Premier League Match 20 - Everton 3 Southampton 0

Lost... One Dressing Room

Everton away in our third match in five and a half days, playing right into the hands of a certain Lying Dutchman.  I have absolutely zero expectation from this game considering that we hardly ever get anything here and because our last two defeats have been so dismal.  With Virgil van Dijk suspended, this was going to be especially difficult and Everton have found a little bit of form recently, well they’re certainly in better form than they were when we beat them 1-0 a month or so back.

The Newsnow Southampton feed is good for a lot of shit about players leaving but it also throws up the odd nugget and one article I saw was lifted from L’Equipe, the main French sports magazine which stated that Claude Puel’s wife was finding it difficult settling in England and that they didn’t have any sort of social life from their Ocean Village base.  Interesting.

We knew there was going to be rotation of the squad for today but Virgil aside, it should have been more or less the first team but it isn’t.  Cedric is back, as is José but Ryan Bertrand is again on the bench with Sam McQueen preferred.  Clasie has recovered from injury to form a lightweight partnership with JWP but interestingly, Hojbjerg is nowhere to be seen.  I wonder if his tantrum when being substituted against West Brom had anything to do with it.  Up front, Boufal’s last game before he disappears off to the African Nations Cup is to be spent on the bench.  What the fuck are we resting him for.  Who gives a fuck if he’s tired when he links up with Morocco.  A front three of Redmond, Tadic and Rodriguez must strike fear into the hearts of all who face it.  Messi, Suarez and Neymar it isn’t.

When we played Everton at St.Mary’s, their lack of pace was obvious but it’s corrected today with Funes Mori playing instead of Jagielka and a youngster Tom Davies instead of Gareth Barry in midfield.  Ronald playing a youngster, in fact he’s playing two with someone called Calvert-Lewin in the side – Christ he must think his experienced players are shit.

The first notiable action is Cedric sliding off the pitch and into an advertising hoarding.  Barkley forces Fraser into a decent save whiclst we’re fucking about over the substitution and eventually, it’s Jack Stephens coming on for his debut and playing out of position at right back.  So now we’re down to one of our regular back 4 again but the good news is that one of them isn’t Martina.

We’re not great but Everton are worse and there’s half an opening for Redmond as Williams heads a cross up in the air and from an admittedly tight angle, Redmond tries to drop it over the keeper and gets it wrong.  Everton’s defence and keeper look all over the place and JWP’s corners are causing havoc, well they would be if we attacked the ball with any intent and looked like we wanted to score.

The standard of the game is dreadful with Everton’s Lukaku and Redmoond both having piss poor efforts which the respective keepers just pick up.  Everton’s shambolic defending is replicated by Saints when we have enough bodies back there and Clasie decides that heading it across your own goal about 15 yards out it a good idea. Someone whacks it into Row Z.  The Beautiful game.

Out of nowhere we break fast and Redmond has it on the left.  J-Rod is free in the middle but Redmond plays the ball behind him.  It goes out wide right to JWP and his cross is awkwardly bundled into the net by the clearly offside J-Rod with a combination of his knee and his arm.  Pick out your reason for it being disallowed but the reason we didn’t score is because the quality from Redmond just wasn’t there at the vital moment.

The Everton fans aren’t happy as Saints are dominating the game now.  J-Rod does brilliantly when a ball is played into his feet as he spins past Davies and then goes round the overrated Williams as if he isn’t there and then undoes all his good work by smashing it over the bar.  Another chance soon follows as McQueen gets down the left and his cross picks out Redmond who allows the header to just slide off his head and not divert towards the goal at all.  Absolute bollocks.  Half time arrives and we’ve been better than them but that really isn’t saying much.

Pretty soon after the break, Koeman takes off the shite Lennon and replaces him with Enner Valencia who has done nothing for them since arriving on loan from West Ham in the summer.

Lukaku looks dangerous when he picks the ball up and runs at the defence but he lets himself with the finish which is dragged wide.  Someone has obviously pointed out to Claude that it’s pointless saving our best attacking player for Morocco and on comes Boufal for Tadic who has been as anonymous as Lord Lucan.

A glorious chance is created as J-Rod cleverly lifts a ball first time over the last defender and Redmond is clean through and guess what, he makes the laughable Thierry Henry comparisons look evn more fat fetch by belting it straight at the keeper at a comfortable height for him to block.  Everton begin to have some joy down our left as McQueen suddenly looks what he is, a very inexperienced left back and you fucking know what’s going to happen and on 75 it does as Lukaku plays it out to Coleman, outjumps Yoshida when the cross comes in and Valencia is alive to the rebound after Fraser saves well with his feet.  Bollocks and a barely deserved lead.

We respond to the goal against with our now predictable nothing.  Nothing at all.  Long is on for Clasie who has done his usual fuck all and we’ve gone.  Fonte has had a decent game but he gets lucky when he gives the ball away and Lukaku curls over.  Everton begin popping it abaout with 10 to go with the air of a team who know the opposition aren’t going to do anything to hurt them and eventually Mirallas feeds it in to Valencia feet from the left and just inside the box, Yoshida just takes him out.  Staright through him from behind, no chance of getting the ball, absolute dogshit.

Go on Leighton, put us out of our misery, bang, 2-0, pathetic.

Our midfield is knackered in the last 10 and there’s nothing going on and heads are down.  Jack Stephens has been decent in a limited kind of way and he gallops forward and creates a chance for J-Rod which he attempts to chip over the onrushing Robles but there’s no conviction in the effort at all.  The corner from JWP goes right acorss and again, J-Rod nimbies about when he should have thumped everything in the net.  He’s too nice.

2-0 becomes a pathetic 3-0 surrender as Fonte gets caught in possession on the edge of our box, one pass to Lukaku, whack, 3-0 to this shit.  Bloody hell.  Talk about making a team look better than they are.  José just looks resigned.  You would expect him to be apologising to Fraser or whoever but if he did, I didn’t see it.  To absolutely sum everything up about Saints, Boufal picks up the ball and takes on half the Everton team – he just keeps going and eventually gets his head up and passes to J-Rod.  All he has to do is smash it but he lamely puts it wide of the near post.  Fucking appalling.

I was ranting like a bastard on Twitter after the game and all of my tweets were aimed in a couple of areas.  I know that this is my opinion and opinions are like arseholes in that everyone has one.

The first opinion I’m going to air is that Claude has lost the dressing room.  I could not believe the capitulation once the first goal went in, in addition to the Spurs capitulation and the West Brom capitulation.  I especially could not believe the reaction or lack of, from our captain José Fonte when he dawdled on the ball and directly set up Everton's third goal. He didn't even look that bothered or upset or professionally hurt for what was a colossal fuck-up. It looks to me like he's thinking 3-0 looks a lot better than 2-0 if we want to get rid of this bloke.  I have no problem with José but he’s down and very obviously has been for a while.  His Europa League absence has still not been explained.

Virgil’s body language was all wrong against West Brom a couple of days ago as well, possibly because he's having to play with three makeshift defenders and then there is the omission of Ryan Bertrand today. The rotation playbook is really easy to read for the defenders. The first choice defence played one game and in the next game he plays McQueen, Yoshida and Martina so Bertrand should have played today and he is by far a better left back than Sam McQueen which is why he’s an England international and a Champions League Winner. My money is on Bertrand having kicked off about something in the last couple of days, hence why he was benched. Predictably, the after match Claude interview said he was ill and therefore couldn't play well that is absolute horse shit because he was on the bench. If he was ill, as in had some sort of virus or whatever you would hardly want him sitting with six other substitutes now would you so don't insult my fucking intelligence and don't take the piss out of the people who paid a fortune to go and watch that complete fucking shambles. Hojbjerg clearly kicked off when he was substituted against West Brom and he was not anywhere to be seen today.

Our style of football was again boring as fuck but we created chances today and the main fault for the predictable zero next to our name is with the players. You could have the best midfielder in the world but if you have the strikers that we have then it's going to make no fucking difference whatsoever. This was summed up perfectly in the last minute when Boufal beat virtually the entire Everton team and lay a chance on a plate to J-Rod. All he had to do is the one job but he's paid for and stick the ball in the fucking net but he somehow just shat it wide of the post.  It was fucking awful. Redmond was clean through and showed absolutely no composure whatsoever and just smashed it at the keeper. As the game wore on, our midfield was knackered, McQueen was really struggling at left back and that's where the first goal came from despite Fraser making a great safe to keep out the initial header. Yoshida had played pretty well up until the second goal when he had a complete brain fart and went in for a tackle on the edge of the penalty area that he was never going to win in a million years and was always going to end in a penalty. That sort of challenge is the sort of challenge you get from the centre half of the Dog and Duck in a 3pm kick-off after he's had five points for lunch.  Absolutely fucking ridiculous. And then you have Jose sauntering out of defence for the third goal, giving it away,  one pass bang. By this time, no one gave a shit about the fans watching and no one certainly gave a shit about the manager.  We just laid down and died.

I tried to be positive about the summer recruitment and replacing of the big names that moved on but something occurred to me today that I should have realised earlier in we have a squad now that has so many players with zero personality or presence.   The defensive side of the team has the players with presence (when they’re fucking picked) – Fonte, Bertrand, Virgil, Fraser, Romeu).   In the front half of the team we have the zero-presence players in Long, Rodriguez, JWP, Clasie, Redmond. Not good enough on a consistent basis. You could also add Tadic to that list who is been absolutely shit since he got his nose broken in that game for Serbia.  All of these players are probably fine if they have ‘big presence’ players to play off of.  J-Rod or Shane would be fine playing off of Graziano Pellé or Sadio Mané but having all these zero presence players in the team at the same time – it doesn’t work.  We could therefore fall back on the defence but Virgil is suspended, Bertrand’s not selected and Cedric gets injured meaning we have two kids at full backs it looks decidedly ropey.

We have a good goalkeeper, I know he's had a dip recently but at the end of the day he is a very good goalkeeper and we have a very good back four when the first choice players are all picked. Romeu sitting in front of them is a powerful presence in the side forward of him we have no presence whatsoever.  The jury remains out on Hojbjerg who does at least look like he has a bit about him but he needs regular games. Boufal could be a wonderful player if we use him properly which we quite clearly are not at the moment. It must be nice for the Morocco manager that he's been saved from playing at 90 minutes today so he'll be nice and fresh for the start of their AFCON campaign.

Claude Puel will soon be skating on very thin ice.  If boring defensive football gets you wins then you’ll be fine but if the results are bad and the football is bad then you’re in the shit, especially when you’re wife isn’t happy.  They say that football teams end up reflecting managers image.  No wonder Claude’s wife is unhappy – we never fucking score.  No wonder we look like we can’t communicate with eachother.

We are in our at the moment relatively comfortable position in the table this season, down to Charlie Austin’s goals and 1-0 wins at home built on a strong defence.  It’s now time for the rotation to stop and the best team be picked, a best team that includes Fraser, Cedric, Bertrand, Jose, Virgil, Oriol, Davis, Hojbjerg.  Me, I’d go 4-2-3-1 with Hojbjerg next to Romeu in defensive midfield and get the attacking players further up the pitch.  I’m guessing Claude won’t change the formation though so we’ll be stuck with hoping Redmond, Tadic, Long and J-Rod can work out where the goal is unless someone gets their cheque book out.