The Toffees crash out to Wolves in the League Cup

A change is not always a good thing.

We rolled into Molineux last night thinking our form has been OK this season, albeit on the back of a 0-0 draw at home to Villa and an away defeat to Liverpool and we had already beaten the opponents this season in the league, although it was a lot closer in the end than it should’ve been but anyway, it was a League Cup game, a competition we have never won.

All the talk would be of course what teams both managers would put out, many thought as Wolves were on five straight losses in the Premier League, they may not worry too much about this game and put out somewhat of a second string team. As far as Everton went, we thought there would be some changes but overall, still a strong starting 11. Well, it’s fair to say, we got both of those assumptions wrong.

I wasn’t originally planning on going last night but during the day, i saw a couple of tickets become available and thought, yeah, I’ll do it. Took my eldest son along who is going through some serious issues at the moment so I thought it would be good to get him out, he is a Villa fan though so I am putting last night on him, joking aside, the last time he came to a game with me it was home against Leeds when Coleman scored that wonderful goal after racing down the right wing at Goodison Park a couple of seasons ago so I thought he may be a good luck charm, again, that didn’t play out.

When the team came out I did think, and I don’t think I was alone, there were maybe too many changes to our recent starting 11, Mark Travers came in for Jordan Pickford, we had a back 4 of Coleman at left back, Keane, Tarkowski & O’Brien, in the middle we had James Garner with Tim Iroegbunham, on the left we had Dwight McNeil, Carlos Alcaraz as the 10, Tyler Dibling getting his first start for the club on the right and Barry up top. As you can see, we had some serious omissions. We’re still missing Branthwaite but other than that, the lynch pins of the early season form, Gana Gueye, Dewsbury-Hall, Ndiaye and the man that is Jack Grealish were all left on the bench. I had my doubts about us getting a result, I must say, Wolves have only won one game this season and it was in this competition, a 3-2 win against West Ham after being 2-1 down.

The game was pretty dull if we’re honest, neither team did much and from Everton’s point of view, the changes really disjointed the whole outlook of the team, there was nothing really in the middle of the park to set the likes of Barry, Mcneil and Dibling away to create something for us, James Garner tries but when he has Iroegbunham next to him I think a bit is taken away from his game as he doesn’t have the security he does when Gana Gueye is there. Many wanted Barry to start and get a run of games after Beto’s performances recently, even though he did score one of our goals in the league win against Wolves, and although I have said I don’t think Barry basically has what it takes, and I hope he proves me wrong, I did agree maybe it’s time to leave Beto out for a while and use him as and when off the bench but against a team who’s moral must be really low at the moment, he didn’t do himself any favours to enamour himself to the fanbase or at least, myself.

Dwight McNeil came in from the dark, he’s not been used much, if at all, by Moyes this season and it’s not hard to see why, he was absolutely awful, he really was, there were shouts of sell him in January, I can’t see anyone that would want him, not the teams near the bottom of the league, the teams that have come up in the summer, in fact, I am not sure if a Championship team would take him in all honesty, he was that bad. As I posted on X, there was an argument behind me between two guys, I’ll say one older than me and one younger, and the older one was rightfully saying how McNeil was shite with the younger one coming back with “he has had the most goals/assists than anyone in the last 3 seasons, so he can’t be that shite” now he’s entitled to his opinion but I think that is totally irrelevant, going on players past exploits means nothing in the here and now and we can only judge him on what we see and he was terrible last night, maybe he wasn’t alone, but just on him, he was very poor.

We didn’t create much in the game and on the 29^th minute, Wolves went 1 up, a ball was fired in from their left, Travers palmed it away only for Munetsi to smash it in, he seemed to have all the time in the world, no closing down at all, really poor goal to give away. At half time, the manager made changes, he hooked Barry and Alcaraz for Beto & Dewsbury-Hall, the latter seemed to make a bit of a difference, he just has that little bit of something that was lacking but we still couldn’t break through. At that point I’d have also hooked McNeil for Grealish but that change came later on when also Dibling bowed out and Ndiaye came on, this was on about 58 minutes, so Gana Gueye/Pickford aside, this is pretty much the 11 we have been playing with this season (Mykolenko hasn’t played as many as we’d have liked, he did come on for Coleman later on in the game) but we still couldn’t make the breakthrough, Garner hit their bar with a freekick that I actually missed as I was coming back to my seat from the concourse but that just summed us up, I don’t even know if I can say we huffed and puffed, we were just not good enough overall.

We have never won this cup before, as we know, we haven’t won anything since 1995 so I was hoping, and I am sure you were too, that we would give this a real good go but in his infinite wisdom, the manager decided to make a whole raft of changes, maybe he was worried about injuries, maybe he underestimated Wolves or thought they wouldn’t go as strong because of what they are going through in the league but he should’ve realised, they are a Premier League side and not a Mansfield shall we say. As the game was petering out, Wolves broke on us again and scored their second, that was the que for many of us to leave the stadium.

It was a poor outing, Moyes got it wrong, the players that were out there weren’t good enough but we have to put it behind us now, we play West Ham at Hill Dickinson on Monday, we need to get back on the horse and get back to winning ways after 3 games now without a win.

Thanks for reading.