SILVA HAS TO SHINE
I WAS interested to hear Farhad Moshiri speak at Everton’s AGM – because there’s no doubt some of it was aimed at the manager.
The owner telling the fans about the club’s aspirations and where they should be, saying the current position simply isn’t good enough, hardly helps when Marco Silva is under pressure.
But maybe that’s the point. I’m yet to be won over with the team’s performances under the new boss and I KNOW a lot of Evertonians feel the same.
Sometimes, he looks like a lost soul on the sidelines and that is worrying for the fans.
The thing is, he goes into the Bournemouth game under far more pressure from fans than he’ll ever be from the board. They won’t put up with him looking lost for much longer. They want to see a boss who is decisive and has belief in what he does.
And they want to see a team which reflects that.
I get where Moshiri was coming from. He’s invested a lot of money, will invest far more in a new stadium and wants to ensure they have a winning team when they move into it.
For me, that means backing the manager. If you are going to talk about where you want the club to be and what your ambitions are, then you have to give him the resources to meet those demands.
Silva said he would have to get rid of players before he brings any more in. That’s understandable with a big squad, but really it is time to back the manager and see if he’s the right man to lead Everton into the future the owner talks about. AS I’ve already detailed in my words on Harry Kane (above), I’m a great believer in getting games won before you rest players. So it’s interesting to see how Liverpool react in the next few weeks to their first real blip of the season, which, I think, was brought on by themselves. Any side can be People made a big deal – negatively – of him asking to come on against Tranmere when his side was already winning 6-0. But, for me, it shows the mentality of top strikers is no different to when I was playing. I hated being left out. Hated it. I was the most frustrated man ever when I didn’t play. I got into more trouble at Liverpool for my reaction to being “rested” than I ever did for all the high-profile scrapes that made the papers. Gerard Houllier tried to introduce a rotation policy – and it did my head in. I was out of the squad altogether for the final game of the season in 1999-2000 when we needed to win at Bradford to make the Champions League, after I’d hit the roof about being subbed in the previous game. We lost. Erik Meijer and Titi Camara played ahead of me. I won’t go into detail about the voice message I left on the manager’s phone after the game. But the point is, Kane is no different to me, or any of the forwards who live for goals. I have seen so forgiven for losing at Manchester City, especially the way Jurgen Klopp’s team played at the Etihad.
But maybe he should have reacted by putting Mo Salah (left) and Roberto Firmino in from the start at Wolves in the FA Cup.
Win the game, then rest them, rather than chase the game.
It’s gone now, of course, but I felt