Is Marco Silva all that?

You know when your in a terrible place when your own shirt sponsor makes fun of you for hiring Allardyce and is then forced to delete the tweet. Well done Sports Pesa.

 

Can't help but hope you're right. Disliked this club for years, mainly for the cup final defeat ( Sharpe off side, Gray foul on the keeper - Johnson onside, lol), but also for Andy Johnson's six mile off target shot being credited to him when it hit Doyley on the ear and deflected in at Goodison. The games was ours. I'm small minded.

 

Excellent grudge-keeping sir. I can't even remember the Johnson incident, thank goodness there's people like you keeping the fires of resentment burning!

 

I’m not sure about the Home form thing - we’ve played a lot of good teams at home and only had a couple of really bad results. Brighton we didn’t win due to stupid red card early in game, Stoke was a bad result - but probably not too unexpected as we knew they would sit back. Then 4 points from Liverpool, man city, arsenal, man utd - I would have taken that before the season. Plus a win against West ham thrown in for good measure (not too difficult this season I admit!!!)

 

It's a fair point though. After Saturday we will have 11 home matches remaining, only one of which is a top 6 club. Of those 33 points on offer I think that we will get about 22.

 

I disagree, I'd say the vast difference in quality between the two line up's is a bigger reason, I mean look at the team we fielded against Palace back then compared to the team we fielded last night.

Gomes (8), Kaboul (6), Prodl (7), Britos (6), Holebas (7), Capoue (6), Behrami (5), Guedioura (7), Amrabat (8), Ighalo (7), Janmaat (5).

Janmaat, Capoue, Behrami, Gueidoura and Amrabat are simply no where near the level of Kiko, Doucouré, Cleverly, Hughes and Richarlison/Pereyra. I'd even say there's been an upgrade in every single position bar Prodl/Gomes of course.

 

Yep, and yet mazzarri lead that team to a 3-1 win over man utd, who tonked silva's side 2-4. And mazzarri lead them to a brave 0-5 defeat at home to man city whereas silva crashed to a hopeless 0-6 thrashing.

Makes you think.

 

Is Gray an upgrade on Igalo? Look at how narrow last year's lineup was

 

When Ighalo was at his absolute worst he was marginally better than Gray as you know that there was always a chance that Iggy could do something unexpected.

 

I agree that the current players are much more comfortable on the ball, more skillful. But I'm certain that even with the current crop, we'd be playing very differently under Mazzarri.

Every coach has his style, otherwise clubs wouldn't bother chopping and changing until they found one that they think can do the job they want. As RC has pointed out, we managed to beat Utd last year with a technically inferior squad - but when you consider Walter's cautious style to Marco's all out attack, it's not such a shock.

I'm sure we all agree that the football this season is miles better? I guess the tune will only change if - despite the free-flowing style - we start losing most weeks.

 

Probably not to be fair, I'd love to see Ighalo up front with the current crop.

 

In football picking any individual game is not always a fair comparison. In fact before the Man Utd game mazzari had not won any of the comparable fixtures from last year.

 

like deftly nudge the ball less than 10 yards and in the direction he wanted it to go

 

As much as Janmaat is made of glass, I’d say it’s a bit harsh to say he’s ‘nowhere near the level’ of Femenia in terms of ability. I’d say both are quite capable. The rest I will totally agree upon. The problems stem from the CB’s being exactly the same and the fact that we play 3 of them!

 

Genuine question - does the 18 month length contract you've given fat sham actually mean that Moshiri will be happy to pay him up a full year at the end of the season, and the Silva saga will start all over again in June/July? Even if he leads you to a top half finish?

 

Managers come and go , players come and go .

The only constant is the fans and to a lesser extent the owners .

 

In all likelihood, yes. Allardyce would probably need to perform a miracle of some sort to keep the job beyond the end of the season - I'm talking FA Cup and European qualification-level of miracle

The appointment is a perfectly sensible one, given our direction of travel over the last few months, but it's temporary (we only wanted to give him 6 months) and I'm not entirely convinced it will end up being Silva in the summer that we go for anyway

Reading between the lines, the Silva stuff was over quite a while ago and we had Fonseca from Shakhtar at the top of our list (another manager who would've been a huge gamble currently). There have been some suggestions that Moshiri is getting into bed with Jorge Mendes (we were linked with the current Benfica manager too), so I think there's a reasonable chance we'll move on from Silva

 

Toffeeblue9, I think you might change your mind about Fat Sam. His sides play more football than he gets credit for. It's fashionable to make out that British managers are unsophisticated and boring, but the worst offenders for negative football are Italian and Spaniard managers to my mind.

 

He got Sunderland to play decent football with a much less potentially talented squad. Incredibly he got Patrick Van Aanholt to defend.

 

Well, he has a relatively clean slate as far as I'm concerned. I'll judge him on what I see

I have confidence that we won't go down now that he's in the job, but bringing Sammy Lee with him sticks in the throat

There's 3 or 4 players desperately needed in January and 3 or 4 very important players due to return very shortly, but overall I think this is probably the best club squad he's ever had - I'm almost curious as to what he might be able to do given money and time (but not curious enough that I want it to happen here)

 

Having watched Everton getting a tonking last weekend all I can ask is how bad are West Ham?

 

Dreadful

 

That Bolton squad was amazing. Okocha, Gudjohnson, Gardener, Campo, Jasskellinen, Djorkaeff. Wow that was some team.

 

The arrogance and delusion of the bung-taking, Jabba the Hutt clone is unparalleled:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/ar...ss-Sam-Allardyce-takes-swipe-Marco-Silva.html


"Let’s put it this way, if you look at my track record, why wouldn’t I be here irrespective of Marco Silva? I have every respect for Marco Silva and I am not criticising Marco Silva but Marco Silva’s track record has got no comparison whatsoever with mine.
He got Hull City relegated (last season). That is perception. We have not to live in perception at our level. We have to live in reality and the reality is that I was spoken to. I pulled out and then I came back in because they felt it was the right thing to do."

 

Ahhh, what a martyr. I’m very proud of Sam actually. He didn’t take the Everton job for money, no! He didn’t take the Everton job because they wanted him (or in his words he pulled out ... never a foolproof approach).

He took the job because it was the right thing to do. Everton are lucky to have a man that will take the job because its the right thing to do.

Why did he lose the England job again...

 

Yep, I cringed a bit at this

 

Here’s my issue with Silva. Today’s opponents, Tottenham are as the stats will show, a better football team than us. Instead of going toe to toe with them as we did against both Manchester clubs and coming off second best, I’d like Silva to set up defensively and play for a 0-0 and if we get one chance and take it, bonus. Silva won’t utter the word defend in his team talk and because of this, I predict we’ll get stuffed 1-5

 

That's because Silva isnt Pulis.

 

Sam has an 18 month contract at Everton. Arsene has 18 months left on his Arsenal contract. Silva has 18 months left on his Watford contract. Looks like Marco has some lucrative options open for him.

 

Occasionally, Silva should be like Mourinho

 

Fair enough opinion, but for me this is one of the good things about him. If we set up to defend, we'll lose today. I'd rather have a go at them than watch a damage limitation job.

 

Quite difficult to answer that

We have won 4 games this season, and I'd say only one of those we clearly deserved to win

Despite the great win and performance on Wednesday, there have been big parts of this season where I think we've been the worst side in the division

The league table is relatively close from 9th to 17th, think 5 points separate everyone, so it's easy to look up the table and think that we could still salvage a decent season (I think we can go 9th today if results go our way) - especially with the January window a month away and 4 very important first team players a week or two away from being back from very long-term injuries

But - I think that we've been so bad at times that looking up the table might be dangerous, there are huge issues still to address which a big win against an abject West Ham side is perhaps glossing over

Personally, I'd be satisfied with staying up with relative comfort and not being dragged into the scrap with half a dozen games left to go

You'll probably find my standards are lower than a lot of other blues though

Can we catch Watford? I doubt it. I guess it's not beyond the realms of possibility, but it would surprise me. If we can get a decent number of points on the board in December - with games against Liverpool and Chelsea in there and before new arrivals in the window and before injured players are back, I might gain some confidence that it's possible. Think we have a really, really tough December though and we could get worse before we get better and I expect Watford and a few other teams to be out of reach before things turn around properly

 

Having had Roberto Martinez as our manager and having seen the pros and cons of this approach, I'd say the ideal is somewhere in between the two approaches. The devil-may-care approach will get the odd win but plenty of hammerings, the really defensive approach rarely brings any wins but will rack up a few draws. There aren't too many managers outside the top 6 who get the balance right on this

 

What a fuss about nothing. A couple of wins and Everton are 10th.