Oh absolutely, I can’t abide managers throwing cup games, it’s just not on under any circumstance for me, play the first 11, win the game, and then look at the next one.
The manager can be criticised without wanting him fired. In my view it needs to be fair criticism though. Some of the stuff after the Spurs and Newcastle games were absolutely ridiculous, tonight however he’s made himself fair game.
In the wider view he’s improved the defence a lot in my view (don’t care what stats people are dragging up about xg shots conceded - Patterson Coady Tarkowski Mykolenko are miles better than Coleman Keane Holgate Kenny, anyone can see that)
and he’s not really been given the resources to replenish the front line properly.
In the last few windows alone Richarlison James Siggurdson Bernard Walcott Kean Tosun have all left the club. They didn’t all pull up trees for Everton but that’s a lot of attacking players, two of them very good for us.
In their place we’ve brought in Gray, Townsend, Rondon, Maupay, McNeil and Gordon from the academy.
It’s just nowhere near good enough. Now we can say that Thelwell and Lampard maybe didn’t spend the McNeill money wisely but 20 mill gets you nothing in todays market.
That collection of attacking players is not good enough. When you go past the first choice defence the players aren’t good enough. When you go past the first choice midfield the players aren’t good enough.
Frank has his pros and cons and we can debate them all day but ultimately we are not set up to compete in this league. We’ve assembled a bottom half squad quality wise and are now operating under a bottom half budget. These are the results, bottom half football.
If the board are serious about ambition thsn there’ll be a clutch of attacking players for Lampard in January. I very much doubt it though.
