By David Prior at Stefan Cel Mare Stadium, Daily Post
HUMBLED. A DREAM earned over a season of dedication and spirit washed away in 45 minutes of madness.
David Moyes has up until now found many positives in a season that going into last night could boast just a solitary win from six games.
Saturday's defeat to Portsmouth, he and his players had assured, was simply a blip ahead of the good things that were surely about to flow.
How misled we were. Nothing could possibly dis-guise this abject failure. Everton were out-classed and out-fought to such an extent that they are now, surely, out of Europe.
Ten long years have passed since Everton last faced the altogether different challenges inherent in Continental action, but the stirring performance in Villarreal seemed to prove that they had a team that could still cope admirably with them.
On this evidence, evidently not. Against a team of mostly home-grown unknowns, amid an 'intimidating' crowd of barely 15,000, Everton collapsed to such an extent that the still locked-in supporters booed David Moyes throughout his cross-pitch walk to the post-match press conference. And that was polite compared to the treatment handed out to the shell-shocked players on the final whistle.
The players, certainly, deserved the barracking. Not just for the complete lack of organisation and backbone that accompanied their post-interval capitulation, but also for the manner in which they utterly squandered the sizeable advantage given to them by Joseph Yobo's earlier away-goal equaliser. A manner that, in the context of a twolegged affair, was nothing short of irresponsible.
Yes, Dinamo played in an unexpectedly accomplished fashion, and yes, they converted virtually all of their chances. But having seen them convert six goals in their last outing on Sunday, Moyes will have surely warned his players of the pitfalls that awaited them should their defence fall below watertight.
If he did, no such message got through. All the qualities that made Everton the proud if derided masters of the one-nil last season were stunningly absent.
And while singling out individuals seems churlish given the extent of the team's failure, Jose Mourinho should expect to lose what Merseyside friends he has left for recommending Nuno Valentes to the Everton manager.
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