Every team whether that be in business or in sport needs a strong leader who leads by example to help the team to become successful. Everton’s captain should not be starting because he’s not good enough, Seamus Coleman has played two good games since he came back from a horrendous leg break. Coleman has a serious amount of credits from the Evertonians with all the amazing things he does off the pitch and it pains me to say it but if we have any sort of ambition we need to drop him from the side due to poor form. Maybe a rest might do him good but I can’t see it, watch how much he runs around the pitch complaining and trying to get fouls all the time rather than actually just getting on with the game. His pace and confidence have completely gone and teams are going out of their way to double/triple up on him as everyone else in the league can see that his legs have completely gone.

I’ve actually no idea who I’d hand the armband too – maybe Gylfi Sigurdsson? If we look at the team from back to front, our keeper has lots of potential but always has a mistake in him, he’s been acting completely unprofessional and immature recently – constantly trying to get involved with things he really doesn’t need to. Right Back we have Jon Joe Kenny who we need to give a run in the team but ideally we need a new right back as we are hopelessly short in this area. Will the January window be the time to do this? Who knows let’s hope the recruitment team has a plan.

Left back we look great no issues whatsoever, central defence is as strong

an area in the squad except when we play a high line against pace like we did against Spurs which was completely ridiculous. Our first choice starting central midfield i.e. Gomes, Gana and Sigurdsson is fantastic, I don’t think Tom Davies, Morgan Schneiderlin, McCarthy, Besic and Dowell are going to be adequate replacements so we need to sell or loan out these players but more importantly, we need to purchase two new central midfielders. In the wide positions, we have Richarlison, Bernard, Lookman, and Walcott, I personally think Walcott has not played that well this season but I do still think he’s a good player.

I think if we could potentially bring in another winger then that would benefit the squad but I don’t think it’s a desperate position we need to address. The strikers at the club are not up to speed, we all know that we’ve never replaced Lukaku, Tosun has not impressed the manager to get a consistent start, Niasse is not good enough and in his defense I don’t think that we’ve given Calvert Lewin an adequate amount of game time to run the rule on him. I’m hoping that we see him start as a striker more often with Richarlison playing off the wing.

Will we see any of the youth strikers get a promotion to the first team? I sincerely doubt it but maybe Fraser Hornby might get an opportunity?

We’ve all signed up for the project and we knew that it would take a long time to sort the problems out from last year. Getting a complete hiding from Spurs might be a blessing in disguise as I really feel that this is a timely reminder that our squad is not strong enough. Regardless of recent form, I do feel optimistic about the club as a whole, I trust that the Manager will turn the squad around and will play an attacking brand of football whilst we are at it. I feel that if the Manager doesn’t trust his younger players i.e. Kenny, Davies, Dowell, Holgate, Baningime et al to start games then it would be better to loan them all out to leading European leagues. If you look at how well Lookman did last year, Jadon Sancho looks like a world beater at Dortmund and Reiss Nelson of 1899 Hoffenheim (on loan from Arsenal) has scored 6 goals in 11 appearances!

We’ve been successful at U18 and U21 levels yet none of our players are getting much of a run in the team, let’s put this season to one side, let’s throw all of our efforts at the FA Cup and build a squad to challenge the top 6 next season. If we play a weakened team in the cup then I’ll completely lose my head as we’ve been doing this for far too long. As frustrating as it can be – stick with the team, we’ve green shoots of optimism and Rome was not built in a day, I believe that Brands will find us some leaders to add to our sometimes toothless senior player group.

Keep the faith – we’ll get there!