Yassassin

Best of the season so far, imo, in the PL

A professional footballer seeking to maximise their earnings from a comparatively short career to assure their own and their family's financial security is sensible

If this had been down to VAR, we’d have been forced to play it

I’m horrified by the fact that this tactic didn’t dawn on our management as quickly as it did on the other fuckers. Good recovery though, tbf

Eddie>Ralf

Super performance by all. We all know we’re short of quality in many areas but that performance puts me in Proud to be a Geordie mode

He accidentally stood on him like Boris accidentally had some parties this time last year. It happens

VAR redefining risible. Atrocious

He did look pleased and tbf his second-half was his best period for us imo. The bar wasn’t high mind

I’m really pleased for Lewis, too. There’s a decent footballer in there somewhere and it was good to see him smiling at the end

Zero goals against is almost as significant as the points

If after studying individual player performance over many games one concludes that Clark is a better pick than Fernandes, you have a problem

Rafa is casually dressed. Speechless

So, there’s a working party to develop solutions to a perceived problem for which the solutions have already been devised and extensively briefed to The Athletic and The Times? Seems legit

Oh, right

Not bad insight

Simeone is the match and everything that they do should drive them to this end. He doesn’t have a clue yet that he’s for us but he will

There’s many coaches of his generation who can adapt to changing tactics in the sense of how teams are coached; pressing is an example. He has no clue how to coach high-pressing and when we attempt it, it just looks half-arsed and doesn’t work. Rather than winning back possession it’s easily bypassed and leaves us exposed in defence. Fwiw, I think Southgate has the same problem with England

Tbf to Brucie boy it’s only taken taken him two years to undo everything that Rafa did. Effective

It’s OK really because so many of us hoped for the best. I can remember Stamford Bridge, 4th December 2004, realising that everything had changed as we got beat 4-0 by a multibillionaire’s hobby. How could we afford to compete? We couldn’t and Ashley helped to convince us of that

I mean many of us thought that he would keep us competitive and that wasn’t so outrageous a view given that he was a real life billionaire but he turned out to be a small-minded shit. We were desperate though; Abramovic had taken over at Chelsea, the Thai guy had taken over at City or was about to and the perennials of Arsenal (never won the league after this) and Man U (well funded) as well as Liverpool were still around. Difficult times as the reality of not having recently won anything and being just a little too far north bit

The opprobrium following the takeover is insufferable in any case at the moment so let’s be having it and persuade (bribe) Rafa to return. He wants to, we want him to and it would be best for the Everton fans who (by and large) didn’t want him at all for this to happen