Everton flight home from Germany aborted, return delayed 24 hours

[Groucho]

If we go out and get 7 points from 9 then no one will care about a few pre season defeats.

Personally I think we'll struggle to do that. All the reports suggest we've looked sluggish and it's never good when your important players are lacking in match sharpness. It's not inevitable we'll get off to a slow start but I wouldn't be backing us to turn it on straight away.

Once Barry, Besic, Lukaku, Mirallas and hopefully Atsu all start we'll look good. We haven't exactly had a full first team glimpse yet have we?

Chris Long played and scored the other day - he's not going to start Vs Leicester is he? The WC lads may retain some fitness from the WC.

 

[tonka1878]

Leave the feckers there I say. They are an embarrassment to this great institution. Losing friendly matches with no thought to the turmoil they put us supporters through, for shame.

 

[bflefc]

My flight home from Dusseldorf last night was also delayed til this morning. They put us up in the Sheraton over the road from the terminal which was OK, and I finally got into Heathrow about 0730 today. Knackered now and can't wait to finish work and get home.

 

[Ihaters]

Its quite odd how, when people point out how badly we look just a week before our first game of the season, the reaction is like a group of pre-pubescent chimps throwing their toys out the pram shouting 'its a joke', mocking that we're getting relegated, leave them there....where the fact is... we have looked abysmal, and haven't actually progressed at all in these games from the first game where we fielded a load of kids.

Whether its by intention or bad planning, it is what it is, and no amount of desperately trying to belittle a valid concern, because there is no reasoned response except that - 'it will be alright', or 'once we had a good pre season and then played badly', alters that we just played 5 games against turgid opposition, each of which took us apart with absolute ease.

Thank fk for our other players that have not been playing much, I have a lot riding on their influence when they return and hope they will go straight into our team, because if we have to play the starting games without them, using what we've had so far, its going to be an uncomfortable start to the league.

Anyone who thinks our last game of pre season, seeing us getting hammered by a newly promoted German team is nothing to worry about, needs to take their heads out of their Martinez shaped clouds imo, we were shocking with only Besic doing anything of any note.

We need improvement... immediately, that is not melodrama, that is fact... we need to be massively better in just 5 days time when we play our first game of the season, to do this we need to make sure that players who have had no pre season are up and running and playing tactically correctly alongside those that have had a pre season of below mediocrity.

This is where we are right now, please feel free to tell me otherwise and where I am mistaken.

Its not doom and gloom, its completely possible we will up our tempo, play well and the missing players will make all the difference, but its a guess because our pre season hasn't allowed us to find out, and therefore hasn't allowed Martinez to find out, which for me makes it a poorly planned pre season.

But its not the league, so its only from the weekend onwards that matters, just hope this chaotic, lacklustre appearing pre season is actually the master tactician doing what he does, find it hard to believe though based on what I have seen so far.

 

[Dymak]

Its quite odd how, when people point out how badly we look just a week before our first game of the season, the reaction is like a group of pre-pubescent chimps throwing their toys out the pram shouting 'its a joke', mocking that we're getting relegated, leave them there....where the fact is... we have looked abysmal, and haven't actually progressed at all in these games from the first game where we fielded a load of kids.

Whether its by intention or bad planning, it is what it is, and no amount of desperately trying to belittle a valid concern, because there is no reasoned response except that - 'it will be alright', or 'once we had a good pre season and then played badly', alters that we just played 5 games against turgid opposition, each of which took us apart with absolute ease.

Thank fk for our other players that have not been playing much, I have a lot riding on their influence when they return and hope they will go straight into our team, because if we have to play the starting games without them using what we've had so far, its going to be an uncomfortable start to the league.

Anyone who thinks our last game of pre season, seeing us getting hammered by a newly promoted German team is nothing to worry about, needs to take their heads out of their Martinez shaped clouds imo, we were shocking with only Besic doing anything of any note.

We need improvement... immediately, that is not melodrama, that is fact... we need to be massively better in just 5 days time when we play our first game of the season, to do this we need to make sure that players who have had no pre season are up and running and playing tactically correctly alongside those that have had a pre season of below mediocrity.

This is where we are right now, please feel free to tell me otherwise and where I am mistaken.

Its not doom and gloom, its completely possible we will up our tempo, play well and the missing players will make all the difference, but its a guess because our pre season hasn't allowed us to find out, and therefore hasn't allowed Martinez to find out, which for me makes it a poorly planned pre season.

But its not the league, so its only from the weekend onwards that matters, just hope this chaotic, lacklustre appearing pre season is actually the master tactician doing what he does, find it hard to believe though based on what I have seen so far.

Excellent post, and it is exactly how I feel right now.

 

[Azzurri]

Hang on, i thought we were having a behind closed doors game in Germany?

Maybe they'd forgot about it until halfway through take off and told the pilot to hang on.

 

[Moomin]

When we get beat by a group of German Star Wars geeks at a game of togger, we must surely sack this clown of a manager.

 

[malcson]

Martinez has discovered an awful lot this pre-season, primarily about how & who not to play!

 

[PhilBr]

I'd actually like to see the manager come out and criticise poor performances such as this. Not in a terrible OTT way, but to make it clear that it won't be tolerated when it comes to the season. In your final friendly you want to be showing that you're ready for the league and putting in a final push to consolidate a place in the starting XI, not getting turned over by a team recently in the German second division. I didn't see many positives from that game, possibly Long's goal aside.

They had a heavy training session in the morning before the game, no wonder they weren't sharp - they won't be doing that next Saturday!

 

[Ihaters]

When we get beat by a group of German Star Wars geeks at a game of togger, we must surely sack this clown of a manager.

Why's that mate? Seems a bit of an over reaction doesn't it? seems a pretty good manager for us to be fair. Think your being very unreasonable in fact.

 

[4737carlin]

I think people are moaning about the pre-season results because we have had a great window off the field, the business side of things, so its hard to moan about the board/Kenright at the present time so the negativity has to go somewhere else

 

[Ihaters]

I think people are moaning about the pre-season results because we have had a great window off the field, the business side of things, so its hard to moan about the board/Kenright at the present time so the negativity has to go somewhere else

I think its more because we look utterly, utterly poo with our first game on Saturday.

 

[toffeejack]

Once Barry, Besic, Lukaku, Mirallas and hopefully Atsu all start we'll look good. We haven't exactly had a full first team glimpse yet have we?

Chris Long played and scored the other day - he's not going to start Vs Leicester is he? The WC lads may retain some fitness from the WC.

we haven't had our back 5 play together at all hence part of the reason for the leakiness. it's usually been one of distin or jags with a backup and most of the time two backups together at CB and then hibbert at RB which pretty much every team has attacked non stop.

 

[Tom Mc EFC]

Everton fail to take off in preseason?

 

[Allezfan]

Its quite odd how, when people point out how badly we look just a week before our first game of the season, the reaction is like a group of pre-pubescent chimps throwing their toys out the pram shouting 'its a joke', mocking that we're getting relegated, leave them there....where the fact is... we have looked abysmal, and haven't actually progressed at all in these games from the first game where we fielded a load of kids.

Whether its by intention or bad planning, it is what it is, and no amount of desperately trying to belittle a valid concern, because there is no reasoned response except that - 'it will be alright', or 'once we had a good pre season and then played badly', alters that we just played 5 games against turgid opposition, each of which took us apart with absolute ease.

Thank fk for our other players that have not been playing much, I have a lot riding on their influence when they return and hope they will go straight into our team, because if we have to play the starting games without them, using what we've had so far, its going to be an uncomfortable start to the league.

Anyone who thinks our last game of pre season, seeing us getting hammered by a newly promoted German team is nothing to worry about, needs to take their heads out of their Martinez shaped clouds imo, we were shocking with only Besic doing anything of any note.

We need improvement... immediately, that is not melodrama, that is fact... we need to be massively better in just 5 days time when we play our first game of the season, to do this we need to make sure that players who have had no pre season are up and running and playing tactically correctly alongside those that have had a pre season of below mediocrity.

This is where we are right now, please feel free to tell me otherwise and where I am mistaken.

Its not doom and gloom, its completely possible we will up our tempo, play well and the missing players will make all the difference, but its a guess because our pre season hasn't allowed us to find out, and therefore hasn't allowed Martinez to find out, which for me makes it a poorly planned pre season.

But its not the league, so its only from the weekend onwards that matters, just hope this chaotic, lacklustre appearing pre season is actually the master tactician doing what he does, find it hard to believe though based on what I have seen so far.

The thing is I've been in your shoes.

Two years ago we were utterly awful in pre season and I had a right panicky moan on here. Said that if we couldn't pass the ball 10 yards in a friendly vs blackpool against an actual prem team we'd be embarrassed.

First game of the season was Man U at home and given our pre season form I was positive we'd get thrashed and start the season slowly.

We won 1-0, were superb and went on a run of some of the best football we've played in the last 20 years.

So I'm not going to make that mistake again, pre season just doesn't matter. Footballers raise their game for actual games.