Everton manager Sean Dyche speaks to the media following his side's 4-0 defeat at Manchester United
Everton manager Sean Dyche speaks to the media following his side's 4-0 defeat at Manchester United
Everton's players can’t be passing the buck to the manager and the manager can’t be passing the buck to the players. They all need to be taking accountability.
Sean Dyche can’t hoodwink Scousers, he can’t hoodwink Evertonians. He can say what he wants before and after games but what we’re witnessing with our own eyes is just not good enough.
Sean Dyche is struggling to do Sean Dyche things. That’s a huge question mark if he can’t even get his style of play through.
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He needs to stop comparing himself to Pep Guardiola who is going through the worst period of his managerial career. His style and solutions have been successful for many years.
If Dyche’s style was winning game after game, and not conceding goals, then we’d probably put up with not liking it because we were getting points on the board. But this is another 4-0 defeat and we’ve had a couple of those already this season plus a 3-0 at home on the opening day.
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He’s the manager of Everton Football Club and whatever he is doing, it is not working, we can all see that. But the players can’t hide behind the manager, they have got to take accountability.
The whole club that we know and love is a mismatch. We’re an absolute shambles and a laughing stock from the outside with all that is going on since Farhad Moshiri came in.
It’s been an absolute disaster, but I’m sick of hearing excuses. I’m sick of hearing the manager talking about things in the past, he hasn’t spoken about statistics this season because the stats go against him and while I’m not a big fan of stats myself, each one is horrendous right now in terms of the football we’re playing.
In the first half an hour, United’s fans looked nervous, but we gifted them three goals. Yes, it’s happened before Dyche, it’s got that same feel, manager after manager, but he’s been here for almost two years now and his job is to stop this and try and turn this football club around.
Last season he quite rightly got a lot of credit for what he did but this year, the mentality from the whole football club has been rock bottom. Over the summer, I was thinking that we need to improve on the 48 points we won on the pitch last season, but a couple of games into the campaign, Dyche was talking about how we were going to be in a dogfight.
We knew with the new manager coming in, Manchester United were going to get a bit of a bounce but they did struggle against Ipswich Town, and they did struggle in their European game midweek. You just want to be able to have a pop to see if they’ve got any fire in their belly.
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We did pretty well at the start of the game and Manchester United didn’t get into their rhythm but it’s just so obvious and the same situation, week after week, when we get on top but don’t find the net, we seem to run out of ideas. It’s like we give up and have no belief or confidence what so all.
Beto had a couple of chances but again our decision-making in the final third let us down. That leaves the opposition thinking: ‘Is this all they’ve got?’
We’d had a warning from the edge of the box beforehand and when it happened a second time with Marcus Rashford and not one of Everton’s leaders are smelling that, we left the door wide open for them. We’re not learning.
It feels like the players are giving up, both mentally and physically. For all of the other goals after the opener, we’d had possession of the ball, comfortably, but unforced errors have gifted them three goals.
Is that down to a negative mentality from the manager who I’ve been giving stick to this season? Maybe, but the players are getting away with it.
United’s second goal comes from a pass from Abdoulaye Doucoure who is a midfielder facing the wrong way. Why isn’t he side on? Why can’t he just turn out?
His first thought is negative. His first thought is to go backwards.
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That puts the pressure on Jarrad Branthwaite who should have obviously been quicker, but it comes from negativity.
James Tarkowski gets outbattled by a kid. He’s getting bullied by a youngster when you’d be expecting him to go right through the ball and the man.
You’re our captain, why are you getting beaten in a 60/40 ball. If his team-mates see that then they’ll think he’s given up and wonder why he hasn’t tracked his runner.
If he’s carrying an injury then he needs to get himself off the pitch because it’s not like he’s performing as the man-of-the-match every week. He’s been fantastic since he came here but we’re not good enough as a football team to carry passengers.
Again, that comes from our players being negative with Vitalii Mykolenko passing it backwards. He was under no pressure, he could have just turned and passed it to Iliman Ndiaye, but his first thought is negative.
Is that due to the manager? Possibly, but the players have got to take accountability, you can’t try and win football games by passing the ball backwards every time, we’ve got to be braver.
I don’t know what Mykolenko is doing for United’s third goal or why he is in the centre of the pitch. One Manchester United player wins the second ball against three of our players but why aren’t we following it up?
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We’ve got a huge challenge ahead after another game in which Evertonians have walked away disappointed. Some fans I’ve spoken to after the game have told me they’re not even going to let it bother them anymore.
The kids are walking out upset but the parents are saying: ‘well it’s expected isn’t it, we know exactly what’s going to happen and he’s not going to surprise us with his team selections or style of play'. Because of our love for the club we just hope something might be different.
Why can’t we pull it back to the edge of the box from one of our corners? Why can’t Tarkowski run to the front post?
We all know what’s going to happen. It’s going to be the long, looping ball to the back post, hope that Tarkowski gets a good header, and it falls to one of our players.
The opposition see that. They know we’re a threat from set-pieces but if the keeper catches it then the outfield players get up the pitch quickly to cause us issues.
Our opponents are one step ahead of what we’re doing. They let Ashley Young kick it down the line because they know where it’s going.
They know what our threat is, it’s Iliman Ndiaye. So, every time he gets the ball, there are two or three opponents around him and all our other players will stand and watch.
He needs to improve his final ball, but he’s taken several players on and there’s nobody else helping him. Nobody is getting close to him, doing a one-two, we’re letting him try and do everything himself because nobody else is on the same level.
That’s starting to make him look like a poor player because he’s not getting help and is showing frustration. It’s not like he’s Diego Maradona, he can’t do it all by himself.
The one area where you don't know what Dyche is going to do is what seems to be an inconsistency when dealing with the squad and it baffles me. It appears like he is very inconsistent in the way he treats different people within the squad.
I get it if you’re Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, but we’ve got players who have been injured and they’ve taken weeks coming back. They’ve got to be ‘Dyche-fit’ playing game after game in-house and for the Under-21s before they get a sniff.
Yet last month, Dwight McNeil had been injured all week and ended up playing 90 minutes on the Saturday. Inside the dressing room, I’d imagine that players on the fringes will be upset with that and thinking: ‘why is he treating him differently than me?’
The ones who aren’t getting selected are left playing catch-up and the longer it goes on, the harder it is for them to come in and get into the match rhythm that is needed to perform at the highest level.