With a mix of positives and negatives coming from Everton’s clash with Bournemouth at the weekend, manager Marco Silva was taking the plus points but he wasn’t ignoring the clear improvements we needed to make.
Heading to Dean Court and taking a 2-0 lead with goals from Theo Walcott and Michael Keane despite being down to ten men as Richarlison took an early bath, Bournemouth hit back inside of the final 15 minutes of the tie to level matters up and see us lose out on an extra two points and our first away win of the 2018/19 Premier League campaign.
🗣 | Boss pleased with the attitude of his players to take the lead with 10 men – but warns they must protect their leads better in future. #EFCawayday
👉 https://t.co/xOHUyrt3Mm pic.twitter.com/sMS9jYJDbA
— Everton (@Everton) August 25, 2018
Speaking to the Official Site as he met with the media for his post game press conference, the gaffer had plenty of praise for the performance of the squad, but he knew that our efforts hadn’t received the reward they deserved owing to the way we threw away the points in the closing part of the game.
Reactions from fans were mixed as they took to social media with their thoughts but clearly, there is an appreciation for what Silva is trying to achieve, we just aren’t there yet.
Perhaps you either need to practise that zonal marking thing better, or get back to man for man, which has proved a better marking method.
— Always Positive (+) (@NubiBlue) August 26, 2018
Unbeaten, scoring goals blimey actually having shots at goal. Chill out people, improvements are being made and that’s without most of the New signings.
— Craig (@ctayts) August 25, 2018
more shoots of recovery each week from our team, we need to keep our heads. love Marco and what he is trying to do.
— Trevor P Malcolmson (@trevor_p_malco) August 25, 2018
Zonal marking has to stop, completely ineffective and it’s costing us points, that along with individual errors. Solid defending and man marking on set pieces is a must. If we continue with this zonal marking this will just end up as Martinez part 2
— Paul Jones (@pauly1878) August 26, 2018
Still doing better than under that last fool! Just give them time and they’ll get better.
— Crazy A (@ADAL12) August 26, 2018
Why did/do we fail to close out a game? It happens time after time! #unprofessional pic.twitter.com/Dl0OfGxuFb
— Geoff Morris #MGWV (@nighthawkgeoff) August 25, 2018
Lost out on a win today due to a lack of discipline simple as
— . (@Dannyh_1878) August 25, 2018
Zones don't score goals, opponents do!
— MOP (@Mp49205658) August 25, 2018
NSNO
— WarpyTrauma (@warpytrauma) August 26, 2018
Devastated to drop the 2 points.
But my optimism remains intact!
We are playing quality football!I'm still looking forward to the next game, and i hope the rest of the fans can keep their heads up and avoid that plummet into negativity!
????????????— Jonny Hicks (@H1xYb0Y) August 25, 2018
We never attacked all last season. We went down to ten 2 out of 3 games and still undefeated and Tosun can actually control a ball and was brilliant all day…have a word mate. Yeha not great throwing away the lead but under Koeman Martinez and Allardyce we would have lost that
— Matty Saunders (@saunders_matty) August 25, 2018
The signs are there I think, we still need work and improvement and the signings we haven’t yet seen could provide that depending on how quickly they settle to the pace of the division, but it’s still early days and things should only improve – at least Silva isn’t ignoring obvious criticisms even if he’s not going overboard in talking about them, so he must be seeing what plenty of fans do and it’s his job to fix it where he can.