Oh no doubt I just don’t often see the correlation.
Though it will be tough as it follows the away tie in Turkey.
Oh no doubt I just don’t often see the correlation.
Though it will be tough as it follows the away tie in Turkey.
Early days, but our firepower fills me with hope. We haven’t clicked yet but we can still score the goals and get the points on the board. As we improve we will start to add routine victories, and we need to do that, both for energy levels and the fact that you can’t count on winning by fine margins all the time.
I don’t see anyone else who is better placed than us for the title, but we have to earn it.
LFC is the biggest winner in this gameweek with zero injuries, zero suspensions, and 3 points while playing shit for a huge swathe of the game. Long may it continue!
The last line tickled me ; “Liverpool can’t keep winning by one goal every week, we hear. This is true. They’re quite likely to start winning by three or four.”
I think the City Arsenal game yesterday highlighted how far back City are. Arsenal in many ways face the same challenge as we do - i.e. in getting the new recruits to adapt to their new environment. Getting Wirtz and Isak firing by Christmas will be key.
Perhaps. I personally don’t think they have bought the quality to match. Add that to the fact they play with the handbrake on and the imagination setting set to zero and I think they’ll struggle enough to score goals when it matters that it will hurt them when competing for the highest honours.
We’ll see how yesterdays result affects them. It can’t be viewed as a bad one but City are there for the taking and they were at home. It’s just the momentum shift in pulling one out the fire that might give them a bit of a change in mentality. How that plays out after years of being a rich man’s Stoke with those tactics ingrained? We’ll see.
We were at home to Arsenal and we sneaked it. I think the margins are not as wide as some think. I agree that we bought premium but compliancy or a couple of injuries are the danger - beyond not having our team singing from the same karaoke screen.
They’ve brought the quality. But doesn’t matter who they buy if Arteta persists in playing 3 DM’s in midfield. Especially when he had Nwaneri and Eze in the bench.
Bring back Wenger
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Arsenal are on course to finish the league with at best 76 points.
We are on course for 114
Arteta appears to have taken them up a blind alley. His pound shop Mourinho act isn’t really doing what vintage Mourinho Chelsea did, which was pound everyone else and reliably get at least a draw against direct rivals away, win at home. Instead they have dropped those big game points, and playing for a corner is no substitute for the sheer brutality of the pressure the best Mourinho teams built attacking lesser sides. They are one genuinely bad result against a midtable side from crisis.
We didn’t though, we weren’t great for about 30 minutes but they did the total sum of fuck all in that 30 mins.
After the loss to us they needed to beat Man City and the City defence does look shaky however City did create a couple of chances. It certainly showed the ability to exploit what is deemed as impregnable by some.
Our victory over them was at most what was required, it’s the same with them and Man City. Newcastle really is key, we went and won there if they don’t and we get 3pts it will start to build pressure which as we saw last season starts to spiral.
As Barney Ronay says we will likely start to gel more fluidly we aren’t even out of 3rd gear, the first 60 against Madrid demonstrated what we are capable of and if we start to play like that then we should start to see more comprehensive results. We are a work in progress.
Definitely - I just hope that Wirtz and Isak will filter out the pressure that will inevitably come from outside because people like to see big transfers fail, especially if they are rival fans. They will need time to get with the rest of the side and I feel the two of them fit and firing is what this side needs to hit the fourth and fifth gear.
And hopefully, just hopefully. Some of their fans who were vociferously Wenger out towards the end of that man’s tenure start putting more respect to the guy and realise how toxic their treatment of him was.
Arsenal would have gotten atleast 2 more leagues if Arsene had half the backing that arteta recieved (in 6 years) over the entire length of his career.


I see there are lots of Evertonians still complaining that there wasn’t enough added time on Saturday’s match. I checked up the recommendations for this season and there are a few thing that are slightly different to what I thought:
Effective playing time
Allowance is made by the referee in each half for all playing time lost in that half through:
- Substitutions
- Assessment and/or removal of injured players
- Wasting time
- Disciplinary sanctions
- Medical stoppages permitted by competition rules, e.g. ‘drinks’ breaks (which should not exceed one minute) and ‘cooling’ breaks (ninety seconds to three minutes)
- Delays relating to VAR ‘checks’ and ‘reviews’
- Goal celebrations
- Any other cause, including any significant delay to a restart (e.g. due to interference by an outside agent
Calculation of additional time
More accurate calculation of additional time in line with IFAB guidance to enhance effective playing time.Calculation of additional time
- Goal: Added time clock to start after 30 secs
- Substitution: Exact time (play stopped to restart)
- Injury: Exact time (play stopped to restart)
- Penalty kick: Exact time (award to restart)
- Delaying restart/time wasting (e.g. ‘ceremonial’ free kicks, goal kicks): Referee to make allowance based on match events
- Red card: Exact time (red card shown to restart)
- VAR check/review: delays restart Exact time
The one I didn’t realise is that the clock for a goal starts after 30 seconds of it being scored (and before the restart of play) rather than it being a straight 30 seconds regardless. I’m not sure how fast the restart was on Saturday but I remember it being quite fast. There were three substitute breaks. No injuries, penalties, red cards or VAR delays. That just leaves the ceremonial free kicks at the ref’s discretion.
The regulations are on page 64 here, if anyone is interested:
Just one more minute would have been more than fine, then we could have finished that break and beat them 3-1.
Everton are a half decent side for where they’ve been in recent years. They need a striker, but they will finish comfortably mid table. They gave it a good go in the derby to try to come back. We could have concentrated a bit better, but essentially we had the thing won early on, and after playing a tough game on Wednesday night against Atletico, it looked a bit like we were managing resources and not going at it the whole game.
Which is lucky for Everton.
Winners win and losers whine. They are barking up the wrong tree on the time thing, as there is a good-sized gap between the level of the sides.
When we are watching a match together, we have a game to guess the added time. I’m usually pretty good at it: +/- 1 minute. I called it right on Saturday as well. If there is more added time than I expected, it is usually because I forgot one long injury or VAR break.
Interestingly, in European games it is not unusual to see no added time at all at the end of the first half.