This is exactly right. Which is why it's illustrative to see what a neutral site says (Sky) without a pony in the race. Everton fan reactions are overwhelmingly colored by the overall result.
A few weeks ago Donovan was pedestrian in a win against Wigan, and people counted that against him, because even though Everton won that shouldn't mitigate the fact that LD supposedly was average. Yesterday, Landon played very well while his team stunk, and now people are counting it against him because, and I quote: Everton were terrible. Donovan was part of it. When you have a game like that -- especially one in which your team is up a man for a large portion of the game -- it's pretty pointless to denote a MOTM. they were all pants. Seriously?
The start of the year was very poor for the entire defense,thanks largely IMO to the Lescott drama. They and he have improved since then.
Keep it simple, man. An attacking player's job is to create goals. Altidore for example is creating goals at a rate of more than 1 every other game and doing so on a poorly resourced team. If the end of LD's latest European foray sees decent attacking numbers then we can say he didn't perform too badly.
And you continue to go out of your way to marginalize Landon Donovan. Why people can't simply accept that he's a good player and doing a good job is beyond me. That's simple.
But I don't think it is fair to say an 'attacking' player can't have a good game in which his team does not score.
hahaha! C'mon, you're reading a bit too much into my comments. All I'm saying is wait until the end of his loan and tally the numbers. I'm not advocating passing judgement on the man at this point; he hasn't had enough games.
Story of your season isn't it. Who were you actually missing? Johnson and Torres? Try Baines for best player. We lost, so what. Can't argue with that. There's not much to tell between the two sides anymore. Compared to last season. If you get 4th I'll buy you a beer mate.
Running around making runs doesn't make a good performance does it? Impact does. What did Donovan do apart from the run? He had a few good touches. He was about the same as Fellaini. Fellaini was bossing the midfield for his time on the pitch.
Fair enough but would you also be reserving judgements about LD until the end of the loan if he was stuck on the bench at this point and only seeing minutes as a sub? I won't speak for you but I know others would be quick to calling the move a failure if that were the case.
Absolutely. I'm addressing the aggregate of a player's performances though. I mean Bobby Zamora had many a 'good game' last season and Hoggs was not surprisingly looking to unload him. This season he's scoring goals and all of sudden there was talk of England calling. There isn't much room for Emile Heskey types out there and even Heskey's career fortunes haven't been consistent.
I would not call it random, Timmy is a great shot stopper, but his weakness has always been crosses. He has gotten a lot better, but it is still a relative weakness.
I think this is an important point. One reason for Donovan's "lack of productivity", if you can call it that, is that he and Neville aren't on the same page for much of (all of) their games. In earlier games, Neville was simply booting the ball upfield towards Cahill and Saha at every opportunity. Yesterday, Donovan was often playing inside and not stretching the field as one might think he should be doing playing against a man down. Either way, they aren't combining well. If they were, I think Donovan would get more touches and thereby more chances to put his impact on the game.
Fellaini was bossing the midfield? He played for 30-something minutes before he came out. His lack of composure was just as evident as Pienaar's and he wasn't making any kinda of strong impact either. "Running around" is not a fair description either. That's using descriptive words to fit your opinion. I may be rating Donovan higher than he was, but Fellaini was not owning the midfield yesterday.
We're up to 766 posts in this thread now. That gives Donovan the #1 and #2 biggest gameday threads ever, right? The Man City thread had over 600, so that was like top 5 also, right?
I too thought Baines was our best player, but up til he went off, I still think Fellaini was the best player on the pitch. Can't help but think we would have won had he been on the pitch for 90. Donovan tried his best, he made some smart runs, terrified Insua a fair number of times (I liked that he was running at him, I have barely seen him take players on in his time here, like he took on Insua), but like the rest of the team, final pass/touch was lacking. He was one of our better players.
Watch the game again is all I'm going to say. My sentiments exactly. Donovan was in the top 3 but wasn't the best IMO.
To be fair, I agree with Tony. Liverpool had zip when Fellaini was on the pitch, I can barely recall them getting near our penalty area other than the frantic start, until Fellaini went off.
Fellaini was a huge loss in that match. He was the last player Everton needed to lose in that physical of a match.
Neville isn't a Yank, so his performance is not real relevant. Howard screwed up and showed off his biggest issue. Donovan was just OK, at least Moyes left him in.