To say the season is beginning to crumble away would be an understatement, and Steve Bruce knows it. Second best and apathetic, he called us in his missive from Goodison …
Dear Colin
That was up there with our most disappointing days this season.
We’ve prided ourselves on our resilience, especially away from home, and that’s the disappointing thing for me.
Today we were too easily beaten and we have to admit that. We gave poor goals away and when you do that in this division, you get punished.
Goodison has never been a good hunting ground for us, but wherever we go in the Premier League, if we play with that apathy we’ll come unstuck.
We had the first chance through Kieran before they scored, and then Sessegnon hit the bar which might have made a difference.
But I can’t make excuses because we were second best today.
The two goals we conceded today were awful and that’s summed us up of late. You can’t give away goals like that.
The one reason we’re in the situation we’re in is the defensive situation across the whole team.
At the moment it’s not quite right so we have concentrate on that.
All the best,
Steve Bruce
You guys seem to have forgotten about the injuries that have weakened the team.
We thought that we were going to see something special when the midfield was “stiffened” with the signings of Sessegnon and Muntari. Three or four weeks ago I was of the view that letting Andy Reid go to Blackpool was a sensible move. Even though I’ve always liked the player it seemed that we had moved on. It doesn’t quite look that way to me now.
It was a gutless performance. The promise of genuine progress has evaporated and we seem to be in free fall. The lack of any sort of replacement for Bent (which I said at the time was going to be a huge mistake) and so it has become. A PL side hoping to make the top 6 with only one fit striker seems incredible. Incredible but ridiculously true.
Well thats four in a row we have lost and 3 from winning positions! Steve you can’t keep saying the same thing after each defeat, obviously the players aren’t responding. The defeats just happen to correspond with the arrival of sessegnon and Muntari, is it a case of they haven’t quite gelled together yet? From what I have seen we don’t seem to have the cohesion in the team, the midfield seems divorced from the defence and we are not as slick going forward. Certainly the goals we are conceding are soft and opposing teams are going to recognise that we are vunerable right now. There is nothing worse than a lack of confidence on the pitch and we need to halt this slippery slide quickly. Europe all of a sudden looks a long way off!!!