Homepage Article The Beautiful and Damned

[EFC_FRANCIS]

Well when Everton get a front line that bang in 53 goals i'll worry less about our midfield contribution.

Feel free to use others around us like Spurs, Arsenal even Chelsea. Midfield not scoring isn't a problem so long as your attack keeps up their end of the bargain. Chances are Richarlison doesn't play as bad next season and rebounds to at least 12 goals from 7. If we sign a right winger that's good for 7/8 goals the problem is solved. It's ok to have a non goalscoring midfield so long as your attack is good enough is my point. The problem is Richarlison stunk all season and Rodriguez gave us 6 goals but was only fit for about half the games rather than crying out for the next Frank Lampard. The problem goes deeper than just putting it down to not having someone who can shoot like De Bruyne or Fernandes

 

[davids]

A lot is being made of the lack of crowds and our home form,I think with full houses we wouldn't have won so many away games.

 

[Gilbert..]

Feel free to use others around us like Spurs, Arsenal even Chelsea. Midfield not scoring isn't a problem so long as your attack keeps up their end of the bargain. Chances are Richarlison doesn't play as bad next season and rebounds to at least 12 goals from 7. If we sign a right winger that's good for 7/8 goals the problem is solved. It's ok to have a non goalscoring midfield so long as your attack is good enough is my point. The problem is Richarlison stunk all season and Rodriguez gave us 6 goals but was only fit for about half the games rather than crying out for the next Frank Lampard. The problem goes deeper than just putting it down to not having someone who can shoot like De Bruyne or Fernandes

Yeah of course. Its an obvious point if the strike force is good. But those stats are shocking no matter how its dressed up. I didnt throw in arsenal for the same reason. They never scored enough. Chelsea were more opposite. Their strike force wasnt that good. Their midfield contributed a lot of their goals. Spurs. Well kane and song. So their strikers. West hams midfield was more than double Evertons.
Its a poor return whatever way you look at it. And just as much a reason why when you look at the table we are by far the worst scorers in the top 12. Only team in the top 10 to finish on a negative goal difference. Not going on about a frank lampard. But for 5 of our midfielders who play on a regular basis every week to chip in 3 goals between them over a whole sesson. Thats poor.

 

[Amokachi1995]

Good article. The 4 Centre back point is an interesting one. Probably the main reason for not maintaining it was the return to fitness of Luca Digne and the relatively frequent injuries of Mina.

In a similar article after the Derby win a point was made about how much bigger we were than them. And it does make sense to have some kind of edge i.e. you are going to be able to aerially dominate a lot of teams and be physically stronger.

The challenge then comes how can you overlay some subtlety or penetrative against other teams full of big grocks like Newcastle or West Ham.

 

[Saint Domingo]

Joe Royle beat Alex Ferguson in a final once, does that make Joe Royle a better manager than Alex Ferguson?

My point is the passion and intensity of Simeone is more like the Everton culture....

No. Joe Royle didn’t win three CLs though. The highest standard of competition in football anywhere and he’s one of three people to do it history, and the only one with different clubs. His student Zidane is one of the others with a lot of the players Ancelotti brought in.

We need to stop harming after all sorts of managers. We have a very good one here. If he can’t get anything out of the players, in the same way that Koeman Silva and Allardyce couldn’t, then eventually we have to come to the conclusion that these players aren’t good enough and stop putting everything on the manager.

 

[DanEFC92]

Simeone really would be the perfect fit for Everton IMO...

He's the dream *sniffs

 

[EFC_FRANCIS]

Yeah of course. Its an obvious point if the strike force is good. But those stats are shocking no matter how its dressed up. I didnt throw in arsenal for the same reason. They never scored enough. Chelsea were more opposite. Their strike force wasnt that good. Their midfield contributed a lot of their goals. Spurs. Well kane and song. So their strikers. West hams midfield was more than double Evertons.
Its a poor return whatever way you look at it. And just as much a reason why when you look at the table we are by far the worst scorers in the top 12. Only team in the top 10 to finish on a negative goal difference. Not going on about a frank lampard. But for 5 of our midfielders who play on a regular basis every week to chip in 3 goals between them over a whole sesson. Thats poor.

Chelsea only look as good because they have their midfielders on pens and won an awful lot of penalties Jorginho scored all 7 of his goals from the spot. West Ham scored a lot but along with City, United and Leicester are playing so their midfield does score goals. Its their entire game plan were as ours was completely different (whether that's right or wrong is a completely different discussion). Ours was clearly not about our midfield chipping in except when James and Sigurdsson played almost as a second striker. I just don't think this is as big an issue if Richarlison didn't have the worst season of his career or James is fit for 10 more games. Honestly not sure if any midfielder playing in the role Doucoure, Gomes, Davies, Allan were assigned chips in with 5+ goals with the way we were playing. It's not like they missed sitters its a tactical issue for when your attack isn't up to it. Would I like them to score more? Of course but if Richarlison scored the extra 6 goals he shouldve done and we had a right winger I wouldn't care that Allan hadn't scored all season

 

[Brett Angell Delight]

What is perhaps also worth noting is that we scored 21 goals in our first 10 games, and then just another 26 in the remaining 28 games. We started the season with real fluency and it descended into a style of football that Allardyce would have been perhaps proud of and crucified for. In that 28 game period, we achieved just 2 wins by more than a 1 goal margin.

Of everything this is the most baffling thing about this season for me. Did we just catch teams cold at the start? Hard to reconcile such free-scoring football with the turgid nonsense we were served up for the last 2/3 of the season.

 

[chippy1722]

We need to stop harming after all sorts of managers. We have a very good one here. If he can’t get anything out of the players, in the same way that Koeman Silva and Allardyce couldn’t, then eventually we have to come to the conclusion that these players aren’t good enough and stop putting everything on the manager.

What’s the point in paying him big bucks if he can’t improve on previous ‘cheaper’ managers.

 

[Gilbert..]

Chelsea only look as good because they have their midfielders on pens and won an awful lot of penalties Jorginho scored all 7 of his goals from the spot. West Ham scored a lot but along with City, United and Leicester are playing so their midfield does score goals. Its their entire game plan were as ours was completely different (whether that's right or wrong is a completely different discussion). Ours was clearly not about our midfield chipping in except when James and Sigurdsson played almost as a second striker. I just don't think this is as big an issue if Richarlison didn't have the worst season of his career or James is fit for 10 more games. Honestly not sure if any midfielder playing in the role Doucoure, Gomes, Davies, Allan were assigned chips in with 5+ goals with the way we were playing. It's not like they missed sitters its a tactical issue for when your attack isn't up to it. Would I like them to score more? Of course but if Richarlison scored the extra 6 goals he shouldve done and we had a right winger I wouldn't care that Allan hadn't scored all season

Our midfielder is on pens. Half of sigurdssons goals came from pens so i was even trying to dress it up a bit.
So thats 6 goals from open play from midfield over a season.
Mate i dont think we're going to agree. I think its shocking.

 

[Saint Domingo]

What’s the point in paying him big bucks if he can’t improve on previous ‘cheaper’ managers.

I doubt any of those managers were cheap. People are looking for a short cut where there isn’t one and then getting frustrated. The only way out of this is massive investment but FFP won’t let us do that, therefore it will take multiple windows. Some fans want a manager who can take a cheat code around this and have some sort of tactics which mean that these players will gatecrash the top 4 because of some novel coaching. If it ever happened (which it won’t), it wouldn’t be sustainable as the league adapts and then it doesn’t happen again. The only thing that is sustainable is a top 6 quality squad that is constantly being refreshed. That’s what City Chelsea Liverpool United do. If we want to compete with them then the answer is to do the same as that, it’s not to hope Silva Ancelotti or Koeman can suddenly get Davies Siggurdson Coleman and Keane playing like top 4 calibre players.