My question to Sean Dyche is ‘why can’t you see what everyone else is seeing?’
In his press conference at Aston Villa, he joked that he’d watched the Bournemouth game 42 times and he was still convinced that it wasn’t about substitutions. The whole world, including every other pundit on television knows that Everton were fatigued and subs were needed.
Dyche said you didn’t see that, and we played well for 87 minutes but the balls inside were coming from the 80th minute and you took too long. Against Villa, the warning signs were there more or less from the kick-off.
You could say that you’ve gone to Aston Villa and the scoreline was a lot closer than I thought it would be and the home side won the game by a wonder goal but for me, the all-round play is making the game too difficult for us to get something out of a football match.
We should have packed the midfield and stopped the supply going forward. For me, that would have been braver from the manager to try and stop the problem at source, and we got a goal when we actually did that.
Like I said in my column last week, while we know Amadou Onana’s strengths, we also know his weaknesses and that he takes liberties at times. Dwight McNeil saw that – brilliant – and took the goal well.
So let’s do it again. But no, we sat back and let them get into a rhythm.
I wanted to see a reaction from the players. I wanted to see a bit of fight and desire.
I also wanted to see whether the manager had learned his lesson from the game at Aston Villa last season.
We knew that getting beat wouldn’t define our season but given the run we’re on, we hoped the manage could find a solution to get something out of the game. At one point it was 84% possession for Aston Villa but Everton were 2-0 up but a lot of Evertonians were still thinking ‘this is going to feel like a long game now, can we hold on?’
Aston Villa played us off the park. The first two goals that we conceded were mistakes but I listened to Dyche’s comments after the game when he said every time we make mistakes we are getting punished but my question would be ‘why are people making mistakes?’
Is the set-up correct? Is it the mentality?
Players aren’t trying to make mistakes but they’re possibly getting forced to do things that they can’t do like Jack Harrison who could have held his line and try and keep them offside, but he tried to be honest and he just wanted to try and get anything on the ball. He got a touch and unfortunately it fell to Ollie Watkins.
If Dominic Calvert-Lewin had taken his chance and made it 3-1, would the feeling at Villa Park have changed? There seems to be a lack of belief in this side though.
