Silva: Everton players step up and be counted

As the fallout from the disastrous defeat at Millwall continues, Everton manager Marco Silva has demanded his players stand up and be counted if they want a future at the club.

In an article in the Liverpool Echo, Silva is quoted saying he is asking the Everton players show him they are committed to turning around the team’s fortunes as the pressure on him mounts.

The tendency after such a disastrous run of results such as the Toffees have endured, which culminated in Saturday’s FA Cup defeat, is to focus on the manager and ask whether it’s time for a change in the dugout.

But perhaps more of the emphasis should be on the players themselves. Several of these players have been bought at great expense and have a responsibility to produce the quality of performance that such fees demand.

Unfortunately too many of those players don’t seem to be delivering the kind of consistent performances required. So perhaps calling out certain players, if not by name, is justified.

But then on the other hand isn’t it incumbent on a coach and manager to find ways to get the best of out those players? Particularly if you have brought them to the club in the first place.

Now many supporters, me included, will ask why do professional footballers getting paid huge sums of money need motivation or coaching to ensure they play regularly at their best?

I think it’s a good question. However the reality is that perhaps like any other profession, sometimes it becomes just a job. And when things are not going well, personal motivation becomes a problem for some individuals.

Maybe that’s true but I reckon not too many Everton fans will have huge amounts of sympathy for players who cannot find the motivation to produce their best given how well paid they are and how elevated their status is.

Problems getting players to produce their best form could be down to personal problems with the manager, such as happened at Manchester United recently.

More from Prince Rupert's Tower

But that doesn’t seem to be an issue at Goodison Park. Silva seems to have a good relationship with most of his players. So then the question is, if that’s true, why aren’t they performing for him?

At this point it comes back round to the manager. I don’t know if it would be the right decision at this time to change manager, not least because of the cost and effort of finding yet another new coach this late in the season.

But I feel that Silva’s time at the Blues is perhaps drawing to a close. Unless Everton make a dramatic improvement in the next few weeks and months, it will be difficult for the board to resist the pressure for yet another change.