24 Feb 2026 09:20:26
Well that was ugly, but sometimes you have to win ugly games, against ugly teams and my god, Everton are an ugly team to play
The plusses were Lammens who grew in stature last night, and Sesko with another great goal, another player who we can see growing before our eyes.
Apart from that it was poor, misplaced passes, a lack of energy but hey ho, onwards and upwards. I love Mainoo but he needs to get a rocket up him, both he and Cas ambled around all night, showing no real energy or urgency, despite his stellar stats, Bruno was almost anonymous. Maguire suddenly looks like a fixture in the team and deservedly so, Cunha needs to learn to pass the damn ball.
Still, 5 wins out of 6, not playing for 2 weeks is never helpful so hopefully we will see a return to form against Palace.
24 Feb 2026 10:58:23
Yeah, both Mainoo and Cas were out of sorts last night. The game made my eyes bleed, but it was a lovely bit of quality to win it and a great finish. I used to think Everton fans were a bit too moany, but if that's what they do every week, I have a lot of sympathy for their fans.
{Ed025's Note - its like that most weeks Eric, thats what you get when you have a dinosaur like Moyes at the helm mate, he will make you hard to beat but at the cost of any style or substance as im sure you know from his time with you..
24 Feb 2026 11:25:35
Excellent result last night, and it keeps the pressure on for Champions League positions. 5 wins from 6 since Carrick took over, and we would all have taken that. It feels like we have lost some of the early momentum/excitement. However, at this point, we need the wins. Losing Dorgu and his energy has definitely taken something from the team, as did Martinez last night with his progressive passing from the back. There does also seem to be a number of peripheral factors that I think are impacting our performance: - Are we match sharp with so few games? It is great for the recovery, but we do seem to lose something after a break.
- Are we still short on the outside of the first 11, with Carrick relying heavily on the same 11? We have had issues when there is a second game midweek; we are just not used to this, and it hits us. - We seem to be getting games across the whole weekend, from early/late starts, Sunday, Monday! Everything bar 3pm on a Saturday. It should not really matter, but I think it has.
24 Feb 2026 12:06:55
I feel for you and your fellow fans, Ed. I've tried to block Moyes' stint out of my mind. Sadly, when he was in charge, we weren't even hard to beat. ?
{Ed025's Note - hes so pragmatic Eric and his teams are boring to watch, he plays to not get beat rather than win mate and yes hes a safe pair of hands, but my god its hard to watch..
24 Feb 2026 12:08:25
AJH, I'm just going to put it down as a complete off day for us. But most importantly, we came out with the 3 points. What we have seen now is us play both good and bad in 6 games, and we have come out with 16 out of 18 points.
Taking this all day long. 70 points needs to be the aim to get Top 4. I look at the run we have now until Chelsea, and we could really nail this in the coming weeks.
24 Feb 2026 14:51:35
Angel, I hope you're right, but this and the West Ham game were both very poor. We've been lucky in both and could easily have ended up with just one point. I'll take luck all day long. The fear I have is that, whilst Carrick seems better able to set up the team and make changes in the EPL than Amorim, it could be that Amorim's coaching was much better.
I do hope this is wrong, and that Carrick and his staff get the team back on form.
24 Feb 2026 15:38:48
DonRed, nothing to me says that Amorim was a better coach. Literally nothing; I am not sure where you get that. By the way, I'm not saying you're wrong, but nothing has shown me that he is a better coach, based on his time at United.
Carrick has had 6 games now: 4 of those were good wins, 1 was a win but a bad game, and 1 was a draw and a bad game. Amorim's record speaks for itself, I'm afraid.
24 Feb 2026 15:52:47
I really don't want to rehash this. But we have lots of metrics that show what I'm saying. But it's also not logical to think that the players can go from 14 months of poor coaching to suddenly being fantastic because of a couple of sessions, regardless of how good anyone thinks they are. Again, we won't ever agree on Amorim, except that I think he wasn't learning quickly enough how to set up and adapt to changes in EPL games.
Our running metrics, our expected goals for and against, all showed improvement. When we had our best players, we did well under him. I think we saw yesterday that, without Lisandro Martinez, we struggled to progress the ball, and our CMs don't have tempo players. Amorim tried to solve this with Bruno. Carrick has tried with Martinez. The danger in that approach is that it's much more predictable. I hope I'm wrong, but that's what I'm seeing.
24 Feb 2026 17:48:17
Just watched it today, was out late last night, ended up watching pieces in fast forward. Boring, no exciting football. Everton spoil most games, imo, with the way they play, and we don't have the players to counter that tactic effectively. A couple of surprise good performances in Dalot and Yoro, who were decent. Midfield three, Mainoo was best, imo, but not standout.
I'd take another 10 of them till the end of the season. Effort, commitment, and organisation will get us a long way in this league. Keep winning, secure CL, and finish as high as possible; that is all that matters. 3 points will do Carrick's case no harm, but the performance needs to be better from a few of them. Palace at home next, so 3 points there and we are 1 step closer.