Win Over Palace has Everton believing they can beat Manchester United
Everton is the most in-form team in the league, but they face a traditional bogeyman on Saturday when they welcome Manchester United to Goodison Park
Moyes has Everton flying high heading into United match
I believed David Moyes was the right choice for Everton manager after the sacking of Sean Dyche. I know many disagreed with me, and they made good points. Moyes is not the very model of a major football manager. Hes not Pep or Claudio Ranieri; he’s not pushing the boundaries of what we thought tactically possible.
But he is the very model of a perfect Everton manager.
Moyes understands the club, its culture and its fanbase better than anyone who came after it. Dyche had a limited understanding, but not really. Carlo Ancelotti understood what the fans wanted to see. Rafa Benitez1 understood the culture, but he hated it. It was a leftover grudge from his life managing Liverpool.
Moyes knows that Everton fans, above all else, value hard work, relentless pressing and a complete inability to ever give up.
Moyes also has the ability to bring out the best in a player, not by belittling them, but by instilling confidence. Moyes has empathy for his players.
I have much more to say about Dyche in a future piece, but for now, I’ll give you these two key points:
His time at Burnley instilled in Dyche a belief that his system was infallible and that any shortcomings on the pitch were not the result of his system, but of the players inability to adapt to his tactical setup.
When it became clear his system was not working with this squad of players, he didn’t adapt his system to play to their strengths. He simply gave up, telling the board that he’d taken this squad as far as he could take them.
This is not true. Not in the slightest. Dyche could have turned his flailing Everton squad into a creative , goal-scoring team. But Dyche has an unearned self-belief in his own tactical acumen. All you have to do is watch his Masterclass video and you’ll see what I mean.
His stubbornness and absolute refusal to adapt, either to the modern-changing game or to in-game moments that require adjustments—will continue to hamper him wherever he next lands a managerial job.
🔢 Stat of the Day
Before his return, the Toffees had managed only 15 goals in 19 league matches - the fourth-lowest tally in their history - while their expected goals (xG) tally of 18.33 was the lowest in the division. In just six league games under Moyes they have already managed 12 goals - from an xG of 8.12.
SOURCE: T H E G U A R D I A N
OTHER NEWS
Everton Stadium’s first test match is an unqualified (and stunning) success
The sadness we feel at seeing the Grand Old Lady go is mitigated—at least in part—by knowing what awaits us on the banks of the River Mersey.
The new Bramley-Moore Dock Everton Stadium2 stadium is an elite football stadium that puts us on even footing with Tottenham and other European clubs who have unveiled new-ish stadiums over the past 5-10 years. On Monday, we got our first glimpse of what it’ll look like on match days when the Everton U18 team took on Wigan.
It wasn’t a good match for the U18 squad. Wigan Athletic may be a League One resident, but they’re still talented enough to see off a U18 team.
The only complaint from fans was about the camera angle being used for the broadcast. It was..not good. But Everton hero Alan Myers assuages our fears with this tweet:
“For those asking, this is a basic camera setup, nothing like what will be used in the PL."
You can watch the full test match on YouTube here:
Silly Season is in Full Swing
People think of “Silly Season” as the time of year when transfer rumors start making their way through Euroean newspapers. I won’t disagree that it’s exciting to open up my favorite sports page to find out that Everton is making a play for Jude Bellingham or Lionel Messi or some other historical player.
But it’s bullshit. Or at least 99.5% of it is bullshit.
I’m going to let you in on a ittle publishing world secret: Silly Season is basically another term for making up stories to sell newspapers. 3
Today’s dumb thing concerns Real Madrid allegedly trying to secure the services of Jarrad Branthwaite.
Here’s how it generally works:
A newspaper in Spain or somewhere else makes up a story about a club being ineterested in a player. Sometimes, the story says the club and player are deep in negotiations. They are not. In fact, these newspaper articles are often the first time the player, his agent and the teams in question have heard anything about the story.
A newspaper from a different country picks up the story, rewrites it to add even more bullshit, and then publishes it under a headline that would make any reasonable human believe the deal is done. And because humanity is largely done with reading anything other than a headline, they start telling their friends it’s a done deal.
Meanwile, dozens of other papers begin reprinting the story. The sources they list in the articles are other papers who have published the story. Not only are they linking to the original fictional story; they are doing zero diligence to find out if the story has any truth to it.
In less than 24 hours, supporters from the receiving team truly believe that an awesome new player is coming in to join their squad, only to be crushed when they finally find out it’s not true. And it has never been true.
I’m stunned that we don’t take these stories for what they are: Complete and utter fiction. But, nope. We play along every year, and the international sports media is more than happy to play along for one reason: money.
Truth doesn’t exist anymore. Not really. 4
Upcoming Schedule:
Everton (7-7-9; 30 points) vs. Manchester United (8-5-12, 29 points)
Goodison Park | 7:30 a.m. ET | USA Network
F O O T N O T E S
I’m still not convinced Benitez didn’t take the Everton job to have a little fun and screw things up. I have no proof of this.
Everton Stadium is a temporary name. There’s no timeline for signing a naming rights deal. But given how crucial the stadium is to international football (the Euros and eventually the World Cup), it’s only a matter of time before someone pays us a lot of money to slap their name and logo on the outside. My bet? Dan Friedkin’s extraordinarily close and historical ties to Toyota will result in the automaker winning the naming rights lottery.
You likely knew this already, but it bears repeating
I have so many things to say about the English press that it’s perhaps going to take a whole series to get it off my chest.