Unfortunately Frank Lampard’s sacking had to happen if Everton are to have any chance of surviving this season. Performances and results have been very poor, especially since the restart.
I’ve never wanted a manager to succeed like Frank, he connected with the fans and the football club, it was great to see, but he’s struggled since the World Cup. He’s talked about the issues before he came to the club but he was willing to sign that contract to be part of it and we haven’t moved forwards, we’ve gone backwards.
The board might have promised x,y and z to you and it hasn’t happened but that’s football and probably what’s happened to the majority of Everton managers in recent years. He’s old enough and wise enough to know that can happen.
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As a manager and a coach, your job is to develop each and every player. That’s what coaching is about, not just writing 11 names on a piece of paper and saying ‘go out and enjoy it.’
You’ve got a responsibility to improve them but apart from Alex Iwobi last season, whose level before that had been very low, I’ve not seen it. Even Iwobi’s levels right now have dropped again and when I look at that pitch, there’s not one player of who I can say ‘Frank has improved him.’
We haven’t seen any progression which begs the question of what Frank and his staff have been doing. The fans had nothing to hold on to, it deflates you.
There were alarm bells ringing before the break but since they came back, Lampard hasn’t helped himself. He didn’t seem to know his best 11 or formation and was tweaking personnel to try and change something.
He talks about his mentality as a player where the only way out was to work hard, to be professional and to keep going and I agree but unfortunately you can only improve if players want to take it on board. Do they have that desire to learn or to develop themselves because I don’t see that with this group of players?
The table shows that right now we’re the worst team in the Premier League but these players aren’t the worst in the Premier League. We’re just not putting in the performances and hand on heart, Frank must have known he wasn’t getting the best out of them.
When they cross that white line they unfortunately don’t seem to have that fight to win games. As Frank said, we had control, but I don’t care about that, I want to put pressure on the opposition, getting shots and crosses in.
West Ham are also having a torrid season and their fans could have turned on them if we’d have started fast, put them under pressure and forced them to make mistakes. Nobody seemed to want to win it though but goals change games, when we first played Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City at Goodison we got battered but won 4-0.
The goals we’re conceding are very soft. Whoever is in charge, we need big changes are needed because this style of football just isn’t working.
David Moyes’ side didn’t break sweat, they didn’t need to. We’ve not been creating enough opportunities in the final third and that’s been our downfall for a long time now but our strikers on the bench never came on when we needed to throw the kitchen sink at them.
When the going gets tough, who is going to roll their sleeves up and push their team-mates? Not after the event, that’s very easy but during the game.
Idrissa Gueye left his man again for the first goal and Onana left his player for the second, strolling into the box unmarked. That is just not acceptable and if I’m Conor Coady or anyone else in defence, I’d be screaming my head off so hard that they won’t do it again because they know I’m going to embarrass them in front 62,000 people.
Other managers that Frank played under like Jose Mourinho would out players if they weren’t pulling their weight, he’s done it with Luke Shaw and even our very own Dele Alli, when he wanted more. There’s no fear factor at Everton though, Mourinho could do that because he had the money to go out and replace you but Frank hasn’t had that luxury and he has felt he needed to get his arm around them and trying to get them to come out of their shells and become more expressive but it’s not working.
When you look back at the goals, there’s no pressure on the ball. If that was Vitalii Mykolenko or Demarai Gray trying to put a cross in, you can guarantee that there would be an opponent with two yards of them, attempting to make it difficult.
But there was nobody within 10 yards so he does a nice little chip into the box where we’ve got three centre-halves, they don’t deal with it, and there’s a midfielder who has switched off and didn’t want to do his job because it was too much like hard work and the guy just goes to tap it in the net. They’re very soft goals and they’re so easy to stop if you show more desire and willingness to win the header.
Who was running out to make it more difficult for the crosser? Stay with your man until someone says ‘it’s ok, I’ve got him.’
Again it’s another game that’s gone by in which the opposition has been very poor themselves but we never smelt blood or had the desire or willingness to make it uncomfortable for them. If a team is struggling and need a win then they play Everton and we give them three points.
Time for Moshiri to splash the cash in a different way
I said last week you need your leaders to show their faces, especially when you’re in a crisis and both the owner and the board turned up at West Ham United but unfortunately the performance on the pitch didn’t change. Also, the fans are not going to forgive and forget this time around.
Frank Lampard spoke about how Roman Abramovich wasn’t there during his entire 18 months in charge of Chelsea but that’s a different scenario and they weren’t in utter crisis whereas Everton are right now, for the whole world to see how much of a farce this football club has become and it’s embarrassing for the fans. How much is it going to cost Farhad Moshiri if Everton were to go down?
Money talks and therefore if I were the owner, I’d be offering a big chunk of gold to the players right now to try and stay up. People might not like the sound of it but perhaps a significant bonus for staying in the Premier League is what they players need to motivate themselves?
People have been talking about them and calling them out but there seems to be no self-awareness there so a financial incentive might be the carrot they need to pull their finger out. Something is required to get them to wake up and recognise the severity of the situation.
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