Andy

Can only assume Bruno was injured? If not, it's the kind of change you make to kill a game off. Very odd.

I can't see us challenging for top 4 tbh, teams have sussed out how to play against us and we don't have a plan B. We really struggle against a low block/counter attacking setup, we have done for ages now. Add that to the fact we are naff away from home and we'll drop too many points IMO. I hate to roll out stats as they obviously don't tell the full story, but for all our possession, Brighton had as many "big chances" as we did today despite barely touching the ball for 45 minutes. That's not really good enough and is symptomatic of a serious lack of creativity.

Is that his job like, or is he there to help us control the game? Pitching the blame for us not scoring on Tonali is mental

Can't help but notice how much less control we've had of the game since Tonali went off

Longstaff and Miggy coming on to see out the 1-0 defeat

Good clearance by Joelinton, we looked in danger of scoring a goal there

Yep. We have too many players who rely on the game being stretched. If you remove that, our play becomes completely inert.

We have one on the bench

You ever played football? Fitness is not the same as match sharpness.

Aye.

He's started less than half a dozen competitive football games in 12 months man, fucking hell

His passing is miles sharper than Longstaff, almost all first-time pass and move. His movement in general is better too. It's no surprise we're more dominant in games where he's on the pitch than when he isn't.

He's miles better than the alternative, like.

Wouldn't say he was one of their league's best players though? Remember him being distinctly decent at Roma at best, he was hardly Totti

Their best players have tended not to come over here, historically, so it's a hard comparison to make. I can't think of many Italians who have been great in Italy then flopped here, though. Only one that springs to mind is Dino Baggio, but he was at the back end of his career and already on the decline at that point.

Ange is such an overrated manager like, his game management and stubbornness is constantly his downfall. Hate his fake nice guy persona too.

Reading one of their forums, their fans don't seem to rate him at all. Not an unfamiliar story as I'm sure Feyenoord fans weren't keen either until he had a purple patch.

I'm surprised people expected us to rock up at Goodison and roll them over like, we've hardly ever managed to do that down the years. They notoriously turn up against the bigger teams at home - last season they beat us, Chelsea and Liverpool and drew with Arsenal, Villa and Spurs at home. They arguably have a better team this season than last. We managed what is always a tricky away fixture well. They literally didn't lay a glove on us, which is not usually how this fixture goes. With a forward we take three points.

I've been saying it too tbf, we've been awful consistently. However, at least we could pass the ball tonight which is a step in the right direction. This is definitely one of the more controlled away performances we've given, whether you could argue Everton allowed it or not - I'm not sure they did tbh as they didn't exactly have 10 men behind the ball and the game was stretched at times.

You might be right, but if we'd converted one of those chances I seriously doubt we're having this conversation, it becomes a comfortable win where we managed the game well and the home team barely touched the ball in our box.

To me the performance wasn't really the issue though, we had moments we were just extremely wasteful. Gordon should score his penalty and the 1 on 1 he had, convert either of those and the mood in here is entirely different as we win this game at a canter.

Isak scores at least two of the chances that Gordon snatched at

I don't think there's any way of doing that without it looking like Howe doesn't trust Gordon. He's always backup, he's scored his other penalties. Taking him off penalties for this would have sent the wrong message entirely.

I think what this game does highlight is that we're very poor at putting teams to the sword when we're in control of a game. We're over-reliant on a moment of magic to win us games when we're on top. It feels like almost all of our goals this season have come from either a "moment" or a sudden transition, rather than breaking through teams with clever patterns of play in and around the box. We should be incredibly easy to play against really, just overload the defence and counter attack against us.

I've been critical of our away performances for ages, but we win that game with an actual striker up top IMO. Played some nice football through midfield at times, we just lacked composure in the final third. Considering how rattled we've looked away from home over the last year and how these lot always seem to be up for it against us, it was at least good to see us keep them at arms length for pretty much the entirety of the game and actually dictate the tempo a bit.