Right, all those who queried signing Lallana need some humble pie. Our best player by a mile. He and Dibling together are better than anything else at the club. Let's ditch last year's wood and start playing players who have the touch and guile to cope in this league.
I still maintain that, with this being their last season at Goodison, this will finally be the year when they go. Probably with us (suicidal tactics) and Leicester (points deduction). Ipswich will survive with some sort of record low points.
OK, just start with Dibling, Fernandes and Archer please, and see how we go. Lets give ourselves a fighting chance from the off.
Martin needs to stop being so loyal to the players who got us up. It's that simple. Bench Adarma and Smallbone at the very least going forwards. Fernandes and Archer have to come in. I would also suggest Dibling and Lallana should be playing as well.
I think KWP staying might not turn out to be the miracle we thought. Overstacked on the right - KWP undroppable, Sugawara a great taelnt, - but Taylor our best left back and won't play.
I don't think Lallana wants to, sadly. He doesn't have the body for it anymore. But we need to get to 60 minute without conceding so he can come on and make a difference.
To be fair, I think that's sort of Martin's strategy. Play defensive for the first hour or so, hopefully keep it at 0-0, and then go for it later. The problem is that we keep on getting that stage 1-0 down. Most people are asking for a more positive set-up. That's fine - but it's far, far less likely to mean that we get to where you want after 60 minutes.
I do seem to remember (and I do rate KWP) that he’s had a few games for us over the years where he just doesn’t seem focused
Not panicking yet as there are plenty of options at the club to be explored, but RM has to explore them. Bit miffed at RM for the unchanged outfield though and I don't see the point in having 5 at the back if we are going to concede three anyway. All 5 goals conceded so far have been from individual errors of some form, 3 of them have come directly from the style of play. I think the way these first three games have gone is pretty close to what many of us expected might happen if RM tried to insist on his tactics in the PL, we do know he can be more flexible than this mind. Fernandes and Archer need to be starting at minimum, ideally Dibling too. At least Everton are still choking too.
So wound up by that. Need to vent a bit. We are giving away goals when we don't need to. Brentford played the exact same system as us. They played out from the back, but we only pressed with 2-3 and they pressed with 5. Now, if there are 5 players around our box, why not go long? Is that not the whole ****ing point of the system? Draw them in and then get past them? I thought Ramsdale's long passing was really good - pinged them along the ground - so why are we playing ourselves into trouble every time? I disagree playing with the 4 made it worse. We did the same thing with the 5 in the first half. I don't think these CBs are good enough at passing to do this. The Brentford ones were much better - but they also had genuine wingers to release the ball to. BBD is not a good player out wide and Aribo doesn't have the pace to scare anyone out there either. I think Cornet may make a difference. Dibling and Fernandes are great players, but they can't be coming on trying to rescue a match every game. We have to start using our brains and mixing it up. Play tippy tappy in midfield when we get it. Press hard when they have it. Stop gifting goals. The thing is, we actually have defended really well for the most part. How demoralising to make fantastic blocks and challenges and then just give them goals.
