What I'd like

[Tim Cahill's Corner Flag]

There's been a horrible sense of deja vu from last season.
We escaped relegation and didn't learn or grow from the experience.

I think the writing was on the wall with the final game of last season - a listless 5-1 loss to Arsenal.

This season has a been a wasted opportunity - we've regressed in ways I didn't think possible.
Less than a goal a game; less than a point a game.

I'm not sure what happened, but we always used to be competitive. We always gave it our best. Even if went to water against the Big 6, against everyone else we held our own.

The games after the World Cup were the worst - the losses to Wolves and Southhampton were some of the dumbest football I've ever seen us play.

I was angry.

I wanted us to get relegated so maybe they would learn something from this and start over.

Even if we stay up, what's the point if we go through this again?

A team's goal shouldn't be to avoid relegation - it should be a given. Chelsea have had a horrible season and safely avoided it so you have to be bad - really bad for it to be a concern and this club is much much much better than this.

We have to clean up the administration, fix up the finances and then focus on the pitch. We need to find players who have the same values as us.

So stay up or go down doesn't matter to me as much as learning from this experience and turning this club around to what it used to be.
1) Being competitive
2) Making the fans proud

 

[Daveysgingerlovechild]

There's been a horrible sense of deja vu from last season.
We escaped relegation and didn't learn or grow from the experience.

I think the writing was on the wall with the final game of last season - a listless 5-1 loss to Arsenal.

This season has a been a wasted opportunity - we've regressed in ways I didn't think possible.
Less than a goal a game; less than a point a game.

I'm not sure what happened, but we always used to be competitive. We always gave it our best. Even if went to water against the Big 6, against everyone else we held our own.

The games after the World Cup were the worst - the losses to Wolves and Southhampton were some of the dumbest football I've ever seen us play.

I was angry.

I wanted us to get relegated so maybe they would learn something from this and start over.

Even if we stay up, what's the point if we go through this again?

A team's goal shouldn't be to avoid relegation - it should be a given. Chelsea have had a horrible season and safely avoided it so you have to be bad - really bad for it to be a concern and this club is much much much better than this.

We have to clean up the administration, fix up the finances and then focus on the pitch. We need to find players who have the same values as us.

So stay up or go down doesn't matter to me as much as learning from this experience and turning this club around to what it used to be.
1) Being competitive
2) Making the fans proud

Short of a major change I think we'll be circling the drain again next season if we stay up.

So many parallels with what happened at Villa, Sunderland and Wolves in the last decade or so. Villa in particular.

 

[Liam-EFC]

If we go down, sticking with Lampard for so long will haunt me.

 

[bitter-no-better]

Short of a major change I think we'll be circling the drain again next season if we stay up.

So many parallels with what happened at Villa, Sunderland and Wolves in the last decade or so. Villa in particular.

Stay up and we will be sound next year. Leicester ,Leeds and Soton being replaced by arguably poorer teams. Bournemouth, Fulham, Brentford, wolves and palace probably overachieving this season.

 

[Blue peter]

Two key things will have relegated (if it does happen) 1) sticking with Lampard as you say, people say Brighton was the very last game he should have been in charge. I disagree. It was Bournemouth - he should have gone after that. 2) not getting a striker in (even if on loan) - two incredibly important decisions that the Board/Owner got absolutely wrong

 

[Aberblue]

Two key things will have relegated (if it does happen) 1) sticking with Lampard as you say, people say Brighton was the very last game he should have been in charge. I disagree. It was Bournemouth - he should have gone after that. 2) not getting a striker in (even if on loan) - two incredibly important decisions that the Board/Owner got absolutely wrong

Concerning the idea of sacking FL after the two Bournemouth games - with hindsight, that would have been the correct decision, but at the time Frank had a lot of support, and the feeling was that we should give him time, especially if we got a striker, full time or on loan, early in the transfer window. Seeing the same dreary football in the Wolves & Southampton matches should really have sealed his fate, but as usual our Board got it wrong.

 

[Daveysgingerlovechild]

Stay up and we will be sound next year. Leicester ,Leeds and Soton being replaced by arguably poorer teams. Bournemouth, Fulham, Brentford, wolves and palace probably overachieving this season.

There's some truth in that, but we really do need to get our house in order. Relying on three worse teams is a bad strategy. Plus, there's no god given right to finish above promoted teams.

 

[PKwalnuts]

What the board have put us through is worse than today, they've been at it for years.
Whatever happens, change is needed urgently.
Keep sticking together blues, we will get over the line, and put all this behind us.

 

[Moomin]

Don't fear it.

Embrace relegation.

 

[Blue peter]

Concerning the idea of sacking FL after the two Bournemouth games - with hindsight, that would have been the correct decision, but at the time Frank had a lot of support, and the feeling was that we should give him time, especially if we got a striker, full time or on loan, early in the transfer window. Seeing the same dreary football in the Wolves & Southampton matches should really have sealed his fate, but as usual our Board got it wrong.

Im not sure we needed hindsight with the timing of the decision. He has just been spanked 7-1 on aggregated by Bournemouth, had been in the job 10 months and his points per game average was poor. He made a litany of odd decisions but when he come with a formation that worked, he then went and reversed the decision and got spanked next game. He talked well of us, was a decent player, but was and is plainly a poor manager.

I suspect the Board knew at that stage that getting a striker in was slim pickings in January so his performance was not going to suddenly and dramatically improve. At that time, there was a six week period to have bedded a new manager in. Only four if the squad were on international duty so the vast majority of the squad would have been at new managers disposal to work with. I’m not sure anyone who saw his performance to that point, should have been hopeful of anything out of the six pointers against Wolves and Southampton.

 

[davek]

So stay up or go down doesn't matter to me as much as learning from this experience and turning this club around to what it used to be.
1) Being competitive
2) Making the fans proud

Well you wont achieve that in the Championship. It'll be a catastrophe for a generation.

 

[Bluebonic]

Anybody, and I do mean anybody who wants Everton to go down for any reason whatsoever, is an absolute keck stain as far as I am concerned. I have hated this club many, many times, but it is MY club, why the hell would I or any other true supporter want to go through the humiliation and despair that relegation would bring.
do one the lot of you!

 

[Drico]

Anybody, and I do mean anybody who wants Everton to go down for any reason whatsoever, is an absolute keck stain as far as I am concerned. I have hated this club many, many times, but it is MY club, why the hell would I or any other true supporter want to go through the humiliation and despair that relegation would bring.
do one the lot of you!

I'm sorry, but there isn't a single Evertonian in the world who wants to see us go down. Some people might rationalise it as a coping mechanism, but not a single fan wants us to drop today. Some might feel we deserve to drop, but that's qualitatively different to wanting us to drop.

We're all in it together today. I see some posts on this forum at times and think to myself that if people actually believe some of what they write, then no wonder we are where we are. The Mina nonsense springs to mind. His "last dance". His "me, me, me" self-publicity a day before the club's biggest match in a quarter of a century. And people thinking he's grand - after taking 100 of those every week and turning out less than 100 times for this club in five years. And it drives me nuts. And it makes me think we'll get what we deserve when his last dance might be to fall over and present Junior Stanislas with a one-on-one he can't miss.

But, in the end, we need to stick together now on today of all days. No Evertonian wants to see us relegated. None.

 

[cooperman]

The club will struggle to recover from relegation. We've sleep walked into this position without making the right preparations. Those thinking going down would be a reset will be disappointed I think and are seriously underestimating how hard the championship is to get out of.

But without big changes at the top, survival today will only be kicking that can down the road I fear.

I just can't fathom how we've squandered so much money and got to this

 

[judge]

Lampard should never have been appointed. He had a track record of failure before us and an even better one after us.