Both sides have dreams of Champions League qualification, and with Liverpool again slipping up there are now four clubs on 39 points with the Anfield men clinging to fourth spot only on goal difference.
And it is City who are beginning to slip. They are now down to seventh having held a top four spot for much of the season, and their manager was disappointed with their approach at Goodison Park.
Eriksson said: "It took far too long for us to get going, we started 40 minutes late. Just the last few minutes of the first half saw us starting to play the football we want to play.
"We were kicking long balls, chasing second balls, we are not good at that. If that is the way we are going to play our football we will have to sell half our team and buy other players instead.
"We will not do that. So it was frustrating and disappointing, we were not brave enough to play the way we wanted in the beginning.
"It was more our attitude. Joe Hart kicked the ball out more than 18 times in that first half, long balls going nowhere and we are not good at that.
"In training it is forbidden. So why did we do on Saturday something different to the way we play in training all week?"
He added: "But credit to Everton. They are aggressive and our opponents know we want to play football and they try to prevent it.
"We have to be big enough to beat that if we want to be a great team. But we were more positive in the second half, our attitude was much better.
"But we did not create enough chances. Considering how much we had the ball, we should be creating more opportunities than that. But it has been our problem in many, many games this season."
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Lets not panic - we were out muscled and some of the challenges Carsley & neville put in today were X rated
Sven knows were we wnet wrong and we have a chance to correct it on Wednesday
Lets get a striker signed and Michael Johnson back
CTID
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
City's patient sit-back and counter-attack approach has worked well this season, witness away at Newcastle, at home to Bolton. But they didn't do it today, they weren't quick enough, and they look vulnerable when the opposition comes at them at speed (Everton, Villa away.) Sven should get Etuhu going forward. Or send Richards on a few runs down the wing, he could cause mayhem with his strength. Or get SWP back (but he seems to be a bigger part of Chelsea's plans now.) In any event, they can try this: 1. Pass ball out to wing. 2.Winger run fast and kick ball into middle. 3. Kick ball between them two white sticks. Sounds simple when you say it like that. Do that v WHU (and Dunnie, you deal with Ashton) and it'll be OK.
Latest news- MU recruit Maltese communications expert with broken keyboard. Sliema celebrates.
I agree with the coach.. the team played with fear, poor passing and some greedy moves. No communication amongst players and no middle control of the field. Hence no threat generated on offense. Too much wait and see and no one tried to pass the ball to Castillo.
All genuine city fans feel just like you Sven. But it must be glaringly obvious we need personnel to sustain our push for European football, especially upfront and in our midfield. However most city fans feel the signing of the left sided Castillo on loan who has apparently paid to join us, and the signing of an unknown Iraqi are indicative of serious cash flow problems at the club, and not the kind of signings the good doctor led us to believe we would be seeing at city. I hope we were not a tool for the doctor to further his political ambitions and profile as the cynics believe? I am sure the good doctor will soon loosen the purse strings in pursuit of success for Manchester city, he bought Manchester city with the promise of money for success and a 3 year plan to achieve his aim. maybe he did not expect to see progress so quickly surprising him and his bank manager, one or two big signings in the next couple of weeks will reassure us fans .if this season gets away from us, fans will wonder over our chairman’s true intentions and ambitions, I am not calling the doctor” but the truth will be in the pudding”, up to now the only money outlaid by the doctor was to secure himself Manchester city football club, all the pre season signings were secured using TV money (40,000,000),players where a full fee was expected upfront were not secured i.e.: £4,000,000 Bresciano, now is an ideal opportunity for our chairman to prove to all his doubters that he is serious about his intentions and ambitions, break the bank for a world class striker, and midfielder and consolidate a European place
this was simply not good enough. in fact is was real bad. we had our one shot at their goal at the death, with a weak(to be nice) header from bianchi just before the final whistle. my god this is bad one shot at goal all game. i am tired of seeing richards and dunne passing back to hart for him to just kick it up. that has happened in more games this season. now back to the formation with corluka, dunne, richards and garrido. then we can play offensive football that was so effective earlier in the season. our forwards cant be judged on this! we arent creating any chanses! sort this out. 4 4 2, PLEASE!
Joint for points with Liverpool, Villa and Everton. I cant say I am overly dissapointed that we lost- Everton are playing just as well as we are so we need to capitalise in other games- and win the fixture at eastlands.
Sad to see us dropping down to seventh, but get back to winning ways and fourth has our name on it.
Take this result on the chin, I would rather loose away to a good Everton side and learn some lessons and improve, than loose to loose againt one of the 'lesser' teams and learn nothing.
Always a red, are you one of the many local! Malta rags who never go. Sad,Sad, very Sad.
Mr Always a Red, Sliema, Malta. Why didn't you just say "I'm a creep"?
i watched the game in the week against doncasters first team behind closed doors.the team was issacson,sun,mills,goredo,logan,dabo,marshall,ethu,impenza,bianchi,santiago who was on trial from argentina.With all these names on show i thought city would be comftable not a chance if it wasnt for the young midfeilder marshall who scored twice this would of been embarasing to say the least,man of the match was issacson he was outstanding and the young midfeilder marshall looks like he could play for us right now also there was a trialist keeper in for city swedish u21 he also looked excellent. what iam trying to get at is ihope sven doesnt start clogging up the club with rubbish like some of these players who played in this game because beleive me some of them are not up to the challange some of our kids are better than half of these first team members .remeber dabo picks up 30.000 a week why is he still here.i think sven needs to sought us out from top top bottom get rid of all the clingers and maybe he will see the wood through the trees and then we can think of fourth spot and trophies
Man utd fan in Malta suprise suprise, utd spent £300m+ City £30m, says it all there you've been buying the title for years
Always a red, MALTA, that just about says it all, dosent it... YOU NUMPTY!!
Is it me, or is it strange that Mark Halsey has give us F*%% all since Wembley 99??
Booked Haman for a perfectly good tackle, Didnt send Cahill off for a second bookable offence, and as for Carsley's challenge on Corluka, X-rated dont you think Mark?
ALWAYS RED, GET BACK ON YOUR OWN SITE AS I CAN SEE YOU RAGS ARE GETTING WORRIED ABOUT US!!!
Sven will sort it out but we need a tall, strong striker! Come on Sven put that bid in for Fred!
Every time a City player spouts off about playing in Europe prior to a game with get beat. Zip it will ya. We need to bring in a few more players before we can even think about Europe. Right now we are doing well but not near good enough for Europe enough said. Getting impatient come on Sven sign a goal scorer before they all get snapped up.
We deserved a point out of the game after looking like the home team in the 2nd half, but we have to learn to stick the ball in the net. Openings were created (not many) but no one seems to want to take responsibility for taking a pot at goal. They have to learn that you have to speculate to accumulate. Not to work the keeper until the final minutes of the game is criminal. Castillo kept drifting inside and running into trouble, plus the pace of the game looked too much for him. Elano isn't back yet - we're missing his link up play with Jonno that was there earlier in the season. If we have any pretensions about being a top 6 side we need look at our goal difference. Unless it improves we might miss out, which would be a shame.
On the evidence of todays match I think it is becoming increasingly evident that we need a right winger. Everton limited Petrov's possesion and Hibbert played very well at right back to stop his crosses. If we had a similar option on the right side then we would have another supply route to the forwards. I think Corluka is playing better in the midfield now, although sometimes he dwells on the ball too long and loses possesion, but for me he is Svens best signing so far. Too early to comment on Castillo but I don't think Bianchi is the answer for City, maybe with a better balanced side, a right winger to complement the left side, then our strikers would have more chances. Hopefully either Sturridge or Bojinov will provide the goals, but I think City should get a proven striker, maybe Defoe who plays with a lot more energy and pace than any striker we have at the club at the moment. If we don't go for Defoe then after seeing the comments on here then Elmander should be the second choice. We still need a right winger and if Sven doesn't like the look of Mancini, too old and loss of form then City should make a 15 million pound bid for Bentley. He scores goals, can take better free kicks than either Petrov or Elano and is often Blackburns best player, plus he's young and English, but well worth the money in my opinion. If City are serious about European football then we still need at least four more players and a decent right winger is one of them. Arteta caused City problems with his free kicks and City need someone of similar quality who can whip free kicks into the danger areas inside the box. Don't forget that Everton had three of there better players missing today as well and still climbed above us in the league. If City are to progress then we need to score more goals and having your first shots on goal in the 90th minute isn't going to help our goals for column in the league table. Come on Frank let SVG spend some cash on a couple of decent front men then the great build up play from the defence and midfield will actually count for something. More City goals per game wouldn't harm the attendance figures for home games either. The games in Jan and Feb will almost certainly sort out where City will finish in the league this year and our first crunch game hasn't ended with a positive result for the Blues.
while the lack of chances is a worry at least we know there will be an improvement where last season under pearce there was no chance of improvement it's going to take time.KEEP THE FAITH
When Sven took over the reigns at our beloved CITY, I thought wow! This is fantastic, and with Sven having won the league & cup doubles in three different countries I knew that he wasn’t here just for the money, and given time he would win things for us, so lets enjoy the ride knowing that we are at least two years ahead of the plan that’s for sure, I am not disheartened by today’s loss to Everton as its bound to happen from time to time.
CTID, you missed something. We need to get rid of Vassell, he's just not good enough and it's baffling why, when Sven has got most things tight this season, he persists with Vassell. He doesn't score enough goals, he's always offside and we've plenty of better options i.e. Etuhu, Bianchi, Geo, Castillo (even though he didn't play well yesterday), Ireland, Fernandes or even Ched Evans. Whatever the choice, we always look and play better with the ball on the floor. Some people knock Bianchi, but he's scored 5 goals this season without having a proper run in the side. His awareness of players around him and his first touch is infinitely better than Vassell's
Usual story at Goodison City let Everton bully them as they always do and Everton took full advantage of a weak referee.
The team are far to lightweight up front and fail to close the opposition down quickly allowing them time and space to deliver passes into danger areas.
As a team we are slow learners at winning the second ball.
The team tries to walk the ball into the net instead of having speculative shots and yesterday the delivery into the box was appalling
We lost because we have no real cutting edge up front. All top teams have at least one or two world class finishers, we have none. I would go so far as to say that our strikers are not good enough for the Premiership and that includes Bianchi. Look at our goals scored, mainly from midfield. This was a great start to the seson but we are starting to find our currert true level with this squad. I have no doubt that with two or three good signings we could be top six but that will mean a class act up front. I am now going to create a lot of debate. Micahis reportedly holding out for 75k a week having been offered double his existing to 50k. IF this is true and based on ALL his performances this season, I would seriously consider selling him. Why sell the family silver. Simple, no need if money is no object but that does not seem to be the case. We need to spend somewhere in the region of 15m to get the sort of player we need up front and 10m for a ball winning holding midfield. Perhaps another 10m for a right wide man. Thats 35m and I dont think thats Svens current budget.
Whats Micahs market value? Well get Chelsea,
Arsenal, liverpool and a top European club involved and it could just be enough for the players we need. Replace Micah at CB with an experienced player, Van Buyten is available for 6-7m, and the balance of the back four looks good.
I repeat, if money was no object I would not suggest this action but it appears its not. And I have to say I am not totally convinved about Micah
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Always a Red, Sliema, Malta
Quite a limited vocabulary you have there, you must be a proper rag!
CTID
We need Jan clas huntalaar NOW