Everton v Wolverhapton Wanderers.

jesus.. Fulham all over again.... sign Beto FFS

Fuckin hell. Two shots on target and they manage to score one. How was Chermiti?

Not sure anymore what to say about these games, but I think I will need to take a break from watching them. I just can't deal with this at the moment.

Positives: Branthwaite did well I thought. Comfortable on the ball, reasonably fast/quick. He should start ahead of Keane week in week out. Onana was more involved in this match. Doucoure runs around and puts a proper shift in.

Negatives: The list is too long, but the fact that we can't score goals is shocking.

Anyway, time to do something different, so I'm logging off.

I don’t like Dyche as a person or a manager. As ridiculous as it would be to see another change in management, after 3 defeats and no goals, I wouldn’t be sorry to see him leave.

Nothing to say. I can't face 16 more games like that. Think that's it for me. 54 years of going and it ends up in this mess. No more thanks.

Didn’t go to this one. Won’t go to a lot more probably.

Useless

Tonteau wrote:Fuckin hell. Two shots on target and they manage to score one. How was Chermiti?

Held the ball up nicely once or twice. Didn't do much else but wasn't on for long and didn't get any service. Too early to say if he is any good or not.

The first one I've tuned in for this season. Gave up at 60 minutes as it was obvious what was going to happen. Wish I'd stuck a tenner on their late goal, although I imagine the odds were low.

Made 4 Gwladys wrote:

Tonteau wrote:

Yankthattoffee wrote:No first choice full backs, wingers or strikers. That's about it right?
What could go wrong.
Play the kids. You can't win anything with kids.....part 2.
When the theory is finally proven.

We can't win anything with adults, either.

Well the air around our seats was toxic as usual.
The kids?
Branthwaite looks a permanent partner for Tarks. I haven't seen the replay yet, but was conned into the ref's book.
Dobbin. What did you think? He came across big boy defending today. The few times he got past his marker, was pulled back. Cameos probably for the rest of te season?
The Big Chimney. I expected him to be taller somehow. Committed, but not mush opportunity.

It's the old uns who are a liability. Gana is living on past performances. More errors of judgement today.
Waiting for MOTYD to see how Sarr kept out Duke's header, and how far Duke was offside. A game of inches again.

Jeez, they try our patience.
Will we ever get a full uninjured squad? Then we can make a reasonable fist of it. Maybe.

The damage done today isn't that we lost a point late on. It's that Wolves got all three late on. Disastrous, could come back to haunt us, that goal.

Peach of a cross for the goal, like. But Patterson switches off, just for a second. Tarko is kind of in the right position - you really want one in front of the striker there, and one behind. Patterson will hopefully learn from that. It's the risk you take when you have young defenders in the team.

It's noticeable that the response to today's defeat on this board and this page is absolute resignation, rather than anger. Especially from the regular match-goers. That speaks volumes, we're all beaten up by this. In a way, I'm happy that this board, collectively, hasn't reacted viscerally to this defeat, because elements of Everton Twitter are losing their fucking minds right now. Our perilous current predicament is almost entirely the fault of Moshiri and the board. It doesn't achieve anything to lash out at the manager or Thelwell or the players or even fellow supporters. It serves no purpose to throw everything together into a single, lumpen septic tank of shit. The board, the decision-makers, are beyond redemption. I'm not yet convinced the same can be said for the squad and the manager. What we need now is a couple more players, a change of luck, and some kind of Kevin Brock-style turning point out of somewhere to help galvanise both the players and the fans.

Maybe my relegation-acceptance zen state is allowing me to see things a bit more logically than would otherwise be the case. It's a strange paradox though, in that my acceptance of our fate is allowing me to imagine that our fate isn't as desperate as all the (apparently incontrovertible) evidence may suggest. Try it yourselves - convince yourself that this is it, we're doomed, so you may as well not fret about it too much. And suddenly you'll see hope where it previously didn't exist. Yeah it sounds wacky, and no I can't explain it either.

Anyway, here goes. Things are grim, but...

1. Beto is nearly over the line. Still need to see his first "Kopites are Gobshites" tweet before I'm sure it'll happen, but he'll make a difference, believe me, just as long as he doesn't accidentally walk through a plate-glass door on his first day at Finch Farm and rule himself out for three months.

2. We've had 34 attempts on goal in the first two home games, 16 on target, and haven't scored. Of course that's partly to do with a lack of quality and the lack of a meaningful striker. But in part it's also freakishly unfortunate and abnormal. The opposition have had 4 attempts on target in total in those two games, and we've somehow lost both games. The point here is that we're creating chances at least. There were some dark days in the late Lampard era when we weren't even creating anything, never mind scoring.

3. We've got a lot of injuries right now. Well, in relation to the limited quality we have available to us, it feels like a lot. DCL, Coleman, Iwobi, McNeil. We haven't seen Harrison yet. Again that's just unfortunate. Wolves were only missing the suspended Nunes today.

4. Dyche - who doesn't get everything right, by any means - at least showed a bit of imagination and flexibility (and also common sense) with his team selection today. Danjuma had to start anyway as we're short of wingers, but playing Dobbin instead of the hapless Maupay was clearly worth a go. Binning off Keane, who is proving to be Dyche's Kryptonite, was belated but welcome. I didn't see the game but I understand Branthwaite did OK and hope he now keeps his place. I've seen some Everton Twitter nonsense today calling for Dyche to go. That's just silly. He's obviously no Kendall but, seriously, another managerial change? Who the fuck with any sort of managerial ability would take this on right now? Come on, be serious.

5. None of our likely relegation rivals have had great starts. Look at the league table as it stands and draw an imaginary line under Villa in 13th. From Forest in 14th down, there's your relegation scrap for the season, right there. Forest have had an OK start, winning a game and only losing narrowly on the road to Arsenal and United. Wolves beat us today of course. Bournemouth only have one point and Sheff U, Burnley and Luton (although they've all played fewer games than us) haven't got a point between them yet. Again it's only a small grain of comfort, but things would feel even more terminal right now if a couple of those teams had made flying starts.

6. Admittedly these positives are ever-diminishing in terms of quality, but something I recall from Dyche's Burnley days is that they often made terrible starts. Worryingly, that includes the season when he was binned and they finally got relegated, but there were a couple of campaigns from memory where they started abysmally but then turned it round. I don't know why that would be - why a manager so set on fitness and preparation would preside over so many poor starts to a season. But it is a thing.

7. We have an international break coming up, after the Sheffield United game. A chance to hopefully get some of these injured players back, and to integrate any new signings we make in the coming days (even if we get Beto, we still desperately need another CB from somewhere, and ideally another winger/forward).

I'm not trying to sugar-coat our situation, it's truly dire. I'm currently more sure that we'll go this season than I was at any stage last season, and that's saying something. But there are factors in play that make me think it's not certain. I recall 1994-95 and being at GP to watch us win our first game of the season, in November. We got 4 points from our first 14 games that season. When I think the football Gods are at least neutral and that our perilous position is 100% down to our own shiteness, then I'll tell you. But there is some bad luck at play right now, a case of it never rains but pours, and we've come through similar periods, worse periods, in the past.

Just to stress, I've genuinely come to terms with the likelihood that this is probably the year we run out of road. These thoughts above are not a product of wishful thinking - I like to think that there's some logic here. Gringo mentioned earlier the Five Stages of Grief, and I like to think that by arriving at the "acceptance" stage I'm able to think more lucidly. You may disagree, of course! Maybe I'm kidding myself into thinking I've accepted it. I dunno. Everton fucks with your head.

That’s a good assessment Rotts, not panicking yet ,we all knew What we needed and who to blame before hand so let’s a get this transfer window over see what we got get players back to fitness and watch us compete again.

Well said Rotts. The "irony" though is that we created the most chances, I felt, in the first match and never should have lost that game. I don't want to just blame Maupay, but he had two seriously great chances in that game where a more seasoned/better striker would have picked a corner and scored instead of just trying to blast the ball through the goalie.

Anyway, I hope that we will start creating chances again and that a striker is there to put the chances away.