This was Sunderland, not Real Madrid – they shouldn't dictate game

THE easiest element of David Moyes’ job as Everton manager must be that nobody is coming into him at Finch Farm, knocking on his door and saying: “That’s why I should be playing”.

- By MICHAEL BALL

There have been a few times now this season, like the Carabao Cup defeat at Wolves, where he’s tried to give minutes to these players, but when they’ve been given the opportunity, they’ve let themselves down.

We’ve got to be realistic over where we’ve been as a football club but look at where Sunderland have been and how they’re now getting good results with a bit of hard work and determination.

Because I’ve seen us play some good football, I was confident we’d get something out of the game and we started excellently.

We could have been three nil up after half an hour and it was great to see how we were playing, but then the warning signs crept back in.

After Thierno Barry’s miss, we seemed to go into survival mode where we haven't got the confidence to get the ball forward, everyone backs off and the midfield doesn't win any second balls.

Sunderland were showing their physicality and fitness levels, which I was hoping were going to drop and we might get a way back in, but we just totally lost control of the game and were dominated. I heard some really disturbing stats about the rest of the game, like we didn’t get the ball into their box until the 90th minute.

Vitalii Mylolenko was under a lot of pressure and he kept giving away soft throw-ins.

He didn’t seem to have enough confidence in his ability to kick the ball up the pitch to find one of his teammates.

Jordan Pickford was just kicking the ball to nobody. Three times in the last 10 minutes he gave up possession, twice kicking it to their goalkeeper and once out of play. Surrendering possession like that is horrendous. You're not going to dominate for 90 minutes, we're not at that level at all - even top teams have 10-minute spells in which they've got to survive - but having to resort to last-ditch challenges isn't good enough.