2025/26 David Moyes

[Dddddd]

It's explained by the fact that the overall standard of European football right now has fallen off a cliff. Real Madrid and Barcelona aren't remotely at previous levels when Guardiola, Mourinho, Luis Enrique, Zidane, and Ancelotti were at the helm. Bayern, with few top-class German internationals (because German football is in the toilet), are flat-track bullies who will be found out in the last 8. There's no Klopp figure doing bits at another German club. Italian football fell off a cliff 15 years ago and hasn't recovered. We're a long way from the days of Lippi's Juventus, Capello's Milan, or Paolo Maldini now. PSG are an artificial construct. French football is in the gutter.

That said, many of the English sides will hit a wall when they play some of the above in the knockouts. The stresses and strains of the financially doped Premier League always exact a toll.

So all football is terrible but comparatively English clubs are more and more better than the rest?

 

[Lanolin]

Tell him that next time for me, cheers. I’ve seen far better Bournemouth performances against us in the past, to be honest. And it’s not snobbery to point out that a newly promoted side sitting 6th (sunderland are massive btw), with Brentford hovering around the European spots, might indicate the overall quality of the league isn’t particularly high this season. That’s an observation about standards - not snobbery.

Sunderland aren't 6th mate, they're 11th. The reigning Champions are 6th, one place below the reigning World Champions. These things do happen though, I'm not sure i'd say that this Sunderland team is worse than the Forest one who finished 7th last year, or Leeds when they came up and finished 9th, Or Sheffield United who did the same the year before them etc etc. To keep it on topic I don't think the league is a poor one, I think there's just not a huge difference in quality between most of the teams in the middle bracket and so we all keep taking points off eachother. We need to find a way to start beating some of these teams at home, otherwise the compact nature of the table will mean we're swallowed up very quickly and end up back in the sort of position we've found ourselves in recent years rather than pushing on like we all hoped we would.

 

[Swartzy]

Not really a big believer in xG stuff, think a whole lot of salt is needed but those that are - I did see this the other day.


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In terms of performances where I've felt we deserved to win a game, we've definitely won more than I felt our performance deserved.

Keep thinking when we actually start to play well, it'll show and we could pinch Europe

Please don't bring out the Statmen, we have wks before we play again !!

 

[The Littlest Yobo]

Too many players off it last night. All said and done we were still better than Bournemouth.
We shot ourselves in the foot and is a game we should have won at a canter yet again.But loath to criticise the manager but we need to stop putting square pegs in round holes.
These players though are not as good as we think they are and thats all of them.

I’d love the manager to explain why he thought that the game was crying out for Beto and a centre midfielder playing left wing when we were drawing and there was still half an hour of normal time left to play.

 

[Rob17896]

Fair point we are doing teams away in the same way we are getting done at home.. It needs sorting.

it does. Playing a centre back as a fullback, when we have a fullback and putting a midfielder on the wing, when we have a winger on the bench is perhaps a demonstration of how our manager does not have a clue when trying to set-up to attack. He can't bring himself to do it.

 

[Swartzy]

Toffee TV made a valid point regards Moyes and not playing players the board have bought in the summer. He's got to be careful.

Said this from the start, i got shot down for saying the board are pushing for certain players. But Supposedly everything was down to Moyes and his main man.

Think people are starting to realise it's not the case..

 

[Lanolin]

Because the global shift in football playing style has been towards the functional and the athletic, meaning all leagues have dipped. By definition, the league that has been the closest to that in style would do better. As they have bigger finances due to insane commercial deals, the PL sides can also spend more in acquiring these functional athletes.

It is the natural culmination of team focused systems and data analysis in football (and I'm not against data in football, I think it's useful and we should use it more). It means that teams want to develop systems players as opposed to mavericks etc. Even Brazilian academies changed their focus years ago, because they knew they would make more money producing functional athletes for European leagues than another Ronaldinho.

Even Guardiola's Barca team was obsessed with the system, it just had unbelievable players in it too and all styles now lead to the functional aspect of football. If you also factor in the money in the PL, the owners have even more of an incentive to remain, so again emphasise competitive athleticism over all else. Again, nothing wrong with that, but it means that we have reached a cyclical event where play styles have trended back towards the styles of the 80s and 90s, just with modern formations and a much higher level of athleticism.

Maybe it will change again in a few years. But the standard is objectively terrible in all the major leagues now.

That's style rather than standard though isn't it? That's like saying the standard of tennis is lower now than it used to be because people just hit the ball harder and don't use the same array of strokes. That might mean it's less fun to watch, but if the people hitting the ball harder keep beating the players with the good groundstrokes, they are objectively 'better' aren't they? We can maybe say that in our opinion football isn't as good to watch as it was at some arbitrary point in the past, but it doesn't necessarily follow that that means the standard is lower. Again to keep on topic, we seem to struggle with both the physical and technical sides of the games at the moment, which you'd have to say is somewhat suboptimal.

 

[Pittsburgh Footy]

That's style rather than standard though isn't it? That's like saying the standard of tennis is lower now than it used to be because people just hit the ball harder and don't use the same array of strokes. That might mean it's less fun to watch, but if the people hitting the ball harder keep beating the players with the good groundstrokes, they are objectively 'better' aren't they? We can maybe say that in our opinion football isn't as good to watch as it was at some arbitrary point in the past, but it doesn't necessarily follow that that means the standard is lower. Again to keep on topic, we seem to struggle with both the physical and technical sides of the games at the moment, which you'd have to say is somewhat suboptimal.

Amen

 

[MACCA75]

Essentially people remember the great sides. So they’ll say the league is rubbish because Arsenal are top and they aren’t a patch on the Arsenal team that Henry won the league with.

But then they forget that year we had Stephen Hughes, Mark Pembridge, Gareth Farrelly, Mitch Ward and a load of others that wouldn’t get near this most mediocre of Everton sides - or indeed any team at all in the division.

Standards overall have risen massively.

 

[Ruairi77]

I’d love the manager to explain why he thought that the game was crying out for Beto and a centre midfielder playing left wing when we were drawing and there was still half an hour of normal time left to play.

this and why didnt he put Keane straight in after the sending off, go to a back 3 and keep Garner further up.
We've been garbage since Grealish got injured and he wasn't pulling up trees before he got hurt.

 

[matty1878]

Where’s @matty1878 ? We need some optimism in here.

erm. we’re good away?

 

[matty1878]

He has to get more attacking threat in the side as we are just far too blunt. The easiest way to do that, without putting square pegs in round holes is to get a midfield 2 of KDH and Garner together, Alcaraz in front him and start to give minutes to Aznou and Patterson for balance.

He says we're not scoring enough goals, so instead of hoping that your striker doesnt do his own version of looking like Bambi, get other players in and around it who can be a nuisance as KDH can't do it all by himself.

ye it’s the attacking play

we’re to slow i don’t get why the build
up is to slow.

play pattison FB

drop gueye stick kdh next to garner
try charley or harrison behind

whatever of our strikers misses the sitters

 

[Little Ralphy]

I’d love the manager to explain why he thought that the game was crying out for Beto and a centre midfielder playing left wing when we were drawing and there was still half an hour of normal time left to play.

Be interesting to hear if he justified it, but I think he decided in the first half those subs were needed. He just took too long to make them. Barry and George were very poor first half and I was surprised to see them come out for the second half. He seemed to have them ready to come on for his 60 min sub, but they scored while they were waiting. You could see they were gaining momentum in the game and he really should have made changes sooner to stop that. I suspect that's why he was so annoyed at the end, because he knew what needed to be done but waited too long (or was advised to wait by his staff) to do it.

 

[RomanReigns]

i think from my observations in the home games it looks like what tends to happen is when we take the lead, we kinda enter the 'comfort zone'

we seem content to maybe sit a bit more deeper and allow the opposition to attack us and try and score on the counter

if we get a second goal then 'hell yeah' brewski's all round and we are on the path to 3 points

if we concede and it becomes 1-1 then panic mode enters and half the time we seem to capitulate

for example yesterday, after bournemouth took the lead, the impetus was then back on us as the home team to go out and attack and try and get a goal to equalise, bournemouth then became the team that entered the 'comfort zone' and were happy to sit back deeper and defend especially against 10 men and try and hit us on the counter

what we need is a game plan where we don't enter the comfort zone until we are 2-3 goals ahead of the opposition. this was something i admired with Klopp's liverpool side because even when they were winning, they always kept playing till the end trying to score more goals and even if they were winning 5-0 they wouldn't take their foot off the pedal

we unfortunately take our foot off the pedal way too often after going ahead and simply hope that the opponent is not good enough to fight back

 

[Bluelenny1984]

He has not brought in a fullback since he returned even though it's been glaringly obvious one (or two were needed) had hopes after Tete knocked us back he was aware of the problem and yet...

I know, but that’s not all on Moyes we’ve needed a right back for I don’t know how long and a left back not much less. Am not sticking up for him here, just it’s a wider club problem that yes Moyes should have fixed but it’s been here longer than him.