James McCarthy

[Pittsburgh Footy]

Hasn't been the same since his first season mate. Leg break or no leg break he's never matched that level since.

This isn't true. He was very good the following season, if not to the exact heights of his first season but that could be because the whole squad was awful, and then in the next season the team was looking to kick on when he pulled his hammy for the first time in that game away to Bournemouth and we promptly puked all over that game to draw and then went on a death spiral.

Revisionist history here. To me, you can look at everything before and after that Bournemouth game. And in some respects, that game was a turning point for Bobby Brown Shoes, and Everton

 

[davids]

Think Saturday is as good a chance as any to see what he has to offer going forward.

 

[Mitch Ward's Minder]

This isn't true. He was very good the following season, if not to the exact heights of his first season but that could be because the whole squad was awful, and then in the next season the team was looking to kick on when he pulled his hammy for the first time in that game away to Bournemouth and we promptly puked all over that game to draw and then went on a death spiral.

Revisionist history here. To me, you can look at everything before and after that Bournemouth game. And in some respects, that game was a turning point for Bobby Brown Shoes, and Everton

Also helped Bournemouth turn their season around...Everton, the club that keeps on giving

 

[Eggsyblueskin]

I'm not quite sure how you reached that assessment on his quality mate. He is one of the few players in our team who has won a domestic medal and did so in adverse circumstances given the team he was playing for. He was also a part of the Everton team who scored a record Premier league points total and was one of the most pivotal players in that side. Im not sure our position is one where we can discard so easily players of that caliber.

The lad has horrible luck with injuries, but we are not innocent in that cocktail either, playing him when he clearly wasn't fit. Thus was his importance to the side at a point. The question is can he regain his fitness. Based on his performances when he returned last year, i think he can. If we were to sell him, now is the worst time to actually do that and poor judgement.

I dont actually class, McCarthy as a defensive midfield player the way i would look at Gueye as an anchor, he is box to box a true no 8, engine legs, and a good skill set offensively and defensively with a decent appreciation of holding possession, driving, increasing the tempo and pressing. We have midfilders who can do bits of the afore mentioned and in areas of that skill set better then McCarthy but not with the same range of all.

I think you are being idealistic to be honest mate and no offence intended, football is a balanced game, you need to earn the right to get and hold possession, win battles and impose yourself before you can look at creating, you need players with those skill sets and McCarthy is one. You will get no where playing two Gomes's or Artetas in central midfield. Its an area of the pitch that requires balance and you need to compensate for flair and creativity. For example you wouldnt play Gomes at 6 or Gana at 10.

I have , of course, reached my assessment of him by watching perform in front of my eyes as no doubt you have. I have seen little evidence of the player you see so we will have to agree to disagree. He has many qualities which would be valued by many mid range clubs no doubt, but offensively he is exceptionally poor and lacks enough vision.
I will, in closing, return to my original point which is that if he was the quality of player you ascribe him to be there would be no debate whatsoever on here or at the game which there always has been over his worth. He is probably not as good as you believe nor as bad as I view him but either way I aspire to better quality for Everton.

 

[Winslow89]

Hasn't been the same since his first season mate. Leg break or no leg break he's never matched that level since.

Aye, basically this.

A lot of people hang onto McCarthy for a few reasons - whether that's the nostalgia of his first season's performance or because "...He plays alongside James McCarthy" was a lyric in one of our more recent wondrous chants

He's average and being brutal - post leg break he's not going to have got any better. If he starts getting put into Everton squads in the back end of this season, it'll kill me off.

 

[Lanolin]

This isn't true. He was very good the following season, if not to the exact heights of his first season but that could be because the whole squad was awful, and then in the next season the team was looking to kick on when he pulled his hammy for the first time in that game away to Bournemouth and we promptly puked all over that game to draw and then went on a death spiral.

Revisionist history here. To me, you can look at everything before and after that Bournemouth game. And in some respects, that game was a turning point for Bobby Brown Shoes, and Everton

I'm afraid your post is the revisionist one mate. Football's a game of opinions so if you want to say he was just as good the next season it's difficult to argue. Personally I don't even think he was that great in the first season, he just fulfilled a role in the team which allowed us to flourish. That's not supposed to be a criticism, he did it well, but I don't think he excelled massively, he just offered an energetic and robust presence in the midfield that gave us a good balance. My personal opinion is that many other midfielders could have done the same, and once the overall balance of the team started to be lost slightly, it became clear that he wasn't actually a particularly great player in terms of his individual skillset.

Where you've slipped into provable revisionism though is trying to use actual facts in your appraisal of the third season. What about our performances before Bournemouth away makes you think we were about to push on? Was it the 3-0 defeat at home to United, or the fact we'd been taken to extra time by both Barnsley and Norwich in the cup? Then we went on a death spiral did we? One which involved winning 4 of our next 13 league games, an absolutely huge drop off in form after the 5 we'd won of the 13 games James was bossing the midfield in. The only way in which that game was a turning point is it finally opened some people's eyes to the fact things weren't getting better. People had kept saying we had bad fixtures, luck, injuries etc, and it would all come good but that game helped to show that it wasn't happening.

 

[Pittsburgh Footy]

I'm afraid your post is the revisionist one mate. Football's a game of opinions so if you want to say he was just as good the next season it's difficult to argue. Personally I don't even think he was that great in the first season, he just fulfilled a role in the team which allowed us to flourish. That's not supposed to be a criticism, he did it well, but I don't think he excelled massively, he just offered an energetic and robust presence in the midfield that gave us a good balance. My personal opinion is that many other midfielders could have done the same, and once the overall balance of the team started to be lost slightly, it became clear that he wasn't actually a particularly great player in terms of his individual skillset.

Where you've slipped into provable revisionism though is trying to use actual facts in your appraisal of the third season. What about our performances before Bournemouth away makes you think we were about to push on? Was it the 3-0 defeat at home to United, or the fact we'd been taken to extra time by both Barnsley and Norwich in the cup? Then we went on a death spiral did we? One which involved winning 4 of our next 13 league games, an absolutely huge drop off in form after the 5 we'd won of the 13 games James was bossing the midfield in. The only way in which that game was a turning point is it finally opened some people's eyes to the fact things weren't getting better. People had kept saying we had bad fixtures, luck, injuries etc, and it would all come good but that game helped to show that it wasn't happening.

Fair enough, mate

I just remember thinking at the time that Bournemouth game was a turning point, and perhaps it was a big eye opener that the dream was dead. Losing J Mac during that game and the shambles we turned into when he left the pitch was probably a microcosm of the whole Brown Shoes experiment - great one minute, shambles the next

 

[Neiler]

I have , of course, reached my assessment of him by watching perform in front of my eyes as no doubt you have. I have seen little evidence of the player you see so we will have to agree to disagree. He has many qualities which would be valued by many mid range clubs no doubt, but offensively he is exceptionally poor and lacks enough vision.
I will, in closing, return to my original point which is that if he was the quality of player you ascribe him to be there would be no debate whatsoever on here or at the game which there always has been over his worth. He is probably not as good as you believe nor as bad as I view him but either way I aspire to better quality for Everton.

Good debate mate, agree to differ.

I would make one final point, in terms of your ascertain on the level of debate, universally when he has been available for 30 games a season for us, there was zero debate, i am going back seasons now. After his first season a lot of people were rightly holding their hands up and saying how wrong they were about him for his fee etc. The level of debate only exists because, the lad has missed 95% of the last three seasons, that is understandable and only right but that context is important to the point or standard you are trying to assert and hold him to. Essentially people feel he is expendable because we have played for long periods without him, or are frustrated because he hasnt been able to contribute. We would be doing well to sign a player of McCarthy's calibre in this window. Schneiderlin being a case in point.

 

[Lanolin]

Good debate mate, agree to differ.

I would make one final point, in terms of your ascertain on the level of debate, universally when he has been available for 30 games a season for us, there was zero debate, i am going back seasons now. After his first season a lot of people were rightly holding their hands up and saying how wrong they were about him for his fee etc. The level of debate only exists because, the lad has missed 95% of the last three seasons, that is understandable and only right but that context is important to the point or standard you are trying to assert and hold him to.

I get what you're saying but that's not really any sort of barometer. As a general rule fans will be happy when the team is doing well and not when it isn't. We had a good season in which McCarthy played a lot of games, so the accepted wisdom was that he was good. People also rated Deulofeu highly at that time, and were at least reasonably happy with Naismith and Mirallas. People still talk about Oviedo as if he was brilliant because of his performances in half a dozen games that season before he got injured. Opinion changed on all of those players once we stopped winning though. Their performances weren't much different but the scrutiny levels are higher when you're losing and suddenly people no longer accept a player's failings.

Also needs to be pointed out that there was unquestionably dispute over McCarthy's quality in his second and third seasons, both of which saw him play 37 games (only 2 less than his first season) so the basic premise of your post is demonstrably false.

 

[Frang]

Imagine being thrown in to this game after a 12 month lay off with a broken leg...

No pressure like

 

[Neiler]

I get what you're saying but that's not really any sort of barometer. As a general rule fans will be happy when the team is doing well and not when it isn't. We had a good season in which McCarthy played a lot of games, so the accepted wisdom was that he was good. People also rated Deulofeu highly at that time, and were at least reasonably happy with Naismith and Mirallas. People still talk about Oviedo as if he was brilliant because of his performances in half a dozen games that season before he got injured. Opinion changed on all of those players once we stopped winning though. Their performances weren't much different but the scrutiny levels are higher when you're losing and suddenly people no longer accept a player's failings.

Also needs to be pointed out that there was unquestionably dispute over McCarthy's quality in his second and third seasons, both of which saw him play 37 games (only 2 less than his first season) so the basic premise of your post is demonstrably false.

Thats one slant on it mate, but the same things works in reverse. Lukaku, Stones, Barkley and Coleman were in those teams, im not sure many people would call those bad players. Your point is easy link him in a team with bad players, but you can equally link him to that teams good players who remain so in fact i think two of them got to semi of the world cup just this year. You can frame it anyway you want depending on your point of view. I suspect yours is negative when it comes to McCarthy.

I would acknowledge his best season was first, i dont agree that his performances tapered off that much, even if the team failed to progress or rather lacked a sophisticated managerial approach in my opinion. I think its an open in fact an acknowledged fact that we mismanaged his injuries in his second and third season and he found it very hard to get momentum and fitness even if he played. Ironically that was done because he had become indispensable to us.. Probably to his own detriment. He eventually got fit for Koeman and was excellent in his opening half of the season before a horrific injury, got fit again was excellent under Allardyce and broke his leg.

I think when it comes to McCarthy and injury we are in the realms of confirmation bias in my opinion.

Its pretty simple either you rate him. i do and i put across a pretty haven't argument as to why, or you dont like him for two reasons, you dont rate him or feel we have moved on without him or you think he is crocked. I think the majority have made a decision based on joining the two negatives together.

Personally i think the club needs player of the character and caliber of McCarthy. He and we have been very unlucky.

 

[Lanolin]

Thats one slant on it mate, but the same things works in reverse. Lukaku, Stones, Barkley and Coleman were in those teams, im not sure many people would call those bad players. Your point is easy link him in a team with bad players, but you can equally link him to that teams good players who remain so in fact i think two of them got to semi of the world cup just this year. You can frame it anyway you want depending on your point of view. I suspect yours is negative when it comes to McCarthy.

I would acknowledge his best season was first, i dont agree that his performances tapered off that much, even if the team failed to progress or rather lacked a sophisticated managerial approach in my opinion. I think its an open in fact an acknowledged fact that we mismanaged his injuries in his second and third season and he found it very hard to get momentum and fitness even if he played. Ironically that was done because he had become indispensable to us.. Probably to his own detriment. He eventually got fit for Koeman and was excellent in his opening half of the season before a horrific injury, got fit again was excellent under Allardyce and broke his leg.

I think when it comes to McCarthy and injury we are in the realms of confirmation bias in my opinion.

Its pretty simple either you rate him. i do and i put across a pretty haven't argument as to why, or you dont like him for two reasons, you dont rate him or feel we have moved on without him or you think he is crocked. I think the majority have made a decision based on joining the two negatives together.

Personally i think the club needs player of the character and caliber of McCarthy. He and we have been very unlucky.

I'm not trying to put a slant on it though. Obviously some of the players we had in that squad were good, it would be bizarre to suggest otherwise. I wasn't even saying McCarthy wasn't good, just pointing out that saying he must be good because everyone thought he was after his first season isn't really very sound logic.

Interesting that you touch on confirmation bias though. You definitely apply it to McCarthy seeing as you think he was 'excellent under Allardyce'. He played a part in 5 games under Allardyce, 4 of which we lost by an aggregate score of 10-2. The 5th was the game in which he broke his leg. We drew that game, against the league's bottom side, equalizing after he'd gone off. What fabulous performances he must have been putting in to help us to those results.

 

[davek]

He's been our best holding midfielder since Carsley.

I admire Roberto (as some may have noticed) but between him and O'Neill they destroyed McCarthy's career, playing him half-crocked.

Anyone doubting his ability and the contribution he made to us in his first 18 months here before injury simply dont know football.

 

[HeadieTwo]

better than schneiderlin fraud but still not good enough

 

[Great Dane]

I might be James McC’s biggest fan, so I believe he has a lot to offer a Marco Silva team. For me he is as mobile as Gana - he commits more fouls I would think. But he is better at arriving late in the box and has better control of the ball.
Had he not had the last injury I would like to think that he would be a sure starter in the center of midfield.
He needs to play on Saturday and of course not get injured again.