Sitteh v Everton

Based on the play, are City playing with 15 men? We don't even get to look at the ball, never mind touch it.

You'll have to sign in to YouTube to watch the above video. Here's another one.

Fooking embarrassing!

If I were DCL, I'd likely say "Fook this, I want a move to another club" after this shite.

Spurs 4-2/... Leicester miss out on CL again

All the full times are in & this season's painful shite ends like this

booooooooooooooooooo

10th. Although finishing any higher would gloss over the problems we face.

That game was not even a valid attempt.

Utter shit. Today and the season in general. Is Carlo the right man to work with this dreadful squad? How on earth we do better next season is beyond me. Awful awful fucking awful

At 3-0 I turned over to the Spuds Leicester game. I'm glad it's all over.

We're not entirely in a "tear it down and start again" situation - we have 6 or 7 good players to build around. Pickford (the new mature version), Digne, Godfrey, Mina, Allan, DCL, Richarlison. Also Doucoure will look better if he has better players around him. Also the good thing about this season is that, because it's been a slow death, all our problems and needs are painfully obvious and have been there for all to see since Christmas.

This transfer window is so important. The Euros will complicate things, but we can't afford to leave things late and then bring four players in on deadline day. We need players in early so that Ancelotti can develop some kind of cohesion and identity. How are we going to play? Who do we need in order to play that way? And of course, who can we offload? We need an off-the-scale brilliant off-season, and there is no guarantee of that at all.

It all seems hopeless. But Leicester show what can be done. I'm going to watch Lille in 10 minutes to see if they can win the league ahead of PSG, who should be walking that league by 30 points. I feel pretty depressed about the Blues but it doesn't feel as bad as last season. That's as optimistic as I can sound right now. But do I see us being competitive next season, based on one transfer window? Nope.

Would be nice to see some fucking kids come through from the academy one of these days.

Oh, just to add, 10th is about right. We shouldn't have let Arsenal catch us, they've been shit this season as well, but that's offset by the fact that we finished above Villa, who are better than us.

Rotts - the lack of kids coming through is possibly the most depressing thing for me. I’m guessing carlo likes to play senior professionals and the fact that he has played the same team game after game even when we’ve lost seems to confirm that. But there also has to be the suspicion that we are simply not bringing through any decent young players in-house. Why?

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:At 3-0 I turned over to the Spuds Leicester game. I'm glad it's all over.

We're not entirely in a "tear it down and start again" situation - we have 6 or 7 good players to build around. Pickford (the new mature version), Digne, Godfrey, Mina, Allan, DCL, Richarlison. Also Doucoure will look better if he has better players around him. Also the good thing about this season is that, because it's been a slow death, all our problems and needs are painfully obvious and have been there for all to see since Christmas.

This transfer window is so important. The Euros will complicate things, but we can't afford to leave things late and then bring four players in on deadline day. We need players in early so that Ancelotti can develop some kind of cohesion and identity. How are we going to play? Who do we need in order to play that way? And of course, who can we offload? We need an off-the-scale brilliant off-season, and there is no guarantee of that at all.

It all seems hopeless. But Leicester show what can be done. I'm going to watch Lille in 10 minutes to see if they can win the league ahead of PSG, who should be walking that league by 30 points. I feel pretty depressed about the Blues but it doesn't feel as bad as last season. That's as optimistic as I can sound right now. But do I see us being competitive next season, based on one transfer window? Nope.

Would be nice to see some fucking kids come through from the academy one of these days.

One additional positive is that the signings Carlo has made have all been good:

Allan
Doucoure
Godfrey
Nkonkou (ok, don't know how much involvement he had in that one)
James (jury is still out but no harm in having a player of his quality in the squad)

It has been majorly frustrating .. but some positives are:

- we are 10 points better this season than last -- 59 v 49 last year .. 59 points last season was 6th/7th place.
- we finished 10th -- 12th last season
- we beat the shite (finally)
- we fucked up Dick van Dyke & probably that stopped them winning the title again

our away point tally has been magnificent.

our home points tally unexplainable.


A disappointing year given the expectation, particularly when we were flying high in the top 4...

.. but NOT a calamity.

COYB

I must admit I’m struggling to see positives. For me Doucoure has been a disappointment, and James a wonderful luxury player who leaves us having to play two DMs because he goes missing so much. Allan has been decent. Overall we’ve been unwatchable even when we’ve won games, and have ridden our luck on many occasions. We finished 10th and in the end that’s probably flattered us. Gary Neville got it right in the commentary today, he was actually angry about how shit we were. I like his passion. Pity a manc has more of it than any member of our squad or our manager

hairy cataract wrote:Rotts - the lack of kids coming through is possibly the most depressing thing for me.  I’m guessing carlo likes to play senior professionals and the fact that he has played the same team game after game even when we’ve lost seems to confirm that. But there also has to be the suspicion that we are simply not bringing through any decent young players in-house. Why?

Yeah something else is worrying me here, slightly different but related - goes back to when the commentator during the Wolves game suggested that Brands wants to be signing younger players, whereas Ancelotti, as you mention above, seems to prefer experienced pros/veterans/arl arses.

Maybe I'll stop comparing and contrasting with other sports one of these days, but I'll carry on doing it as long as I can see the relevance - my NFL team, the Browns, were shit for as long as Everton (their glory days ended in the 80s as well) and have only got respectable again in the last year or two. One of the main reasons why they were so bad for so long was that their coaching staff and recruitment people were almost always pulling in different directions. Only last year, when they brought in a GM with a huge brain and a new coach who thought the same way as the GM, have they started to get it together. It took them decades to learn that lesson though.

I appreciate this was just one commentator musing, possibly stirring things up and talking bollocks, but I can quite easily see how that could become a problem. And the absolute last thing we need right now is any off-the-field crap like that. We need everything to go right this summer so we need Brands and Carlo on the same page.

So, back to the youngsters - we haven't played any decent footy for months. Did Ancelotti not give any kids a go during that time because he does indeed prefer experience in almost all circumstances? Or is the academy cupboard just bare? Either way it's a worry. Doesn't take much of an imagination to picture Carlo getting binned off in 12 months after another disappointing season, and him leaving us with a squad of predominantly 30-somethings.

I'm not an "In Carlo We Trust" man. I like the bloke and I still think there's a good chance he'll improve us significantly for the better, but the faith I had has been severely tested since January. The shit football was OK for a while - we weren't talking about that so much when we were 2nd or 3rd. The ends justified the means while we were going well. I actually thought he could bore us into the top 4 - this was my lad's theory, that he knew how little he had to work with and was trying to eke out a CL spot by eliminating risk and parking the bus.

It didn't work in the end. If that was the plan then it failed miserably, we could have had a go and tried to be entertaining and still not finished lower than 10th. And there is absolutely no guarantee that we'll be fine just because we currently have a premium manager with a history of success. He's got his work cut out, I hope he's fully-committed to this, I hope he's got a fucking plan, and I sincerely hope that he's looking in the same direction as Brands.

McNulty's view:

Where do you start? Everton is a club never slow or shy of telling the world how right they get it off the field but supporters have every right to ask when they might actually deliver something on it.

Everton, under Carlo Ancelotti, allied an outstanding away record to utterly wretched stuff at home to end in a league position that cannot be regarded as anything other than a disappointment.

Big moments came such as winning at Liverpool for the first time since 1999 but then there were home losses to Newcastle United, Fulham and Sheffield United, among others.

Too inconsistent and often close to unwatchable at Goodison Park. Shafts of light for the future in the outstanding signings Ben Godfrey, Everton's player of the season, and Abdoulaye Doucoure. Still too much deadwood and Ancelotti, who missed out on his target of European football, may well be spending big again this summer.

McNulty's pre-season prediction: 7th

What McNulty said in September: "If Everton's new players fire and Richarlison and Dominic Calvert-Lewin hit form then a slightly risky prediction (seventh) may come off."