Liverpool (a)
Splendid MiseryWe all saw it so there’s no point dwelling on how bad we played or the complete gutless and spineless showing of the majority of the players, I’d rather concentrate on what’s needed after that.
The harsh facts are and we all know them, the amount of players in this squad who are absolutely unfit for purpose are glaringly obvious. If there is one molecule of hope that we can take from this game is that Carlo will have identified exactly what and where he needs to strengthen and who exactly needs to go out of the door ASAP.
The mess left behind by Walsh, Koeman and Allardyce (I’ll get to Silva) is that we cannot afford to have the likes of Sigurdsson, Schneiderlin, Tosun and Walcott hanging around as squad players, that’s circa £350k p/w warming the bench or not even making the bench. Also you have to consider their age along with the term left on their contracts. All have over 18 months as a minimum remaining, that’s Man Utd levels of waist. Even if it meant selling at a loss or long term loans that cover wages or a high percentage of, we just need to get them out of the club and replaced adequately.
Sigurdsson and Schneiderlin got bullied off the ball, ran passed and ran through by Jones and Chirivella, embarrassed to the point where they were missed completely by our defenders in order to get the ball up the field due to them being outclassed, and that’s exactly what they were, outclassed. As a midfield pairing they have an average age of 29, no pace to get forward or to recover. They had no place to hide today and were criminally exposed.
Walcott for all his endeavour in the first half reverted to type in the second half, poor crossing, running the ball out of play and exposing his right back. For all of his experience at a ‘top club’ like Arsenal you would imagine he would have not just leadership qualities, but also experience in how to manage these games on the field, however like Schneiderlin and Sigurdsson, offers nothing. At 30 yrs of age, in his position, there is little to nothing in both goals and assists.
As for Tosun, he didn’t even make the bench today, he’s surely in the departure lounge.
All of the players played the occasion yet again today and not the match itself, the knife to a gunfight mentality is very much still prevalent at Everton, and it pains me to say that whilst we still have remnants of Moyes’s underachievers, Koeman’s expensive square pegs and Allardyce’s ‘best we could get for our money in Europe’ this will forever be the status quo at that horrible place.
Brands and Silva cannot escape criticism, the summer window was neglectful, the approaches for Rojo and Doucoure, the failed Zaha bid followed by the out of the blue Iwobi signing just confirmed how disjointed the thinking was. Subsequently the horrific luck with injuries have magnified this. Ultimately along with poor results and poor in game management, that saw his end. The previous summers recruitment has given us a fairly good nucleus of a squad with a good baseline to build on.
This coming week will be the first week that Ancelotti has had to train the players properly, we will likely see a very strong reaction vs Brighton.
So the full extent of the rebuild required by Ancelotti and Brands has been shown for what it is, the need to remove institutionalised losers, uncommitted passengers and players that ultimately should never have been signed by a manager we should never have had. Along with Niasse, Stekelenburg and Martina, that’s seven players that will need replacing at an absolute minimum, seven players that equals one quarter of your premier league squad allowance, before drafting in any of the u23’s. That’s a huge percentage, but a minimum requirement.
Of all the Usmanov talk, and there certainly is no smoke without fire, I would imagine that until planning permission is formally announced, his hand and true involvement within EFC will not be clear, once it has the true plan will be revealed. For now we will just have to suffer the shame and ignominy of today’s game and the financial disaster that our accounts will reveal at the AGM.
I usually title these post matches with a song title, but this title is part of a quote from President Andrew Jackson. He said that being president was a ‘Spendid Misery’ and that’s how it is to be an Evertonian. We supported them yesterday, today and we‘ll support them tomorrow. They treat us well occasionally, but mostly they treat us horribly, but we wouldn’t be without them.
UTFT 💙
