Ronald Koeman discussion

[BlueToff]

Aye, saw that earlier.

Hard to disagree atm.

 

[ijjysmith]

Still baffled why Koeman persists with the same tactics when everyone else can see it's not working.

Difficult to play a different way with these players to be honest.

 

[Lowste]

My simple concern is the level of performance and style of play, it is terrible and as bad as I have seen for many a year.
People see winning as the be all and end all and in some ways it is a industry built on results, so I guess rightly so.
I don't see it that way simply as the successful teams play good football and are organised in all areas across the park. None play the way we are playing, and that is my concern

And before people tell me to give him time and not judge him when he has his own team, I don't care for all of this.
I have simple concerns and they aren't improving in anyway

 

[orly]

He's saints isn't he?
Not sunderland

Supporters from other clubs after results is what I mean mate

 

[Kiwi]

Arsed about Saints anyway, they're basically in France and have the bottle of a Frenchman. Which is why they never have nor will win the league.

 

[mttJ]

With respect, I think coming on to an opposition football clubs forum, in your words,to 'gloat' isnt going to attract a level headed response mate.

Understandable. Got nothing against Everton at all. You guys do have to realise though that you got Koeman because no other top 6 club wanted him and you were the ones who could throw the money at him when we chose not to. He's confirmed this in interviews since so it's not a case of equal terms being offered and him choosing you over us instead.

I'm fully aware we're a selling club and no I don't enjoy it. However players like van Dijk are fully out of our league as a club, therefore they'll move on to clubs with Champions League football, not a sideways or slightly inclined step. Koeman was evidently not out of our league and therefore moved to a team who are marginally better than ourselves. Players don't make sideways steps like these, Koeman did because you offered a lot more money and he couldn't agree terms with us going into his final year.

Anyway, apologies for starting on the wind-up. Enjoyed that a lot today!

 

[Kev50]

I'm neutral on Koeman, tbh. I quite liked him at S'ton. His manner was intense but friendly. Now I just see glum and arrogant.

Mind you, if he gets us into the CL he can say or do almost what he wants.

does neutral mean you're determined to undermine him at every turn before he even got here? I thought I was neutral but now I'm not so sure..

I'm under no illusion that we'll lose Virgil van Dijk. It's just embarrassing that you think a team like you can get him.

actually this reminds me how embarrassed I was when we invited Koeman to be our manager, to hear all your mad shrieking.
We'll pop around next in January when the window opens, and remember, it's just business.

 

[Kiwi]

Supporters from other clubs after results is what I mean mate

I know that, just was saying the Sunderland lads were sound as was Alan whittle.

 

[Kiwi]

Supporters from other clubs after results is what I mean mate

I know that, just was saying the Sunderland lads were sound as was Alan whittle.

 

[jinkyali]

Aye, saw that earlier.

Hard to disagree atm.

Its absolutely true.

A real stain on each and everyone of them the last three months of Martinez's campaign.

@The Esk wrote a piece this week on the discord between the club (at board room level) and fans but for me, there is a huge discord between the fans and the team too.

I certainly do not look upon the squad as suitable custodians of being Everton players with the way they have behaved/performed over the last six months.

 

[LouReedwalkonthewildside]

Difficult to play a different way with these players to be honest.

Lukaku can't play on his own up front mate so have a go with 4-4-2, the funny thing is he's looked better when Valencia has come on and gone up top with him, Valencia (no laughing at the back!) at least has a bit of movement therefore giving defenders something else to deal with and that then makes that space for Lukaku. Get Davies in the middle with Gana, maybe his battling and enthusiasm might rub off on the other bellends out there.

Koeman needs to start earning that £6m a year mate.

 

[HughesyEFC]

Aware that this isn't a majorly popular opinion on this forum, but I think Bolasie has been an excellent signing. The 'point' of him playing is mainly for two reasons. The first is that he's actually a pretty good winger, capable of absolutely ghosting past even the most experienced defenders thanks to his unpredictability. You might then say that him beating fullbacks on the regular doesn't matter if he can't whip a cross in, and although I'm happy to accept that premise, I'm not happy to accept the idea that EVERY ball he puts into the box is awful, in fact I'd even go as far to say that he creates at the very least a clear goal scoring opportunity a game, at which point it falls to Lukaku/Barkley to actually net the chance. You can look at the Barkley chance today when Bolasie whipped it in; fantastic delivery of the ball but ultimately zero aerial presence from Barkley and his header went miles wide.

The second reason is Bolasie's physicality. It doesn't take any sort of footballing genius to notice that we're particularly adept on the counter thanks to both the pace we've got out wide and the fact that the sight of Rom legging it towards you full pelt would make the Pyramids wobble. Bolasie though offers something else than just pure pace tho, notably how he does something that none of our other wingers do; he knocks the ball into space (indeed this is probably why Martinez was keen on Andriy Jargmelenko). Not only is this playing to his strengths (cos he's rapid) but it also eases the pressure on what quite frankly has been a diabolical defence so far this season, because we can transition so quickly from defence to attack by hitting it hard towards Bolasie. It's not exactly supremely cultured football, but it's where a lot of our goals seem to be coming from.

What that previous sentence reveals though is the real problem with the team at the moment; most of our goals are coming on the counter as we're still having the problem thats plagued us for about 2 or 3 seasons now in that we have zero creativity going forward. This wouldn't be a problem if wingers weren't wildly inconsistent but literally every winger in the world is, and as a result our 'Plan B' of going through the middle hardly ever works (because no one actually knows how to play a throughball in this team). The fact that our fullbacks aren't nearly as effective as they used to be (seemingly because they've turned a bit awful) further compounds this problem, because when our wingers can't get by a defender, they don't have the support from the fullbacks that we've grown accustomed to pretty much since 2008.

How do we solve that problem, I don't hear you ask because I'm typing this on a MerseyRail train and this has worryingly turned into a bit more of an essay than I had originally planned. Well, I've got no clue, because I've not done training qualifications to earn six figures as a football manager. That said though, there's some good old fashioned football cliches that I am happy to rely on for the basis of my ultimately quite unimaginative solution. No, not 'if you don't buy a ticket you don't win the raffle' because that ultimately says absolutely nothing about the statistical improbability of your favourite football player scoring from 40 yards even if you want to try your hardest to defend the stupid divvy, but more 'the game is won in midfield.' This kind of seems paradoxical given that we have three boss midfielders in Barry, Gueye and Barkley, and make no mistake, Barkley is a boss midfielder regardless of whether you can still picture the arl fella sat three rows behind you sarcastically saying he'll buy a Barkley shirt if he scores this freekick (yeah it hit the wall but how does slagging him off endlessly help ya tosspot, like josh sims or whatever the southampton dan gosling is called, he's one of our own). Sorry, lot of pent up emotion there, you weren't there man, you weren't there.

But yeah so we've got three boss midfielders, but ultimately I reckon they don't really mesh together quite well, which I'm concluding purely on the fact that if we were winning the midfield battle we'd have won more than one of our last eight games, which is a sobering statistic indeed. That would make sense though, wouldn't it? For however utterly utterly lost we will be when he leaves, Gueye is ultimately just as much a defensive midfielder as Barry is, and playing two defensive midfielders hasn't been working for the best part of a year now, and though I loathe to go full Zatara and invoke the Unsworthageddon (that game we won 3-0 against a relegated team), we did look fantastic and much more fluid with only one proper defensive midfielder in that team, even if that was mostly down to Martinez being banished from the training ground like a modern day Shankly. Heard he's found work as a Princess Leia style hologram though, so good on the latter. I think we need someone of the ilk of Tadic/Silva/Arteta to dictate the play in the middle of the park really. Whether that's by dropping Barry (because we will have to eventually, he isnt getting any younger and Moshiris millions cant bypass FA regulations regarding bionic limbs), moving Barkley deep and getting someone else in, or maybe by swapping Barry with Davies, or maybe even just by changing the formation so we have a proper three in midfield is up to Koeman to decide frankly.

Have I really just spent all that time rambling on about this to basically conclude 'play the young lads, dutch moyes'? You bet your sweet cheeks I have mate, that's MerseyRail for you. To sum it up, Bolasie is sound but Mirallas has been rendered irrepairable by Martinez, Deulofeu isn't being given enough time to cement his place and Lennon isn't the answer either. This means our attack is hugely lopsided, which is made worse by the fact that Baines and Coleman have gone to pot recently, so now all teams have to do is make sure Bolasie doesn't get space and hope that Barkley has a bad game (which lets be honest has been the case recently) to totally nullify our attack. I propose we either need a more dynamic midfield, Barkley to step up at number 10 like the proverbial diamond we claim he is, or one of our right wingers needs to actually come good.

Where's Aidan McGeady when you need him?

Oh, and Jagielka's been crap, get him dropped

Not reading all of that chief

 

[jinkyali]

Understandable. Got nothing against Everton at all. You guys do have to realise though that you got Koeman because no other top 6 club wanted him and you were the ones who could throw the money at him when we chose not to. He's confirmed this in interviews since so it's not a case of equal terms being offered and him choosing you over us instead.

I'm fully aware we're a selling club and no I don't enjoy it. However players like van Dijk are fully out of our league as a club, therefore they'll move on to clubs with Champions League football, not a sideways or slightly inclined step. Koeman was evidently not out of our league and therefore moved to a team who are marginally better than ourselves. Players don't make sideways steps like these, Koeman did because you offered a lot more money and he couldn't agree terms with us going into his final year.

Anyway, apologies for starting on the wind-up. Enjoyed that a lot today!

Thats fair enough mate.

Some of our fans acted like beauts when we nicked Koeman. Some of yours acted like beauts too.
Its football.

 

[Slippin Jimmy]

Thanks to the massive Everton for stealing this man from us so we could hire someone who actually uses some of the "not good enough" players within our academy. Nice of Koeman to come out after the game and say he didn't actually know who Sims was either, despite him being our 2nd most used player in the U21s last year.

Enjoy him guys, thanks for the 3 points!

Did you thank him for getting you into Europe, maybe now, more than 30,000 people actually know who you's are

 

[maccavennie]

Lukaku can't play on his own up front mate so have a go with 4-4-2, the funny thing is he's looked better when Valencia has come on and gone up top with him, Valencia (no laughing at the back!) at least has a bit of movement therefore giving defenders something to deal with and that then makes that space for Lukaku. Get Davies in the middle with Gana, maybe his battling and enthusiasm might rub off on the other bellends out there.

it's bloody basic stuff as well Lou, we can all see it. A couple of changes and reignite the season before it goes properly tits up