PL Gameweek 34 Fixtures - 29th April-4th May, 2023

[Stan]

all kick-offs 15.00 (BST) unless stated

Saturday 29th April, 2023
Crystal Palace vs West Ham, 12.30 (Live on BT Sport)
Brentford vs Nottm Forest
Brighton vs Wolves

Sunday 30th April, 2023
Bournemouth vs Leeds, 14.00
Fulham vs Man City, 14.00 (Live on Sky)
Man Utd vs Aston Villa, 14.00
Newcastle vs Southampton, 14.00
Liverpool vs Tottenham, 16.30 (Live on Sky)

Monday 1st May, 2023
Leicester vs Everton, 20.00 (Live on Sky)

Tuesday 2nd May, 2023
Arsenal vs Chelsea, 20.00 (Live on Sky)

Wednesday 3rd May, 2023
Liverpool vs Fulham, 20.00
Man City vs West Ham, 20.00 (Live on Sky)

Thursday 4th May, 2023
Brighton vs Man Utd, 20.00 (Live on Sky)

[RandoEFC+]

Leicester will be safe if they beat us on Monday. A draw would be better for us than for them. I can't see us winning unless Leicester really hand it to us but if we did it would boost our survival chances to about 50% and reduce theirs again to about the same, depending on how Leeds and Forest get on. I'd expect Brentford to see Forest off but with Bournemouth realistically out of the relegation fight now, I wouldn't be surprised to see them surrender a draw or even a win to Leeds.

[OrangeKhrush]

big game against Southampton, ticking them off one game at a time.  Flirting with the championship to champions league in 18 months is surreal, is this real life

[Dan+]

Christ this is massive.

[Stan]

36 minutes ago, Dan said:

Christ this is massive.

I can't tell if I'm calm or nervous right now.

Maybe after the weekend's results it'll be clearer! 

 

[MUFC]

1 hour ago, Dan said:

Christ this is massive.

You lucky twat.

[Dan+]

1 hour ago, Stan said:

I can't tell if I'm calm or nervous right now.

Maybe after the weekend's results it'll be clearer! 

This is the aspect that is interesting / terrifying - we're playing after everybody every weekend now until the final day.

[RandoEFC+]

Marcel Brands, our old Director of Football, has done a Dutch interview again this week. I'm always wary of former failed employees putting their own spin on what happened when they lift the lid on their time at their old job but it's all just too believable.

Claims include him being against the sacking of Marco Silva when it happened. Then he and Kenwright wanted Arteta but Moshiri wanted an experienced manager and spent way over what was sustainable to attract Ancelotti to the club along with James, Allan and Doucoure on huge wages. This was a huge gamble to get into Europe and the failure to do so and offset that spending with the income from European football is the reason we have to sell our biggest assets without really replacing them to comply with FFP. Brands didn't want Benitez but was overruled by Moshiri. He didn't want Rondon but was told to consider it "a gift to the manager", he also made a non-specific comment about meetings on yachts where phonecalls would be made to the manager about which players to pick. 

Obviously Brands resigned during the Benitez era, but we all know that Kia Joorabchian then entered from stage left having a say in managerial appointments, signings, etc.

None of this is real news. Really it's just confirmation of what we all suspected was going on with Everton for the last seven years. Moshiri had a stake in Arsenal but they never let him on to the board so he took his dollars elsewhere and found a chairman willing to do a dirty deal with him. Moshiri gets to be the outright owner of a football club and gets to play Football Manager in real life in return for his money while Bill Kenwright gets to say he found a billionaire for the football club whilst still getting to sit around on the board, call himself the chairman and have a major say in the day to day running of the club as well. Newcastle's owners have looked at us as a blueprint of what not to do, bought the club, got rid of the shite that had overseen the club's stagnation and started from scratch with new, effective people. It's not rocket science really yet Everton have been doing the complete opposite for 7 years and still nobody with any clout learns a lesson or does anything about it.

I still think it's mad how little airtime the board situation gets when Everton are discussed in the media or among general football fans. We've been having protest marches at every home game for most of the season against the board, they don't attend home games since the whole "headlock" accusation debacle, the chairman released a statement on the club website on the eve of the Palace game having a pop back at one of our fan groups out of pure self-interest. It's just become the norm, all of this dysfunction.

All of this is to say that, while we aren't relegated yet, I think over the past couple of days that, not out of my own choice, I've started to check out emotionally. The club is broken, and will keep getting more and more broken by Farhad Moshiri and Bill Kenwright, that it doesn't even really matter what league we're playing in next season. If we stay up, what is there for us? Getting battered every week, often by clubs who hadn't even been in the top flight since before I was born when Moshiri bought the club? Selling any players who perform well to stay afloat? Reading headlines on a monthly basis about us getting docked points for breaching sustainability rules? And fighting relegation again, unable to actually enjoy football? And if we get relegated, we're equally if not more likely to do a Leeds/Sunderland than a Newcastle/Aston Villa so long as those two are anywhere near Everton Football Club.

We might go down or we might not but there is nothing good about supporting Everton and nothing to enjoy about it. What was one of the great football clubs in the land has been dismantled, death by a thousand cuts before the eyes of an adoring fanbase who still turn up home and away and sell out every week, reduced to a tedious irrelevance and a national laughing stock.

I'm sure people will think about Everton fans, stop moaning, you've seen your team play Premier League football your whole life, you've seen them play at Wembley and in Europe. Plenty of clubs never get that. But whichever team you support, there are expectations where you get the joy when they're exceeded and feel pissed off when they're not met. You'd be hard pressed to find many clubs that have fallen short of where they should be more often than Everton over the past decade, and those fans old enough to remember us being the second most successful club in English history would say much longer than that.

Just needed to have a rant, didn't expect it to be quite that long  but long story short, I think I've experienced that feeling of reaching the end of your tether with something where you finally realise it just isn’t worth having any hope or expectation any more, and you saw that reflected in Goodison Park emptying out with 20 minutes left on Thursday night, the sort of scenes you just do not see at a club like Everton. From now on the mantra is to expect nothing and treat any shred of positivity or good fortune as a bonus. Hopefully one day the club will rise again but I can guarantee right now that day will not come until we can refer to Farhad Moshiri and Bill Kenwright as a distant bad memory.

[OrangeKhrush]

22 hours ago, Stan said:

I can't tell if I'm calm or nervous right now.

Maybe after the weekend's results it'll be clearer! 

 

got to love end of season anxiety.

[Danny]

A commentator for our game just said that Brentford could be the blueprint for what Forest could become. I needed a laugh today and that was a good one. You couldn’t find a club that opposes what it is that makes us so good more than Forest.

[Dan+]

Where the fuck was this the other night Brighton?

[Stan]

Fuck off Brentford. 

[Dan+]

Knew Forest would get a result here.

[Stan]

Brighton are good but Wolves are a joke  

[Bluebird Hewitt]

Ah ffs Forest. Conceding that late on. 

[Stan]

3 minutes ago, Bluebird Hewitt said:

Ah ffs Forest. Conceding that late on. 

According to Merson, this is what happened with the Toney free-kick:

 

- it went round the wall and in
- it went round the wall and hit the post and went in off the keeper
- it went round the wall and the keeper parried it in
- it went through the wall

 

So I'm still none the wiser and will wait for MOTD  

[Stan]

YES BRENTFORDDD!!!!

1 hour ago, Stan said:

Fuck off Brentford. 

I take this back.

[Bluebird Hewitt]

Ah ffs Forest. One job. You fucked it. 

[Danny]

17 minutes ago, Stan said:

According to Merson, this is what happened with the Toney free-kick:

 

- it went round the wall and in
- it went round the wall and hit the post and went in off the keeper
- it went round the wall and the keeper parried it in
- it went through the wall

 

So I'm still none the wiser and will wait for MOTD  

hes gone bang, bang, bang and its in

[Dan+]

Fantastic work Brentford. That is even better than beating them 5-0. That will absolutely crush their spirit.

[Danny]

There is something about that match that is peak Brentford versus Steve Cooper and that’s the drama.

Honestly Forest were fortunate to take the lead, they created very little and their goal came from a Gibbs-White shot that took a massive deflection and Danilo was able to react first and shoot.

The game as a whole was a bit boring from us, we weren’t inventive, we didn’t find a way to get through their defence and we weren’t really winning aerial duels. Toney was quiet for a large chunk of the game.

Hats off to Thomas Frank, we have nothing to play for now other than self-pride but we keep playing until the end. We started the game in a familiar 4-3-3 but ended it in all out attack mode; Toney was up centrally, Mbeumo was playing wide-right with Dasilva. Saman Ghoddos was playing as a left wing back, Wissa was drifting around either side of Toney and Baptiste and Onyeka were playing centre mid trying to introduce direct runs and a higher tempo energy into our passing.

The changes worked and we immediately looked more pro-active, became first to second balls, weren’t phased by Forest’s defence and that caused us to win a free-kick. To try and give a better explanation of it than Paul Merson…from the perspective of Ivan Toney rather than Kaylor Navas the ball was placed near the edge of the box but to the right rather than in a central position. We lined a wall-up to the left of Forest’s wall giving the impression that Mbeumo might instead try and swing it into the top left hand corner. Ivan stepped and his strike managed to go between Forest’s wall, the ball was hit with an out-swinging curve with pace but rather than try and power it into the corner, Toney made sure that the ball had a bounce a yard or two from the keeper to make it hard for him to judge where he needs to get a hand to. The bounce causes Navas to get a hand but he slaps the ball against the post and in.

By this point Forest were down to ten men as Danilo went off with a hamstring injury and they had no subs.

The second goal came in the 94th minute and it was peak Josh Dasilva, Josh had the ball on the right channel and managed to cut in, as he did he hit a curved shot into Navas’ near post to give us the lead. When you watch it back it can be easy to underrate the goal because it wasn’t hit with great power, but it was all precision and that is something that is well in Dasilva’s armoury. He’s struggled to fully replicate his form in the Premier League from his Championship days but he has clearly still got it in him at this level.

I do feel for Forest fans though, to lose all 3 points late on in that way must be heart breaking. But with that said they really offered nothing to the game and were just hoping they could sit deep, break the flow of the game up and get lucky on the counter. That was Steve Cooper 101 at Swansea, with talent like Gibbs-White, Johnson and Ayew going forward they need to utilise that a lot more rather than playing it safe and hoping for the best.

[RandoEFC+]

That Palace-West Ham result looks like peak end of season, shackles off, don't really care if we lose, just attack, have some fun and score as many goals as possible.

Good stuff from Brentford.

[Dan+]

2 hours ago, Danny said:

There is something about that match that is peak Brentford versus Steve Cooper and that’s the drama.

Honestly Forest were fortunate to take the lead, they created very little and their goal came from a Gibbs-White shot that took a massive deflection and Danilo was able to react first and shoot.

The game as a whole was a bit boring from us, we weren’t inventive, we didn’t find a way to get through their defence and we weren’t really winning aerial duels. Toney was quiet for a large chunk of the game.

Hats off to Thomas Frank, we have nothing to play for now other than self-pride but we keep playing until the end. We started the game in a familiar 4-3-3 but ended it in all out attack mode; Toney was up centrally, Mbeumo was playing wide-right with Dasilva. Saman Ghoddos was playing as a left wing back, Wissa was drifting around either side of Toney and Baptiste and Onyeka were playing centre mid trying to introduce direct runs and a higher tempo energy into our passing.

The changes worked and we immediately looked more pro-active, became first to second balls, weren’t phased by Forest’s defence and that caused us to win a free-kick. To try and give a better explanation of it than Paul Merson…from the perspective of Ivan Toney rather than Kaylor Navas the ball was placed near the edge of the box but to the right rather than in a central position. We lined a wall-up to the left of Forest’s wall giving the impression that Mbeumo might instead try and swing it into the top left hand corner. Ivan stepped and his strike managed to go between Forest’s wall, the ball was hit with an out-swinging curve with pace but rather than try and power it into the corner, Toney made sure that the ball had a bounce a yard or two from the keeper to make it hard for him to judge where he needs to get a hand to. The bounce causes Navas to get a hand but he slaps the ball against the post and in.

By this point Forest were down to ten men as Danilo went off with a hamstring injury and they had no subs.

The second goal came in the 94th minute and it was peak Josh Dasilva, Josh had the ball on the right channel and managed to cut in, as he did he hit a curved shot into Navas’ near post to give us the lead. When you watch it back it can be easy to underrate the goal because it wasn’t hit with great power, but it was all precision and that is something that is well in Dasilva’s armoury. He’s struggled to fully replicate his form in the Premier League from his Championship days but he has clearly still got it in him at this level.

I do feel for Forest fans though, to lose all 3 points late on in that way must be heart breaking. But with that said they really offered nothing to the game and were just hoping they could sit deep, break the flow of the game up and get lucky on the counter. That was Steve Cooper 101 at Swansea, with talent like Gibbs-White, Johnson and Ayew going forward they need to utilise that a lot more rather than playing it safe and hoping for the best.

The bit in bold truly surprises me. How so utterly out of character!

Get them gone!!!!!!

[Lucas]

2 hours ago, Danny said:

l do feel for Forest fans though, to lose all 3 points late on in that way must be heart breaking.

To be fair, didn't they snatch a 96th minute equaliser at home to you?

Seem to remember that game being a bit spicy. Swings and roundabouts.

[Danny]

1 hour ago, Lucas said:

To be fair, didn't they snatch a 96th minute equaliser at home to you?

Seem to remember that game being a bit spicy. Swings and roundabouts.

Yeah they did, I forgot about that haha, all I can remember is Jensen and Wissa’s lovely goal.

Honestly they offer so little on the pitch, its mad that they can make it seem so crazy that they lost the lead today. Scored a lucky goal and otherwise came to us to park the bus only, there’s a reason why Bournemouth have done as well as they have this season