Roberto/GOT readers
We all admire the courage, the fighting talk, in your own words the "positivity", "tremendous" and all the other epithets you like to attach to the team whether they play well, badly or indifferently - the "philosophy" is like fresh air compared to some of the sterile efforts in the past - with a nod to some of our performances in so called tough away games but, and it's becoming a bigger but - you are the person who takes responsibility. If that responsibility means you have to accept that mistakes have been made - and whether they were yours in team selection or the players themselves in the course of a game then sobeit - but, I'm afraid that, since you are the one who has to be the hard faced manager - managing people sometimes means difficult decisions - then that's what it takes.
So, if you couldn't see just how bad Antolin Alcaraz was last night then we really do have a problem, don't we? If, on the other hand, you were loathe to replace him - yes it's tough to remove a defender at half-time in a game I can understand that - but there's always a diplomatic solution - for one thing surely you think John Stones is a better player and surely the long term future at the back with Jagielka and if that meant you just had to say "Antolin, you're not having a great game tonight, I need to make changes" then fair enough - and for another the simple plain fact of the matter - to get more out of people (players) on another day is that all you had to do was say "we're going 3-5-2 or something similar" - either way we were losing - we did lose (and badly at that) and taking a chance can't be criticised too much if it's done for the right reasons. But dealing with Alcaraz's long term future at Everton was not one to worry about last night - it was the need to replace a player who clearly was playing at a level that was not close to the requirement for the game.
Being brave - managing - is tough. Football is an unforgiving arena - for your team's result will be the mirror image of the opponent's result so someone will lose out on any positive result. It's just not about being nice - it's about being right. Surely the majority disliked Alex Ferguson's methods and his persona but you cannot dispute the level of success he enjoyed.
We all admire the courage, the fighting talk, in your own words the "positivity", "tremendous" and all the other epithets you like to attach to the team whether they play well, badly or indifferently - the "philosophy" is like fresh air compared to some of the sterile efforts in the past - with a nod to some of our performances in so called tough away games but, and it's becoming a bigger but - you are the person who takes responsibility. If that responsibility means you have to accept that mistakes have been made - and whether they were yours in team selection or the players themselves in the course of a game then sobeit - but, I'm afraid that, since you are the one who has to be the hard faced manager - managing people sometimes means difficult decisions - then that's what it takes.
So, if you couldn't see just how bad Antolin Alcaraz was last night then we really do have a problem, don't we? If, on the other hand, you were loathe to replace him - yes it's tough to remove a defender at half-time in a game I can understand that - but there's always a diplomatic solution - for one thing surely you think John Stones is a better player and surely the long term future at the back with Jagielka and if that meant you just had to say "Antolin, you're not having a great game tonight, I need to make changes" then fair enough - and for another the simple plain fact of the matter - to get more out of people (players) on another day is that all you had to do was say "we're going 3-5-2 or something similar" - either way we were losing - we did lose (and badly at that) and taking a chance can't be criticised too much if it's done for the right reasons. But dealing with Alcaraz's long term future at Everton was not one to worry about last night - it was the need to replace a player who clearly was playing at a level that was not close to the requirement for the game.
Being brave - managing - is tough. Football is an unforgiving arena - for your team's result will be the mirror image of the opponent's result so someone will lose out on any positive result. It's just not about being nice - it's about being right. Surely the majority disliked Alex Ferguson's methods and his persona but you cannot dispute the level of success he enjoyed.
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