It is now time to switch to a new Money AM football blog as the world cup is now over and we all look to the future.....World cup 2010 is over, Bravo Espana, and Forlan, once again and bring on the new season !.....I never expected the last thread to be such a success...thanks all.... so this new one might go on for years without the need to edit the title...we shall see...

Dirty Weeds back in the PreMadona.. now there's a thought.

Leeds have been my favourite English team since 1970 Joe. I started liking them before they beat Man U on the FA Cup semi final. Our school class then seemed to split 50/50 between Leeds and Chelsea for the final.

To this day most of those old school mates still support either Leeds or Chelsea.

Hope Leeds get a right stuffing tonight.

Dil, Now that's a school that should be put into "special measures". 🤣

Lol , it was a lovely school Stan and still is. Barry Island Primary Scool. Smallest in Barry but we had the best rugby and football team in my last year there and I've still got the medals to prove it.


Ticket sales are on course to give us our biggest home crowd since we played Everon in the 5th round of the FA Cup in 1977 (35k) and our biggest league crowd since our top of the table clash in the old 3rd Division with Hereford in 1976 (36k).

I was at both those games. Lost to Everton 2-1 but beat Hereford 2-0.

30k + very impressive, have a good one.

We won :-)

Thank you for wearing them out last week Stan , we were awesome tonight.

As Warnock said after 15 points after 5 games , if we are still there or thereabouts at end of October then we'll be in with a shout.

Next up Derby at home Saturday and they are on a roll.

Bigger attendance than the night we got promoted in 2013 but think it may have been less than we got on 1 or 2 occasions in premier league.

Don't care , we won :-)

Don't mench.. anytime -):

You certainly are steaming at the mo.

Its official, statistically speaking Burnley FC has the best Premier League defence. http://www.itsroundanditswhite.co.uk/2017/09/27/statistically-speaking-burnley-best-premier-league-defence-sean-dyche/

Not sure what it's like now but Cardiff had the fewest completed passes in the Championship after 8 games.

Non of that tippy tapped crap along the back four , can't score in your own half so just a waste of time.

Think are average possession is around 40% per game but we always end up with at least twice as many shots as the opposition and are joint top scorers.

Simple game really , get the ball into the opposing half and shoot !

Absolutely, only play it around when your 6-0 up and a minute to go.

Remind me of the last time Burnley had that luxury Stan. No tippy tappy at the flyover.

The same can be said for your lot IT, talking of which.. congratulations on actually scoring last week.

Stan on the Flybridge.

It's Chris who needs a bridge ... to jump off.

Ashley Williams once again proved me right.

Painful to watch :0(

I gave up just after half time. I think one of the youngsters that played we had on loan for a while 2 seasons ago but he never got much game time.

Pathetic last night. 6 doesn't come to mind Stanley but I can give a few 8s and 7s.

Sorry to hear that you Toffees are still struggling, but cheer up.. Burnley come to play on Sunday you know 👍🏼

Obstinate Koeman's reign reeks of a busted flush
LYNDON LLOYD 29/09/2017 18 COMMENTS



Another game, another often toothless and frustrating display, and two more important points dropped. After what unfolded in Italy a fortnight ago, the home fixture against Apollon Limassol was the one in Group E that Everton could ill afford not to win but they managed to grab a draw from the jaws of victory thanks to a late but unsurprising equaliser. That’s just the way things have been going so far this season but there’s a case for saying that Ronald Koeman’s side should never have been in a such a vulnerable position against that calibre of opposition in the first place.

To give Limassol their due, they had done their homework on the predictable way in which Koeman sets up his team, its reliance on switching the play to the flanks and its inability to consistently create through the middle. The team from Cyprus harried, compressed the space and tried to hit their hosts on the break but, ultimately, they lacked genuine quality and were there to be beaten.

Koeman said in his pre-match “presser” that he would select the strongest team available for what was a vital game in the context of Everton’s hopes of getting out of the group. That plainly wasn’t the case, though; if it had been, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, as demonstrably the Blues’ most effective attacker so far this season, would surely have started in place of Sandro Ramirez. And, as he would show by the end of the evening, so, too, should Nikola Vlasic have been in the line-up.

The problem, of course — as has been pointed out ad nauseam in recent weeks by keen Evertonian observers and long-suffering fans… essentially people supposedly less qualified than the man being paid £6m a year to work these things out — is that the Blues are, at the moment, considerably less than the vast sum of their parts and it’s down to a rigidly adhered-to system that the manager refuses to change.

While he has in recent weeks, accepted a modicum of responsibility for Everton’s poor results and even worse performances, Koeman was back to holding up a chronic lack of confidence and individual mistakes as being at the heart of his team’s problems last night.

“It's really disappointing,” he said after the game, a lead statement that is becoming as ritual as his famous “but, okay” crutch. “We started poor without any confidence, doing a lot of mistakes.

"The challenge is to get the team full of confidence. You need to start better, if you start with many mistakes like today it's hard. Look at the first goal it's shocking. Winning games is good medicine but now it will be the same at the weekend.

"The feeling is like a defeat, not even a draw. We are missing seven, eight players, that is maybe too much in the current situation."

Of course, it wasn’t really a shortage of numbers that was to blame here, although had Phil Jagielka been in the side instead of the increasingly error-prone Ashley Williams, it’s unlikely Limassol would have been gifted the opening goal in the manner in which they were.

In any case, the Cypriot side returned the favour with an even more charitable gift to allow Wayne Rooney to score a goal he never would otherwise have done based on the rest of the match. And once Vlasic had come on to provide the energy, the purpose and the second goal that the team had hitherto lacked, the argument over confidence went out the window.

The Croatian had put the Blues ahead with a composed finish that defied his teenage years and provided the platform from which they could take all three points. What it says of the accomplished and experienced Rooney or the criminally unmotivated Kevin Mirallas that a 19-year-old could provide so many of the answers is best left for another discussion.

Meanwhile, while those errors that Koeman cites were undoubtedly factors everything comes back to selection at the moment, and ineffective, narrow formation, anchored by a defensive midfielder partnership that is superfluous when Everton are at Goodison Park, that is doing the players no favours in their bid restore some self-belief.

Not for the first time, Koeman was aware of that last issue because he addressed at half time by withdrawing Idrissa Gueye in favour of Vlasic. The worrying problem, just like his repeated deployment of too many nominal No.10s at the expense of width, is that he keeps starting games with the same busted strategy, week in, week out. If his team is suffering from a lack of confidence, continually playing the ball back and generally moving it around at a snail’s pace, it’s because of a lack of options, movement and width ahead of them.

What does it say of a supposedly top-class manager that he consistently has to change things up at half time or later in games because his starting tactics aren’t working?

The optimists will point to the fact that Group E in the Europa League is still wide open following Lyon’s draw with Atalanta but Everton will only remain in with a shot of progressing to the knockout phase if they can start winning big matches, something they are struggling to do at the moment. In the same way that Oumar Niasse’s double against Bournemouth papered over some glaring cracks, a slender win over Limassol earned in spite of suspect tactics would have belied another sub-standard display.

On the evidence of last night, it’s hard to see this Everton team winning either of their other two home games in the group and there will be an onus on getting positive results away from home as well depending on how things pan out between now and early December.

Then there are the regular challenges of the unforgiving Premier League where there are no easy games and Everton will have to earn the right to beat the likes of Burnley and Brighton in their next couple of games to keep the relegation zone at arm’s length.

The damning thing is that there is talent in the squad and some fine, blossoming young talent being worked into the foundations for future success under the right management. Tom Davies may have struggled last night in contrast to his transformative introduction against Bournemouth but his refreshing desire to keep the ball moving forward and his eye for a pass mean he should be a regular starter in place of one of the holding midfielders at home.

Calvert-Lewin is another maturing quickly on the big stages, displaying the attributes of control, direct running and eye for goal that some questioned he possessed at times last season while he was still finding his feet.

So, too, Vlasic who was a breath of fresh air last night who had the kind of impact on the game that Koeman would no doubt expect of Rooney. In Gylfi Sigurdsson, meanwhile, you have a player who, unsurprisingly, looked far more at home and was much more effective when he moved centrally and could play just behind the forward line. Will Koeman finally realise that simply picking players on reputation or price tag and shoving them into an unbalanced formation has been exposed as futile or will he blindly barrel forward regardless hoping against all wisdom that it will simply start working?

If there’s a common thread between Everton’s managers in the 21st Century it is, perhaps, a stuck-in-their-ways intransigence that ultimately underpinned their lack of success at the club. Perhaps that comes with the territory with the majority of football bosses but we Blues only have our own experiences from which to draw. And from Walter Smith to David Moyes to Roberto Martinez, we’ve been driven to distraction by an unwillingness to adapt to the demands placed on them by an ever-changing Premier League landscape.

Koeman may have only been in the job less than 18 months but he has quickly revealed either a dogged refusal or a simple inability to change — let’s face, it’s not good either way — in the face of mounting evidence that the system to which he is rigidly adhering isn’t working. They should rename it Goodison Donkey Sanctuary — Home for Stubborn Old Mules. Yes, it’s true that he is bedding in a number of new players but that is not the overriding reason for the team’s abysmal displays.

Maybe it’s a sign that my Evertonian patience has been stretched too thin over two-plus decades without success or the Dutchman’s detached demeanour but if Koeman walked tomorrow or was ushered into a taxi by Farhad Moshiri, I wouldn’t care a jot because there's no discernible plan at the moment. That’s not a new feeling, either — I felt that way before last night’s match and it’s not one I’m likely to shake unless there is a wholesale but unlikely shift in the manager’s approach, tactics and selection policy. To say we expected a hell of lot more this season is an understatement and it calls into question the likelihood of success for Ronald’s three-year Everton “project”.

Everton will have a job in qualifying...Lyon are no walkovers....reached the uefa europa semis last year...put four past Ajax...so it's not looking good...