Last big game we won?

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I can see the point in venting some frustration after Sunday and Saint Domingo has put in some decent posts before now. Poor top 6 or big game stats are a good measure of our club's stature. With no investment in infrastructure and limited squad budget, our top 6 / big game stats are on par or better than other consistent league top 10 candidates.

And like West Ham, Southampton and previously Man City / Spurs WE now ALSO have a positive new owner, improving squad, improved manager and league position. Lukaku is committing his future here. Stadium deal progressing.

These are the improvements needed for our stagnating league position since Moyes (which is actually a modest decline when club income and cup performances are factored in). 'Big' wins will be an outcome of completing the improvements above, and there will be far fewer of them before those improvements complete and are given a season or two to bed in. We're the 7th best club in the land and certainly no higher than that cash wise.

And we might still embarrass one of the money boys. That is quality. And when that quality gets a level playing field my guess is that Liverpool, Arsenal and City might all be looking over their shoulders, and Spurs too if they lost say Pochettino to Barcelona if the w4nkers don't come in for Ronko.

Keep calm and support Everton.
 
Saint Domingo said:
That season, Gravesen Cahill Carsley and Martyn had a mentality I've not seen in many Everton players since. They just didn't seem phased by achievement, you can probably add big Dunc in there as well. In terms of talent not as great perhaps but they carried players with them. Who do the current players look to?
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Yes, Gravesen especially, and seeing as we lost him in January, it makes it all the more impressive.

It's one of the reasons I'd like Rooney back. He's an Evertonian who's won everything and captained one of the world's biggest clubs. It could help his team mates to have someone like that in the dressing room.
 

Looking into the fixtures we have left, we have 3 big named games. The rs, Man u and Chelsea. Beating the mancs and Chelsea is always possible at Goodison, so let's hope it's against Big stand deluded.
 
As a side who have finished in the bottom half of the league two years running any win against a team frm the top half is a big win in my book.
Let's not forget we are a team in transition, we have a way to go yet.
If we keep progressing much bigger wins will come.
 

Cels said:
You can make up all the excuses and/or paint the picture any colour you wish. We still only won one domestic cup out of five finals reached (or two cups in six finals counting the ECWC). So even in our most successful period in history Everton were unable to fully push past the finishing line. But that's the difference between becoming a massively successful club, and a club who just had a brief period of success. We have pretty much always been like that; let's not lay the blame solely at the feet of Moyes.

Sorry for slightly taking this thread in a different direction; that was not my intention :(
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I'm not making excuses, I don't need to make excuses for Everton under Howard Kendall mk.1. 2 League Titles, 2 Cup wins, and 3 other Finals, within 4 seasons, is not "failing to push past the finishing line", it's a monumental effort that very few sets of fans ever get to experience. An effort even more impressive considering our great rivals at the time were also the best team in Europe. We obviously had no issue with big game mentality in this period. It's daft to say we did.

We all know we declined during the 90's. But even during those dark times we had some massive wins in big games that we have never really managed again from the Moyes era onwards. The good news is I think that's all about to change over the next few years...
 
Prevenger17 said:
Yup. The idea that every game we lose is a bottle job strikes me as demented.
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On one off games yes. Of course we didn't bottle it against Spurs on Sunday, for example.

But over the last 15 years how many times have we won away to a team that finished in the top 4? Once or twice? Out of 60 odd attempts? There are much smaller clubs with much better records than that.

It's hardly kneejerk, this has been consistent for a generation now.
 
Mountfield1985 said:
On one off games yes. Of course we didn't bottle it against Spurs on Sunday, for example.

But over the last 15 years how many times have we won away to a team that finished in the top 4? Once or twice? Out of 60 odd attempts? There are much smaller clubs with much better records than that.

It's hardly kneejerk, this has been consistent for a generation now.
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Exactly, you can call it whatever you want 'bottling' 'mentality', over a stretch of time that long you'd expect a high proportion of losses naturally but you'd also expect a few wins, the law of chance where you turn up in top form and an Arsenal or Liverpool are injury depleted, unlucky, and you play as normal and win the game. Like you said other teams have done it. To only win one though is abysmal. That suggests that in those moments described above where we should normally win out something mentality wise is stopping us from doing so.
 
Saint Domingo said:
Exactly, you can call it whatever you want 'bottling' 'mentality', over a stretch of time that long you'd expect a high proportion of losses naturally but you'd also expect a few wins, the law of chance where you turn up in top form and an Arsenal or Liverpool are injury depleted, unlucky, and you play as normal and win the game. Like you said other teams have done it. To only win one though is abysmal. That suggests that in those moments described above where we should normally win out something mentality wise is stopping us from doing so.
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I'd also add to that mate the managers haven't helped with the set ups, Sunday being a prime example. The amount of times we've gone to these places with the most awful defensive line ups is absolutely ridiculous. If your manager sets up like Sunday, I'd pretty much guarantee the players were aware that it was a "limit them at all costs" exercise.

It wasn't even like we didn't have options to really give it a go. If we set up the same against the mancs and the rs then I'd expect exactly the same performance and result.

Koeman dine it against Chelsea and we got took to the cleaners, done it against City where it took an unbelievable goalkeeping performance to get us a result and has done it against Spurs. Maybe he needs to look at himself and loosen the reigns against these so called sides. I'm not talking about gung ho Martinez tactics but we are a much fitter side now so shouldn't have such an inferiority complex when facing these sides away.

Not only has it been embarrassing watching us capitulate year on year, it's absolutely unacceptable that we haven't won more like you said. It would take 10 years of us winning against all the top sides to make out record look more respectable due to it being so awful for 20 odd years.
 
maccavennie said:
I'd also add to that mate the managers haven't helped with the set ups, Sunday being a prime example. The amount of times we've gone to these places with the most awful defensive line ups is absolutely ridiculous. If your manager sets up like Sunday, I'd pretty much guarantee the players were aware that it was a "limit them at all costs" exercise.

It wasn't even like we didn't have options to really give it a go. If we set up the same against the mancs and the rs then I'd expect exactly the same performance and result.

Koeman dine it against Chelsea and we got took to the cleaners, done it against City where it took an unbelievable goalkeeping performance to get us a result and has done it against Spurs. Maybe he needs to look at himself and loosen the reigns against these so called sides. I'm not talking about gung ho Martinez tactics but we are a much fitter side now so shouldn't have such an inferiority complex when facing these sides away.

Not only has it been embarrassing watching us capitulate year on year, it's absolutely unacceptable that we haven't won more like you said. It would take 10 years of us winning against all the top sides to make out record look more respectable due to it being so awful for 20 odd years.
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This might be a contentious shout but it could be argued that the reason for this is our managers since Royle (HKIII excepted of course) haven't 'got' Everton. Moyes grew up in awe of United and Liverpool. Even though he created what were in my opinion good sides I don't think he ever thought Everton should be at the top of the league, he seemed genuinely annoyed that fans weren't happy with going for draws at these big grounds. I think Martinez was just a delusional fool so who knows what he thought but even if he did think we were the school of science, saint domingos corinthians, he couldn't implement a basic defensive drill so it's largely irrelevant. Koeman, I'm not sure yet, does he look at it completely black and white at the moment 'this squad is worse than that one so I'll set up for a draw', maybe at some point that will change and he'll go to 'ok now I can play for a win'? Or does he think 'wow it's United/Liverpool one of the great European powers like my Barcelona, let's just put 3 DMs out and hope for the best'. Time will tell I suppose.
 

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