I Just Don't Get It!

[Eggs]

..we are lacking in most things that make up a good football team.

 

[brieverton]

The truth is in the middle.

An overall poor quality squad with a weak mentality.

Sometimes you get one or the other but in recent weeks in particular both negative elements seem to have collided and we see the outcome on the pitch.

A good manager can help to alleviate attitude problems and a lack of quality. Not totally, but I still think somebody somewhere could at least get a marginally better tune out of this squad. If that wasn't the case we would just accept our lot and there would be no clamour to sack Allardyce.

 

[EFC78]

Our problem at the moment is the players are utter shithouses, they’re cowards. The sad state of affairs is, they have been since Moyes left. I was never Moyes biggest fan, but at least he’d have the players in the right spirits, battling (to an extent against “big” sides at home).

The reality is, these players are lazy, uninterested and don’t care for the shirt. I watched the aforementioned Brighton game on Sunday, the full time whistle goes and they all huddle and looked absolutely ecstatic to win, meanwhile, flash forward 24 hours and see our players trudging off at full time could barely even look at the fans.

Those players don’t care, not one bit, we saw with Martinez, Koeman, Unsworth and now Allardyce, there’s no motivation. No fight. Nothing. The captains job is to rally the players and he’s held that job for 6 years now and he’s not up to it.

The young lads, there’s no need for urgency, if they didn’t play again until the end of their contracts, who cares? They’re millionaires.

The one thing Moyes had which these managers don’t is, he had battlers, whether that carsley, Cahill whatever, he had people who wanted to battle for ever ball and be the best.

Can you say the same for Williams? Schneiderlin? Cause I can’t.

The reality is, roberto was too naive, Koeman too stubborn and Allardyce doesn’t give a toss.

Until we get a manager who actually wants to be here, who actually wants to win, and one who demands respect, we’re doing nothing but straddling mid table.

All this nonsense about “oh no Europa please”, says it all about some of our fans.

Look at City or PSG, maybe Liverpool or Spurs, spent the early parts of their riches in the Europa perfecting it, building a base and attracting better players.

Spurs and Liverpool used it as their base to build on and now could be regulars I. The champions league.

Instead we’re happy to not get in Europe this year, cause we need to be fully prepared next season, in our aims to qualify for.... oh, the Europa.

The players don’t care and the fans will accept mediocrity.

Sack the manager, shape the players, raise the expectations of the fan base, then maybe we’ll have something to cheer.

I agree with a lot of what both you and @Lanolin are saying even if both are making different points. I absolutely think mentality has a lot to do with it, but I also don't think it's fair of some to throw the blame at Moyes for when it started. It's been going on for years. I do think that more often than not we lose the big games because the other teams have more quality. But that doesn't explain why Wigan can beat Man City in a Cup Final, or Leicester can win the league against all odds, or why bottom of the league West Brom can go to Anfield in the FA Cup and win 3-2. We never seem to do any of these shock things and I think our weak mentality and cowardly attitude comes in to it a lot of the time.

 

[Kenshin]

There is nothing wrong with that practice per se.

United last nigh fielded players bought from Wigan, Fulham, Watford, Saints and.....Everton.

The RS will field a team replete with Saints old boys on Saturday.....captained by a Sunderland import (if he is fit).

It is what the coach does with those players when he gets them that counts.

Sporadically yes it is perfectly fine, not as a complete transfer policy though!

I think that is the general point in it which you kinda say. United did field former players of lower clubs, they also field players from Juventus, Monaco, Athletico, PSG etc. Liverpool have their southampton first 11 paired with hoffenheim/roma etc. We have lower teams only, which yes i agree doesn't matter where they come from if the team is successful. But personally i believe it is the mentality of them as a whole that when the going is tough like it has been past 3 years, this same mentality doesn't get lifted the same way as it would do in a dressing room not filled with relegation battle players, if that makes sense. Like losing on saturday at half time, you have the likes of Rooney who can draw on his experience as a winner, then the rest are used to getting beat in the league pretty much.

 

[Marius57]

We are set up badly. Players low on confidence due to the managers dire tactics. He sets up to ‘defend’ but hasn’t told the players how he wants them to defend. So we then don’t attack.

We get battered by the top 6 teams because they have incredibly quality finishers. If any of the other teams in the league had the quality that they have, they would also be beating us by those score lines. Fortunately, the other teams in the league waste the countless chances we give them but they all outplay us.

 

[MrGrumpy]

I agree with a lot of what both you and @Lanolin are saying even if both are making different points. I absolutely think mentality has a lot to do with it, but I also don't think it's fair of some to throw the blame at Moyes for when it started. It's been going on for years. I do think that more often than not we lose the big games because the other teams have more quality. But that doesn't explain why Wigan can beat Man City in a Cup Final, or Leicester can win the league against all odds, or why bottom of the league West Brom can go to Anfield in the FA Cup and win 3-2. We never seem to do any of these shock things and I think our weak mentality and cowardly attitude comes in to it a lot of the time.

We are so use to going to Arsenal and RS and losing that it’s become habit. Jags and Bains have never won there, they are the captain and vise captain and are meant to lead. Williams is Wales captain and goes missing every game. We always go there to not get beat, we don’t go there to win, big difference

 

[EFC78]

We are so use to going to Arsenal and RS and losing that it’s become habit. Jags and Bains have never won there, they are the captain and vise captain and are meant to lead. Williams is Wales captain and goes missing every game. We always go there to not get beat, we don’t go there to win, big difference

Part of the problem with Baines and Jagielka is that they have had to step up in to those roles when I don't personally think they are best suited to them. Jagielka for example has some leadership attributes but I don't think he has it in him to be the main captain. They are both 'too nice' and that wouldn't be as much of a problem if we had more commanding leaders in the team ahead of them, because at the end of the day, they can't change their personality. They have also been excellent servants to the club down the years too and that is sometimes forgotten when people criticise Jagielka.

They are the kind of senior members of the squad that are great to have as mentors to the younger players and are available to step in as interim captain if needed. But you want your main leader to be a Tim Cahill or Lee Carsley type who has a bit of nastiness as well as leadership qualities that won't easily stand for cheating from the opposition or referees making bad decisions or teammates not pulling their weight. They are what we are missing in this side and in the 04-05 side for example we had Nigel Martyn, Hibbert, Weir, Stubbs, Steve Watson, Carsley, Gravesen, Cahill and Big Dunc that all had a bit of that.

 

[gonetomorrow]

Our defence is terrible.

 

[Geoff Nulty]

Poor coaching. A team that changes from week to week. Cowed and/or complacent managers. A mindset that is a bizarre mixture of entitlement, arrogance, fear, and fragility.

 

[Kenshin]

You haven't 'explained' it at all though. You've said stuff, but offered no context because there is none to back up what you're saying.

You're effectively saying that appointing a washed up Kendall (twice), a relegated Royle, the absolute abomination that was Mike Walker, Walter Smith, and Moyes himself from the Championship wasn't small time but since he came in we've become small time. It's patently ridiculous.

I'm only 33, I don't remember the glory days. I do remember us signing Tony Thomas, John O'Kane, Mitch Ward, Brett Angell, John Spencer and Tommy Johnson though. You're now trying to tell me that we weren't small time when we doing that but we are now that we're signing 'from 'Swansea' (conveniently leaving out that the player you're talking about cost £45m), you want to tell me that signing someone from Sunderland - again leaving out that he cost £25m and is a current England international - is small time but signing Steve Simonsen from Tranmere, Paul Gerrard from Oldham and Thomas Myhre from Viking Stavanger (and then not playing him because we'd have to pay another £100k) wasn't. Does that sound logical to you?

The point is, the willingness of so many to just put everything down to mentality is mind boggling to me. We hadn't won away at Leeds for about 50 years before Moyes came and ended that hoodoo, same with a 25 year run at White Hart Lane. Was that down to mentality too then? If yes then how come Moyes overcame it, if no then are we not just cherry picking what does and doesn't count in order to fit the narrative?

I keep seeing people talk about us not having leaders and having this weird mentality issue but nobody ever seems to be able to explain where they get this idea from, other than just because we haven't won anything. I've said before, Phil Jagielka was captaining Sheffield United at 20, he's captained Everton under 4 managers, and he's captained England, and yet some bloke on the internet who's never even met the lad says he's a rubbish captain because we don't win trophies. It's bonkers. Ashley Williams captains his country and other clubs for years, comes here and suddenly forgets how to be a leader? Rooney the same? It's like the whole 'winners' and 'losers' thing that makes absolutely no sense but is peddled by those who are desperate to understand why they want to happen isn't happening no matter how much they stamp their feet and say it's not good enough.

You are twisting what I am saying to a small degree.

Going back to previous managers since the 80s, Kendall is our greatest ever manager, royle was brought in as a blue and in a crisis situation and smith was essentially a high profile recruitment from the Scottish league based on his success there. But the context of it all was the club was in a bad way, the bad times interval as it were where we had the likes of Johnson in charge of the club selling players behind managers backs and whatnot. Even when we were at a low, there as still some ambition there. When you look at signings like dacourt, matterazzi, amochachi, backayoko, speed etc these were signings good or bad in hindsight that still held some ambition. 2 of the above are international winners with their countries for example.

But generally when the club really were skint and in danger of going down during the 90s, you can hardly expect us to throw money about. There were still the big clubs as they are now, Blackburn for a while, Newcastle for a while, United, arsenal, Chelsea were always strong. During that time we even went and won a trophy when no-one in the media gave us a chance against United, that was Everton in a nutshell, even when we were the underdogs massively we still turned up and won.

Fast forward to bringing moyes in, he was in the same vein as previous recruitment from the 90s. So the 2004 17th season wasn't unexpected at all considering the fact we had no money so the players weren't exactly top class. Nothing had changed at that point, we were existing in the league and a champions league qualification meant things were looking up. Better players came in and all of us thought things were finally turned around, Everton were back.

Then came Chelsea in the league cup. Every chance since then as a club has been wasted, even the cup final we took a reserve united side to penalties. Every time since then, every bit of fear shown against other teams, every time we have acted like the underdog because the other team have won a couple. Every time when we gave been 45 minutes away from getting somewhere, we have thrown it away. Every derby when they were there for the taking we threw it away.

And once moyes left us in a much better position we turn to a managet down the road who took his club down at the third attempt. That was the club ambition right when we were ready to kick on and go somewhere. Because Martinez proved there and then the groundwork for greatness was there, even he almost got somewhere. The minute he assumed total control and not off the back of moyes work we plummeted as a result. As mentioned previously even when hiring someone like koeman with a new billionaire in control we still shopped below us, players who had never played at any level than below us.

But the point in all of this ramble is that you can see the actual change in focus at the club, from 2009 onwards. All the slow starts after that, the defending 1-0 leads well too early, fearing teams no matter who they are. The defenders in midfield constantly, that was all moyes. So why we then hired a relegated manager as his replacement is anyone's guess. My argument would be because the mindset at the club was that of moyes team, small time when I came to kick off.

I don't buy into this idea of starting points or we can't get anyone better. So with 80 grand a week on offer we can't attract better than players below us? Same as when koeman left, no manager in the world wanted to come here apart from Sam allardyce? Even qpr attracted better players when they were spending silly money. Obviously it was as much a car crash as ours was but they at least got players from the likes of Chelsea and real madrid.

The point of the mentality changing is that even now board wise there is no accountability. No-one loses their job for choosing allardyce as manager, no-one loses their job for the transfer recruitment in the summer. Why is that? All this talk of competing and all the money spent, why is nothing questioned? Because if it was we wouldn't have allardyce here and Steve Walsh still wouldn't be at the club for a starters. West Brom just sacked their board staff for failing in their job, we persevere and hope next time is better. I mean ffs it took our transfer committee 4 windows to sign a striker!

 

[Kenshin]

You haven't 'explained' it at all though. You've said stuff, but offered no context because there is none to back up what you're saying.

You're effectively saying that appointing a washed up Kendall (twice), a relegated Royle, the absolute abomination that was Mike Walker, Walter Smith, and Moyes himself from the Championship wasn't small time but since he came in we've become small time. It's patently ridiculous.

I'm only 33, I don't remember the glory days. I do remember us signing Tony Thomas, John O'Kane, Mitch Ward, Brett Angell, John Spencer and Tommy Johnson though. You're now trying to tell me that we weren't small time when we doing that but we are now that we're signing 'from 'Swansea' (conveniently leaving out that the player you're talking about cost £45m), you want to tell me that signing someone from Sunderland - again leaving out that he cost £25m and is a current England international - is small time but signing Steve Simonsen from Tranmere, Paul Gerrard from Oldham and Thomas Myhre from Viking Stavanger (and then not playing him because we'd have to pay another £100k) wasn't. Does that sound logical to you?

The point is, the willingness of so many to just put everything down to mentality is mind boggling to me. We hadn't won away at Leeds for about 50 years before Moyes came and ended that hoodoo, same with a 25 year run at White Hart Lane. Was that down to mentality too then? If yes then how come Moyes overcame it, if no then are we not just cherry picking what does and doesn't count in order to fit the narrative?

I keep seeing people talk about us not having leaders and having this weird mentality issue but nobody ever seems to be able to explain where they get this idea from, other than just because we haven't won anything. I've said before, Phil Jagielka was captaining Sheffield United at 20, he's captained Everton under 4 managers, and he's captained England, and yet some bloke on the internet who's never even met the lad says he's a rubbish captain because we don't win trophies. It's bonkers. Ashley Williams captains his country and other clubs for years, comes here and suddenly forgets how to be a leader? Rooney the same? It's like the whole 'winners' and 'losers' thing that makes absolutely no sense but is peddled by those who are desperate to understand why they want to happen isn't happening no matter how much they stamp their feet and say it's not good enough.

And to answer a couple of questions you posed.

1. Paying 45 million for siggurdson shiws nothing but terrible business for the club . Whoever advocated that should be sacked.

2. The winners and losers argument is simply down to a basic way of looking at it. Winners don't settle. Winners go into the dressing room and have standards, know when they have failed and push themselves to reverse it. Losers have never been in that position so therefore never know what their limits are, hence why we have the likes of schneiderlin Williams and formerly mirallas just not looking arsed and never raising their game when they need to.

3. You say ending hoodoo yet we beat Leeds as they self imploded. Fantastic at the time but in the grand scheme of things it wasn't a massive result. Try hoodoo like not winning away at the top 4 (formerly) clubs for God knows how long . Like not winning at anfield for 18 years, they are the hoodoos you should be concerned about.

4. The captaincy thing is a moot point until you see what they do and don't do. In our case, these captains we have just aren't arsed. Jags has never lifted the players on the pitch vocally so what does he do? Means nothing in finch farm, he should be dragging the players up to a higher standard.

 

[Lanolin]

You are twisting what I am saying to a small degree.

Going back to previous managers since the 80s, Kendall is our greatest ever manager, royle was brought in as a blue and in a crisis situation and smith was essentially a high profile recruitment from the Scottish league based on his success there. But the context of it all was the club was in a bad way, the bad times interval as it were where we had the likes of Johnson in charge of the club selling players behind managers backs and whatnot. Even when we were at a low, there as still some ambition there. When you look at signings like dacourt, matterazzi, amochachi, backayoko, speed etc these were signings good or bad in hindsight that still held some ambition. 2 of the above are international winners with their countries for example.

But generally when the club really were skint and in danger of going down during the 90s, you can hardly expect us to throw money about. There were still the big clubs as they are now, Blackburn for a while, Newcastle for a while, United, arsenal, Chelsea were always strong. During that time we even went and won a trophy when no-one in the media gave us a chance against United, that was Everton in a nutshell, even when we were the underdogs massively we still turned up and won.

Fast forward to bringing moyes in, he was in the same vein as previous recruitment from the 90s. So the 2004 17th season wasn't unexpected at all considering the fact we had no money so the players weren't exactly top class. Nothing had changed at that point, we were existing in the league and a champions league qualification meant things were looking up. Better players came in and all of us thought things were finally turned around, Everton were back.

Then came Chelsea in the league cup. Every chance since then as a club has been wasted, even the cup final we took a reserve united side to penalties. Every time since then, every bit of fear shown against other teams, every time we have acted like the underdog because the other team have won a couple. Every time when we gave been 45 minutes away from getting somewhere, we have thrown it away. Every derby when they were there for the taking we threw it away.

And once moyes left us in a much better position we turn to a managet down the road who took his club down at the third attempt. That was the club ambition right when we were ready to kick on and go somewhere. Because Martinez proved there and then the groundwork for greatness was there, even he almost got somewhere. The minute he assumed total control and not off the back of moyes work we plummeted as a result. As mentioned previously even when hiring someone like koeman with a new billionaire in control we still shopped below us, players who had never played at any level than below us.

But the point in all of this ramble is that you can see the actual change in focus at the club, from 2009 onwards. All the slow starts after that, the defending 1-0 leads well too early, fearing teams no matter who they are. The defenders in midfield constantly, that was all moyes. So why we then hired a relegated manager as his replacement is anyone's guess. My argument would be because the mindset at the club was that of moyes team, small time when I came to kick off.

I don't buy into this idea of starting points or we can't get anyone better. So with 80 grand a week on offer we can't attract better than players below us? Same as when koeman left, no manager in the world wanted to come here apart from Sam allardyce? Even qpr attracted better players when they were spending silly money. Obviously it was as much a car crash as ours was but they at least got players from the likes of Chelsea and real madrid.

The point of the mentality changing is that even now board wise there is no accountability. No-one loses their job for choosing allardyce as manager, no-one loses their job for the transfer recruitment in the summer. Why is that? All this talk of competing and all the money spent, why is nothing questioned? Because if it was we wouldn't have allardyce here and Steve Walsh still wouldn't be at the club for a starters. West Brom just sacked their board staff for failing in their job, we persevere and hope next time is better. I mean ffs it took our transfer committee 4 windows to sign a striker!

I'm not twisting it, you just hadn't actually explained what you meant until now. You specifically said he'd brought in that mentality, when what you seemingly actually mean is that we had that mentality anyway, but you think he should have got rid of it after completely revitalising us and bringing in massively increased expectations (let's be absolutely clear on that, we went from just praying we'd stay up to moaning that we were 'only' best of the rest) and he didn't. That's a different argument, and one which I agree with to a point.

I totally get what you're saying about Moyes's tenure. There's no doubt that he was prone to being overly cautious, and yes trying to hold on to 1-0 leads, bringing on extra defenders and packing the midfield had more than run it's course for me by the time he left. I could see why he did it though, he had Denis Stracqualursi and Victor Anichebe and was trying to compete with team who had Torres, Suarez, Drogba or Rooney. He decided we couldn't go toe to toe with teams and so should go for the infamous 'KITAP1' approach. In theory I agree with him, it's just that you'd think he'd have adapted it slightly when it hadn't worked after 10 years...

Martinez failed, but I can 100% see why we appointed him. A young manager with a reputation for good football who'd just won the FA Cup with a genuine footballing minnow. I was willing to look past the relegation and didn't really see it as a small time appointment (in realistic terms) at all. I thought it was quite exciting at the time if i'm honest, and not hugely different to Liverpool appointing Rodgers or United going for Moyes. This brings me to one of your other points. Moving up the ladder is natural for both players and managers - you'll only get them from bigger and better sides if a) they're on the way down, or b) you can throw huge amounts of money at them. We don't only sign players from sides below us, but the ones we sign from above are ones which those sides no longer want - Rooney, Schneiderlin, Barry, Neville, Howard et al. We can't go out and get players who are key to the teams above us because they won't come. That's not a small time attitude it's just an indisputable truth.

The salient point in this thread though, is that Martinez was the absolute polar opposite of Moyes in everything he did. You say:

"you can see the actual change in focus at the club, from 2009 onwards. All the slow starts after that, the defending 1-0 leads well too early, fearing teams no matter who they are. The defenders in midfield constantly, that was all moyes."

That's all fair, and it's totally accurate to say it got us nowhere. But you can't say that attitude was introduced by Moyes and has stayed because for 3 years we were the total opposite! It couldn't possibly have been any more different. We dominated at The Emirates but could only draw, we turned up at Anfield and tried to take them on in a basketball game and got absolutely caned twice, we were 2-0 up at Stamford Bridge and let them back into the game because we over committed in attack, before going 4-3 up in the last minute because we were still attacking, but STILL managing to only draw, and we lost 3-2 to West Ham after bringing on an extra striker when 2-0 up and down to 10 men. The mentality was completely different but the results were the same.

After that we brought in Koeman, the mythical 'winner'. We could have appointed someone better on half the wages, but we tried to push the boat out and go 'Hollywood'. It was anything but a small time appointment, unfortunately it was just a bad one. That's the issue for me, it's like a confirmation bias where people take every issue and put it down to mentality, even when it really makes no sense to do so.

 

[Toffee in Jandals]

Everton is mentally feeble...losers

Brutal, but sadly true.

 

[Lanolin]

And to answer a couple of questions you posed.

1. Paying 45 million for siggurdson shiws nothing but terrible business for the club . Whoever advocated that should be sacked.

2. The winners and losers argument is simply down to a basic way of looking at it. Winners don't settle. Winners go into the dressing room and have standards, know when they have failed and push themselves to reverse it. Losers have never been in that position so therefore never know what their limits are, hence why we have the likes of schneiderlin Williams and formerly mirallas just not looking arsed and never raising their game when they need to.

3. You say ending hoodoo yet we beat Leeds as they self imploded. Fantastic at the time but in the grand scheme of things it wasn't a massive result. Try hoodoo like not winning away at the top 4 (formerly) clubs for God knows how long . Like not winning at anfield for 18 years, they are the hoodoos you should be concerned about.

4. The captaincy thing is a moot point until you see what they do and don't do. In our case, these captains we have just aren't arsed. Jags has never lifted the players on the pitch vocally so what does he do? Means nothing in finch farm, he should be dragging the players up to a higher standard.

1. Agreed, but not entirely relevant to the point at hand. It wasn't a bad deal just because he came from Swansea, which is the point I was making.

2. This is where I disagree. Rooney was a winner at United but he's not now? How does that work? Chelsea's players and manager were winners last season but aren't now? What were the team of the 80s, winners because they won a few trophies, or losers because they blew a massive title lead and lost a few other finals?

3. That's cherry picking like I said. You can't only put the things which suit the argument down to mentality. We beat Leeds because we were better than them, we didn't beat Liverpool because we weren't. Seems fairly logical.

4. Similar to 2. Bobby Moore captained England to a World Cup win but he couldn't inspire West Ham to win a load of trophies, was he any good or not? On the flip side, John Terry won shedloads with Chelsea so why couldn't he drag England to a higher standard? Could it be because there's a bit more to a winning side than having a good attitude and a bloke who's dead good at shouting?

 

[Charles Hawtrey]

You are twisting what I am saying to a small degree.

Then came Chelsea in the league cup. Every chance since then as a club has been wasted, even the cup final we took a reserve united side to penalties. Every time since then, every bit of fear shown against other teams, every time we have acted like the underdog because the other team have won a couple. Every time when we gave been 45 minutes away from getting somewhere, we have thrown it away. Every derby when they were there for the taking we threw it away.

Were you at the game on Saturday....?