St. Maximin

Good post. I personally don’t think Howe is the man for us currently, but I’m happy to give him time to implement his style and be better judged. I did notice the pretty dramatic shift in narrative too. I would say it’s a crap squad whoever managed us since promotion though and was always relegation battle material, despite the changing narratives. Under Rafa it was always his hands were tied, Championship squad etc. Then Bruce comes along and people expect so much better because he had £100m despite Rafa having better attacking options (granted Bruce’s handling of Joelinton was terrible). Really the fact we finished 12th was extraordinary last year and I dislike Bruce like everyone else. His time here and Rafa at Everton (and at times us) just shows how all this “having a plan” doesn’t always have the impact people expect. Often you just need a good run of form like we had last year and the momentum keeps the team going.

Continuing the ex-Bournemouth/Burnley connection and Howe’s policy of signing players with mainstream British names. Good to see.

Chris Wood has virtually the same goals to game record as Gabriel Jesus. Imagine he’s played more minutes… but don’t really need to spend much time comparing the creativity of Burnley to Man City.

That was one team though. There’s no guarantee he’ll get it right everywhere and he and Everton clearly don’t look the right fit. He was great for us and engaged with us brilliantly, but we can’t talk about his time here as if he’s a miracle worker or never made questionable decisions. Getting the best squad in the Championship promoted was expected and we managed to end the seasons well in the Premiership despite being in relegation battles. We were fighting with Cardiff for safety in 2019 and nobody raves about Warnock. We finished higher last year than then under Bruce and we definitely didn’t have better squads than teams below (Wolves, Brighton, maybe others), also thanks to a great end to the season - things can often pan out this way. The 10th place in 2018 was very impressive, but even then he wouldn’t be the first or last to take a newly-promoted team into the top 10. Wilder took a clearly worse squad higher. Unfortunately it fell apart the next year, but it’s not surprising given their squad. Ultimately managers have their ups and downs and will rightfully come in for criticism even with previous success (e.g. Mourinho). I haven’t assessed his tactics much, but Everton fans watch their team so seem to be in a good place to comment.

What’s the criteria for defining world class? He hasn’t really done anything of note in years. You can see the clear impact he had here but he wouldn’t be the first or last manager to get a team promoted and then mid-table in the Prem. Seems to be a reason he isn’t getting attention from the best teams now. Saying that managers and clubs can often just be the wrong for each other and that’s clearly happened here and I imagine China too. Clearly not all his fault, but pretty understandable if Everton fanbase is annoyed.

I get why that’s a penalty but it’s the inconsistency over whether VAR properly reviews these or not that pisses me off. That was a clear pen first half but they didn’t properly assess it. It is City though so makes sense.

I’m not convinced he is that level tbh. No doubt very good, but he had so much space and intelligent movement around him at Dortmund that he could thrive. It’s the same for England, where he just doesn’t look threatening to the full-back or that he’s going to be highly influential when I’ve seen him. Southgate definitely proven right to play Saka and Sterling ahead of him at the Euros.

I’m not confident we’ll stay up - will either need a sublime run of results or a low points tally needed to stay up (neither impossible of course). However, there are so many positives from Howe and I think he’ll have a plan for us. Same with the owners. Relegation would be crap but we can accept it with an awful lot more positivity than in previous years. So refreshing to see a manager so personable and say the right things too. Like with Rafa that makes it so much easier to get behind the man, even if you don’t support every decision they make.

He isn’t good enough but on the flip side I forgot Ronaldo was playing for a while until the camera zoomed in on him having one of his customary whinges, so fair play. Same with Schar.

The reactions are just extraordinary really. It was terrible defending from a terrible player who shouldn’t play for us again, but he’s always seemed like a good pro and I’m sure he’s devastated when these things happen. We had this ‘be kind’ idea trending on social media a couple of years back after a celebrity tragically took her life. Not sure how a footballer doing something stupid in the heat of the moment is worthy of similar abuse though.

I want us to continue the quest to become the new Bournemouth, ideally going after players with the most mainstream British names. I want us to be like when half their team was called Cook, Wilson or Smith - already made a start there too. Says a lot when they signed a guy born and raised in Norway and his name is Josh King.

Surely this happens every year though. These teams will lose players too and players decline with age etc. Still think on paper we certainly weren’t better than teams like Brighton and Palace.

I don’t deny that at all, but we also finished 13th and 12th with shite squads.

Our squad showing he much we overrated them under Bruce. Under Rafa and Howe it’s a ‘Championship squad’. Under Bruce some were saying it was midtable material (and it was in the end). We overachieved so it’s no surprise Bruce had his support.

Null and void the season now. Definitely best for everyone…

So we did. Not sure why I chose to forget those...

Yes I agree. However, I still think they had their limitations in the PL. I still remembered our record against the best teams being poor, but we did beat Man City fwiw. At the same time we failed to register a shot on target against Fulham when bottom so think Rafa had to take ownership of that too.

Ultimately not a lot. We did what we had to and should be thankful to Rafa for a great job overall. I'm more just acknowledging the downsides to his time here having analysed things a bit deeper than just points tallies, which is what we've all been calling for from pundits and the like during the Bruce era. Sure it seems harsh being critical, but I feel it's proportionate. He wasn't a miracle worker and his tactics definitely had their limitations too. Should be very grateful overall having said that.

Would be a bit boring if we all agreed, no? I remember for a while we couldn't be completely confident of automatic promotion - think after we lost to Ipswich it felt like that while Brighton had gone and secured it. Huddersfield fell apart once we pulled away and Brighton monumentally choked when they should have wrapped the league up, only for us to take advantage and win with a few minutes to spare. With that squad you'd expect comfortable promotion but the final stats didn't quite tell the full story. So not really being contrarian for the sake of it

That Mitrovic has been ridiculously prolific in that league ever since when played as the main man does raise questions over Rafa's handling of him, but saying that he had Gayle for most of the season and he was excellent so with hindsight that didn't really matter. I still don't think we were overly impressive that year given the squad and our struggles to get there. However, finishing 10th the following year was brilliant and Rafa's standout year here imo.

Not really towing the party line here, but we always have to mention the organisation, plan and the fact he cared and engaged with the fans to justify the admiration he had because the football wasn't always great, both in terms of aesthetics and results. We just about won the Championship, so you can't have many complaints really, but we really should have won it more easily with that squad imo. We barely used a striker who has scored for fun in that league for a few years now and had several embarassing home results/performances. At one stage it didn't even look like automatic promotion was safe and then Brighton had to truly bottle it to let us win the league in the closing minutes. We were in two relegation battles in the Prem for a while and needed some good runs towards the end to keep us safe. I am aware there was a lack of investment but most of these squads in the bottom 10 or so aren't massively different in terms of quality. In his last season we were fighting closely with Cardiff for ages and if one of us teams had a 'Championship squad' it wasn't us. I also don't recall people talking about how good Warnock was as a manager either. Then the moving to China I also didn't feel 100% comfortable with. Of course his offer here was a disgrace and the financial incentives of his move were understandable, but it was a bit of a kick in the teeth imo that it was a for a job the other side of the world to his family, in a crap league where there was presumably a language barrier. Bit of a weird decision, just like Everton and I guess you could say us too.

Nah. We all hate it when there are stupid stereotypes about us being deluded so doing likewise about other fans is silly.

It’s one of the weirdest phrases I’ve heard from football fans. Like every other team they will have their toxic members of their fanbase, but they can’t just be blamed for the fact their manager is having a stinker.

This is why we shouldn’t be surprised that so many people stick up for Bruce. Having mates in the right places help but no way did we have 12/13th place squads on paper and then you factor in our injury issues. Bruce just happened to rely on luck and not tactics, but if it keeps going for you, people will have to do more and more work to show why you aren’t doing a great job. Honestly didn’t get why people thought we were more than relegation battle material on paper.

I’d say for balance as much as the lazy and ignorant comparisons with Bruce to suggest they performed similarly annoy me, I also find the refusal to criticise him from many of our fans a bit puzzling. I’d often hear that he’s a “world class manager” that knows best but tbh I don’t see how he still counts as that based on the last 10 or so years. He was often deemed in the top 5 managers in the league on here recently and again I don’t see how that was warranted. No doubt here you could clearly show he did a great job here, but I’m not sure it’s much more remarkable than what a lot of less successful managers had done in the Championship and post-promotion. I do think you sometimes have to jump through hopes to argue how well he’d done at times talking about plans and organisation, when it can be easily acknowledged we were in relegation battles, had an even worse first 10 games than this year in 2018 and at times we did look toothless even at home to weaker opposition. It was interesting that back then we had a ‘Championship squad’ but then last year under Bruce the narrative switched to an underperforming squad despite many of the same players. Even a few weeks back when Everton lost embarrassingly to Watford, the comments here were focussing on how toxic the Everton fans were, but regardless he needs to take responsibility as those goals were shambolic.