Michael Ball tackles the big issues at Hill Dickinson Stadium following Everton's 2-2 draw with Manchester United
David Moyes and Jack Grealish
David Moyes and Jack Grealish
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Before turning to the on-field action of Everton’s dramatic 2-2 draw with Manchester United, I have to address the context in which we went into the game after the transfer window closed.
Following Angus Kinnear’s interviews on the eve of the new season, we were expecting new players to come to the football club to help David Moyes kick on and start challenging where we want to be.
Lots of clubs leave it late to get the best deals they can, and I was sitting down watching transfer deadline day on television and in the morning, it looked promising but fast forward to late afternoon, and my feelings were left deflated. I was left thinking: “What’s just happened?”
Everton’s whole transfer window was left flipped on its head. I was wondering how they could put themselves in such a situation.
It’s poor planning from the football club. Angus Kinnear told us he was going to bring players in, and he put a lot of pressure on himself, but in the end, he and the transfer committee, the whole club, failed in that respect.
Football is run like no other business in the world, but I tried to put myself in the shoes of Folarin Balogun. I thought if you went for a job interview and were in the building in the morning and the boss told you: “We’ll let you know at 11pm,” and then as that time approached, they phoned two other candidates to take your role, would you still accept the position?
Whether you like the player or not, we gave Crystal Palace a lot of stick for how they treated Dwight McNeil at the end of the winter window. It sounds to me like we treated this guy a lot worse.
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When you go to sign for a team, they show you all the glitter and do all they can to give you the impression that this is the best club in the world. They do the salesman job on you, but I think Balogun has seen the real Everton while he was sitting around and thought if they’re treating me like this now, and I’m going to be here for four or five years, it’s only downhill from here.
Yes, there were issues with his medical, but the club still tried to sign him, and it feels like poor planning for me. He hasn’t kicked a ball since the World Cup and there haven’t been many training days for him, so Everton could have sent someone from their medical team out in advance to check things out.
To wait until the last minute to try and force something over the line and then the player decides he doesn’t want to sign, left them without a back-up plan and they panicked, putting in a stupid offer for Joshua Zirkzee, and being embarrassed by Tammy Abraham, who turned us down straightaway. Recruitment is the most difficult part of football, everyone is playing the game, but you’ve got to have things lined up and it’s left David Moyes really short.
You can make things work in your favour with a tightknit squad. Everton sold Wayne Rooney, then qualified for Champions League football under David Moyes.
Leicester City even won the Premier League. It can go in your favour if everything goes your way and you don’t get suspensions or injuries.
Thierno Barry has got the opportunity to puff his chest out and say he’s Everton’s first-choice centre-forward for the season, the number one pick, but in turn, he needs to start proving himself. He’s got to perform, he’s got to score goals.
If complacency creeps in, David Moyes has got to use every ounce of his experience as a manager to keep these players hungry and ensure that if they drop their levels, then they aren’t playing. We don’t want a situation where players think no matter how they perform, they’re still going to be starting.
There might be a chance now for some of the younger players to have a chance. Maybe they won’t all be ready.
Perhaps I wasn’t ready at first? Perhaps Danny Cadamarteri wasn’t ready?
Sometimes it can wake up the senior players. They’re just going along, thinking it’s all nice and rosy but then a young kid comes in and sets off fireworks.
TFG have put David Moyes in a hugely difficult position over the lack of squad depth. They didn’t back the manager in the transfer market in January, which contributed to Everton not qualifying for Europe.
If you call that a failure, then you’re deluded because you didn’t back the manager. Give him the tools to do his job, he’s the most experienced manager in the Premier League but he’s not a magician.
That’s the squad we’ve been left with, until January at least, so it’s a case of telling those who are there to crack on.
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Everton made it too easy for United but deserved spectacular finish
I sit in the Lower East Stand at Hill Dickinson Stadium, so I was close to Merlin Rohl and Brennan Johnson in the first half of Everton’s game against Manchester United and was really frustrated by their starting positions. Okay, Rohl is not a natural right-back – we can clearly see that – and he was against Marcus Rashford.
While Rohl has got a good footballing brain, his positional sense was all over the place and that’s where you’re going to get found out. It wasn’t rocket science for United, they were looking for the weak link.
I know this from my own career, as a full-back, you’re normally up against the trickiest and smartest players on the pitch. Rashford’s heels were touching the white line the whole game.
Then I look at Johnson and he’s standing in the number nine position. I thought: “Why are you going inside?”
It felt like he was hiding. I know he’s a new player and he’s getting used to his team-mates but he’s a winger and needs to create space.
It was all low percentage stuff, trying to get the ball into Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, which was so easy for United to defend against. The only time we got wide was when Rohl put that fantastic ball in that Barry should have hit the target from.
Bruno Fernandes did what he always seems to do against Everton, bullying and manipulating everyone around him, whether it’s our players or the referee. Every time I looked up, he was free and had found space, but that’s what good players do.
Jordan Pickford needs to be more thoughtful with his kicks. Loads of them just went straight to United centre-half Harry Maguire, the best header of the ball on the pitch.
People were saying, well Barry is standing next to him, but I told them: “No, Lisandro Martinez is half the size of Maguire, kick the ball on him then Barry has got the energy to run and leap, winning the second ball.”
The goals were conceded were far too easy. Vitalii Mykolenko was caught in no man’s land, but I’ve been there as a player and he can’t go all the way out because the winger is wide, you want to protect the centre-half and the goal, but that’s your man.
By the time he comes over, he’s too late, and that’s where he needs help and he never got it. Everyone was ball watching, expecting something to happen and someone else to take responsibility.
I think the substitutions changed the game with Tyrique George going over to the right plus Jack Grealish and Hayden Hackney coming on the pitch. David Moyes has asked that we give Hackney time, but from what I’ve seen of him, he looks hungry and is asking for the ball.
He’s positive, he drives forward and he tries to break the lines. He changed the tempo for Everton and understood we were getting beat, so rather than trying to pass the ball for the sake of it, he was trying to make something happen.
It was great to see Jack back. The way he holds on to the ball and gets free-kicks, we missed that during the run-in last season when we ran out of legs.
He’s cute and clever and just lets the game settle for 30 seconds. United couldn’t cope, they didn’t want to touch him, so he created opportunities.
That’s what he’s all about and some fans complain that he holds on to the ball for too long, but he needs options. If he’s got runners, he’ll find a pass and that can be massive for us going forwards.
What a fantastic strike from George to get us back in the game and we were wondering whether we could go on to get the winner. Then, all of a sudden, it’s another soft goal conceded from out wide.
The winger stays wide, Luke Shaw does an overlap and Maitland-Niles, who had come on, really gets caught out – the communication between him and George was far too slow – there’s nobody marking Benjamin Sesko, the biggest player on the pitch and you get punished. It was a lack of concentration all-round.
Jordan Pickford could have done a lot better with his soft hands, but as a former defender myself, there were glaring errors in there and United didn’t have to do anything special. I was worried that despite all the hard work we’d put in, we were going to walk away with nothing from the game.
Thankfully, we kept going. The crowd got behind the team and tried to push them forwards.
You’re not expecting an absolute wonder-strike from your new signing. When you’re outside of the box, you’ve just got to hit the target.
We saw it so many times with Idrissa Gueye, where he would snatch at efforts. However, if you can guide your shot on target, anything can happen and maybe the goalie will spill it.
But wow, what a controlled, side-foot curler. The people around me were jumping for joy and we deserved it.