verlaine1979

Redmond is just unbearably awful.

He took his goal well, but that's utter nonsense. Hoj's also did plenty of the minor, unselfish stuff that doesn't always get the credit it deserves, but he also gave us drive and leadership early in the second half when it was flagging. I can't remember the last time SD demanded the ball and controlled a game like that (though as has been said elsewhere, Everton's midfield were uncommonly obliging). Put simply, Hoj yesterday played like the midfielder plenty of people on here pretend Davis to be (don't get me wrong though, Lemina is still better by leaps and bounds).

You'd have to drop Davis, a scenario many fans seem incapable of imagining.

We really should though. Well taken goal today, but in possession and defensively he looked off the pace more than any outfield player (and wasn't it his pointlessly chipped ball to Bertrand that caused the turnover that led to their goal?). When we needed leadership and drive in the second half, it came from Hoj rather than SD.

Boufal is really starting to take responsibility for driving us forward, but Hoj was the revelation today. Not just a strong defensive presence, but there was a moment early in the second half where we were looking a bit listless and he stepped up and started demanding the ball and kept us moving forward. Shame the next game is against City, as he really deserves to keep his place and build on that performance.

Trying to chip it down the line when playing out from your own box always seems dangerous - chances of mis-control and losing possession 35 yards out is just so much higher.

Enough incentive to make any new owner want to refinance and secure the debt against the club I'd say...

As long as we remain in the PL, he'll be able to use club revenue to pay off the borrowing he used to buy us, and then after ten years, he'll own a £200m+ asset outright that won't really have cost him anything, and just happens to be a nice safe distance from China.

Aren't we supposed to have the 7th or 8th most expensive squad in the league? In which case, finishing between 6th-10th with a reasonable showing in the cups is basically breaking even.

Blimey, yes - a 'positional game' would seem a good, if generous, description of our tactics. A shame his interpretation of it seems to lead to a game without movement. Contrasts quite sharply with the Poch-era directive that the team should play from positions rather than in positions.

Also, our attacking performance against Burnely was so limp that the ultra-conservative Dyche felt confident enough to bring on two strikers and go for the win. What does that tell you about the standard of our play?

Funnily enough, the reason people were calling for Koeman's head was that the team suddenly lost the ability to score and went on a terrible run of results. Fortunately, his reputation was rescued by Mane going on an incredible run in which he scored 8 or 9 and made a couple more. Koeman never had to manage us without Mane, but he did have to manage Everton without their most potent attacker, and coincidentally they suddenly couldn't buy a goal. Managers can turn things around, of course, but you need a sense that they have a philosophy that they are trying to impart. I've seen nothing from Pellegrino to suggest he has any meaningful template or tactical plan in how he is setting us up - if anything, he seems determined to default to whatever previous managers have done, which is exactly what you'd expect from an overly conservative type. No matter how technically limited your players are, with the right coaching they can still play with intensity and attack in numbers. That we seem unable to do this is down to the manager one way or another.

Isn't the City game midweek? By that point it would only be a caretaker manager anyway, and there's seldom any pressure on those unless they aspire to the top job (which rarely seems to work out).

Sounds about right - though those 9s are very, very rare.

If a tree falls in a wood and everyone is there to hear it, can it be underrated?

De Bruyne scored from the edge of the box at an angle after an incredibly quick 1-2 with Fernandinho worked him an angle where he only had the keeper to beat (still a very good finish from there obvs). Most of Redmond's speculative shots have involved either trying to curl it round a defender and the keeper from outside the area, or trying to hit it through a crowded box. I'm not disputing that most of City's players are vastly more accomplished than ours in all phases of play, but what I'd stand by is that they are coached to always look for the forward pass and to attack & support in numbers. Those are basic tactical decisions that you can follow regardless of the quality of your individual players, and as Romeu said in his interview at the weekend, Pellegrino seems to favour an approach that prioritises marking open opponents for the counter attack, rather than committing to the attack at pace ourselves.

These stats say nothing about the tempo of the game, and they say nothing about the quality of the shots on goal. When Man City attacked Arsenal yesterday, they had five attackers and midfielders swarming forward every single time, and that doesn't include the overlapping fullbacks or the likes of Fernandinho joining the attack. On the other hand, we're lucky if we have another player in the box at the same time as Gabbiadini when we're attacking.

Mental if so. He went to the world's richest club after a streak of 3 consecutive Europa League wins. What on earth made us think we would be in the running for his next job?

Anyone who thought that Tuchel or Emery were ever remotely realistic targets has no business making decisions about the future of the club. As for MP, I look at how Napoli have been transformed under Sarri over the last season and a half. The likes of Mertens and Callejon were unremarkable mid-level international players, but that team has now been coached to the point where their pressing and movement off the ball are as good as I've seen. If you have an idea and the authority to implement it, you can turn average players into a superior team, but I'm not convinced MP has an idea of what he wants the team to do. Not losing the ball is the obvious fallback position if you don't have a clue what you want the players to do with it.

The gap between relegation and the bottom of mid-table is often no more than six points at the end of the season. So we only need to dip below our apparently superior level for two games before that theoretical advantage disappears. We're in trouble, and if we get spanked a few times during our run of games against the top six between now and Xmas, we could easily establish the kind of negative momentum that has seen teams with expensive squads go down in the past.

Argh, why not Boufal in the middle and Tadic on the left? Absolutely unforgivable refusal to learn from his mistakes if that's actually how they line up on the field.

Yup, there's almost never any movement in the centre. It's like they've been coached that as long as they have a clear sight of the player on the ball, they should stay put to keep the easy passing lane open. You see this particularly from Davis and JWP when they're playing behind the striker - they always want to be open for the pass, which usually involves milling about ten or fifteen yards behind where they need to be to trouble the opposition defence. There was a fifteen minute spell towards the end against Newcastle when Lemina and Boufal were both in the middle, close to the opposition box, and they were both constantly in motion, looking to create space rather than just occupy it - we need more of that, but I'm not convinced its in Pellegrino's coaching manual.

Huh? Our problem is the complete opposite of this. We have almost nothing through the middle, so the ball invariably ends up being slowly cycled out to either wing for a cross.

Playing Boufal on the wing was nobody's solution, especially not when his two biggest contributions against West Brom came with him running through the middle. However, MP is a fundamentally conservative/cowardly manager, so he did what they always do, which is pretend that the only place you can play creative players is out wide.

This is down to the manager. They've coped easily all afternoon with high balls and crosses, yet he's done nothing to try and create any sort of pressure through the middle. Happy to keep Tadic and Boufal on the touchlines, and have Romeu, Davis and JWP playing within touching distance in defensive midfield. Static set-up, very little movement, dull as f*** to watch.