't someone to take control of a game. Judging from the 3 Ajax matches I watched last season he's more of an anticipatory, flash-of-genius type of player and I think that doesn't work with any of our possible setups. Also, the only thing Sandro replaced of Lukaku is the horrible first touch. Sigurdson needs to be in the centre without having to run too much.
But I have confidence Sam will continue figuring out how to best set up our team and come away with the points we need. I see us playing really tightly in the back, gradually pushing the defensive line forward throughout the game and developing some more confidence on the ball. We can't expect our squad to play tactically brilliant attacking football. I'll settle for highly structured defensive football with effective countering which should also be improved with the likes of 60 grand Seamus Coleman and Yannick back in the squad. We should really look for a decent second winger and a target man who can hold up the ball (unlike Lukaku did, the utter prick with his rubber feet) to relieve some pressure and who we can feed some decent crosses to.
