Bournemouth (h) A change is gonna come

Bournemouth (h) A change is gonna come

I’m not going to talk about the game, I’m going to bang down a few thoughts & leave you all alone for the next 6 weeks. A long deserved break from this horrible squad.

The challenge for the squad today was to display a culture change & mentality shift from the soft centred mentally weak attitude we’ve become accustomed to. The opportunity to relegate a team, the opportunity to show real ruthlessness & build on the great win on Monday. Sadly this wasn’t the reality & Bournemouth who came to preserve their Premier League place battered a team who aren’t able to show enough grit, spirit & determination to preserve their Premier League futures. It was about wanting it, & most of the Everton squad didn’t want it.

3 Players that have put themselves in the departure lounge if suitable offers come in this summer - Davies, Walcott & Pickford.

3 Players who are in the departure lounge full stop - Sigurdsson, Coleman & Bernard

3 Players that won’t even make preseason training - Bolasie, Tosun & Sandro

3 Players that have to move on for the sake of their own careers - Besic, Pennington & Dowell

Since Pickford threw the ball in at Anfield he’s become such a liability that teams will actively target his near post, & actively put him under a high ball. We’ll all agree that he had a great World Cup, but that was 2 years ago & top flight careers have come & gone in a shorter space of time. He is a massive problem for Carlo & Brands this summer. The best thing that can happen to him is be dropped by England, not just from the team, but from the squad. He needs an ego check, he needs to be shown he can’t be trusted, & he needs to start again, to be hungry & consistent. At the moment he makes Paul Gerrard look like Neville Southall. A strong captain in this team would be calling him out, we need a strong captain who will set standards on & off the pitch. We’ve not had this since Dave Watson. Dave ***** Watson!!

The weak as piss captains of the Moyes & post Moyes eras like Jagielka, Neville & Coleman have all provided the lip service & rallying cries, but it was always the likes of Baines, Felliani, Cahill & Lukaku that pulled the team through by their actions.

You have to be heartened by Ancelotti’s comments about an Evolution this summer, it gives you confidence that there is a cohesive plan. There has to be a plan. He said himself he’s had 6 months to look at the club & the players, out of a first team squad of 25 you can imagine he feels that half to a third are of a suitable standard, the rest would all be made available in a ‘normal’ market, but like most clubs we will have to retain the best of the average for another season. There will be incomings & they will be players that are to the managers standard, that instantly raises the levels, they will walk into the starting xi & slowly but surely the stench of mediocrity will lift.

We’ve 4 maybe 6 quality players, by the start of next season we’ll need 8 - 10 as a minimum. The clock starts ticking at midnight tonight.

The nature of the squad that Ancelotti inherited has been publicly called into question, the 2 sides no more evident than last Monday & today. Ancelotti couldn’t do anything about it in January, but now he can & he will.
File this season under B for bollocks - pre covid to project restart, 5 subs & drinks breaks, it just hasn’t been normal, what it has shown is any team with a semblance of quality has managed to still perform..

Have a great rest of the summer - God bless Leighton Baines 💙