After going against all odds and beating Chelsea it looked like Everton would have been on the up again but no. Everton is such an inconsistent team that I actually went to the Reading game expecting them to lose because they have been bottling it against "smaller" clubs all season.
Anyway I have a lot to say about what I think is going wrong with the club but I'll save that for a separate post.
So once again Everton put on a boring home display where manager David Moyes decided to play it safe and go for a draw, in a cup tie. Everton are a very boring team, they have been using the same tactics for 3 or 4 years now and it has gotten to the point where they have been sussed. I have this theory about football matches, when facing bigger clubs you don't beat them by tactically outmatching them because you can't they are the better team, the only way to beat them is to play a better game than them. When facing smaller clubs you need to use tactics to beat them because you should be able to beat them. Obviously it isn't that simple in football there is a lot of luck in the game but it is an idea that in Evertons case makes sense.
From what I have seen this season when Everton beat one of the big teams it is because the players are fired up and they really want to go. When Everton face one of the teams that are deemed smaller than they are it we see that the players are not fired up and that they don't want to go, this lack of motivation could be down to many factors. Either way because of this lack of spirit going into these type of games you need to use smart tactics to win and this is exactly what manager David Moyes isn't using.
These last 3 or so years the manager has been using these same tactics with everton.
- All attacks are done on the wing, never down the centre.
- Mikel Arteta and Leighton Bains always, and I mean always take the free kicks and corners.
- When we have a corner against us all 11 players have to be in the box.
There are other things to note but these are the main three and they were all present in last nights game.
Throughout the entire game Everton were attacking down the wing just like they have been doing for years now, because of this the Reading players can easily defend against the attacks because they are so predicable, they don't have to have players cover the centre area because there is no threat of an attack coming from there because this is Everton. This type of attacking play has gotten to the point of being incredibly boring, like I was yawning every time they attacked on the wing, their game is so easy to predict that it is boring, there is no excitement when you know what they are going to do, exciting football is a guessing game where you don't know whats going to happen next.
Mikel Arteta, sorry the guy was great once but he has past it, he is a smart guy, he worked hard at Everton for a few years and now he has the big money long term contract, he doesn't have to work for his bread anymore. What do I mean by this? Well he doesn't give off many high performances anymore but he is in the team because dropping him would be an embarrassing waste of money, come on you know I am right, when someone is the highest earning player in your team you do not drop from the squad because you want to feel like that money isn't going to waste, I think this is the reason why David Moyes still plays Arteta every game. Even so it still doesn't change the fact that the man isn't preforming like he should be, everything he does has this half arsed feel to it, look at his corners, the ball goes no where and most of the time the goal keeper gets the ball and going back to last nights game he had a free kick from outside the right side of the box, instead of trying to give the ball to a player who could be a threat he decides to take a
shot and would you believe as always the shot flew into the bloody wall.
Bains I have problems with but it is just him being the only other person who takes the corners and free kicks because like Arteta nothing ever seems to come from it.
The last problem is the worse one and it happened again last night. David Moyes is clueless when it comes to defense, why would you push all of your players back, pushing back lets the other team push forward and create pressure, there is nothing at all smart about this tactic, if Moyes was to leave his attacking players up the field as opposed to down in the box then teams like Reading wouldn't be able to put on pressure and gain an attacking advantage. There isn't really much to say about this stupid tactic because it works with everything, for example if you hold your pieces back in a game of chess then you give your opponent the room to push forward and attack.
Anyway that is mostly why Everton have lost this game and have been losing most of their games all season, no one is taking risks on the pitch, playing a game not to lose gets you nowhere, you want to play to win.
As for reading I'll be fair to their fans they had more passion than the Everton fans but this could just be me sitting in the Park End where all the pissed off supports give the team stick for being predicable, boring and crap.
The reading team did everything right, they were able to defend so that there was hardly ever a major threat from Everton and they were able to attack in a way that made them look like a threatening side.
So well done to Reading you deserve it because Everton are crap and you made them look so.
So there you have it, if I had summarise the night quickly then all I want to say is that the piss I took during the game was more enjoyable than the game itself.
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