Lotus

Rafa spends most of the game telling us to be more narrow. Well, you've got to be extremely f**king good to only play through the middle.

He's smarter than Townsend. Just doesn't have pace nor a right foot.

Not in the 1st half. After a bit of a slow start we played with plenty of verve and energy. disagree, we strolled around keeping the ball, but still farted about too much, tried to walk the ball in rather than shoot. agree to disagree then! I felt like you did in the 2nd half though.

One of our biggest is width. We always look to be playing through the middle. None of our wide men, wingers nor fullbacks deliver consistently decent crosses.

Not in the 1st half. After a bit of a slow start we played with plenty of verve and energy.

None of Ritchie, Atsu, Goufran, Perez or Diame have consistently offered enough so far. It's a problem.

The subs are largely poor too, though. People who think we're gonna win this league without investment this month need a wake-up slap. Has any football fan ever said they'd rather not buy a couple of players given the chance then?

I agree that he didn't get much quality ball but he was bullied out of it pretty easily with his back to goal. They'd played deep so he didn't have space behind so i would have expected him to move wide and pull some defenders with him. He didn't, he was quite predictable.

He's put in some decent crosses from the left before. Looks easy to defend against if you're a LB though.

Didn't think much of him today tbh. Didn't bring others into play much, didn't run into space, thought he was very ordinary.

Happy new year all

Is Mccarthy getting games for Everton?

Feliz Natal!

I can't get over the impression he's holding himself back tbh. The English mentality has never been predisposed to flair imo but on the odd occasion I've seen him both his decision making with the ball and his efforts to win it back when Everton have been without the ball have been, shall we say, less than optimal.

That's superb

He never really looks like he's playing for the team to me.

Rafa Benitez I gave you my heart and the very next day we won 2-0 away Next year, in the Premier You'll show Jose who's "Special" Not bad

Didn't think Lacelles was that bad. One moment stands out where their fat Dutch winger was in a great position but he covered and made an excellent block and won and goal kick n all in the process. Excellent defending. Aye, that was great defending. It's just a shame he spent the other 91 minutes passing the ball out of play and to Wigan players There was a run in the first half by a Wigan player where he lunged in and was lucky to narrowly miss the Wigan player or it'd have been a pen. He was rubbish, but most of the others were too. He just seemed to stand out more imo. He was no worse than Clark tbf. In fact i thought Clark played more inaccurate or aimless long balls. For either of them to have 'a shocker' with the opposition barley registering a shot on goal does smack of hyperbole, like. They were both good enough at defending but neither of them used the ball consistently well.

Defo think we should try and buy Will Hughes off them. Don't see them going up this season. I reckon they'd sell.

Safety first, and you can't really argue with the result I suppose. I just think with Ritchie and Gouffran as wide men, you need overlapping full backs if you want to play more incisive football from the back. With those 2 as wingers you need overlapping fullbacks if you want any width at all. I just think we found it difficult to create too much as a result. All a bit through the middle and mostly in front of their CB pairing.

Thought we were pretty bad from the wide positions. Ritchie and Gouf did nothing of note and Anita and Dummett never offered an option nor an overlap.

Don't agree They are too similar imo. We need to sign another midfielder who is willing to break into the opposition box more. That would involve replacing both Hayden and Shelvey then. Shelvey isn't the type to protect his back 4. I'm all for replacing players with better players but it's odd to look at our season so far and decide we definitely need to replace our starting midfield pair in order to make any progress.

What's the reference in the last frame?

Pietro Vierchowod says hi...