Walking out of Goodison Park, it just felt really sad because Everton had the opportunity to go on a cup run. Who knows if we could have come close to winning it or not, but you’d just like to be in that hat and we’re not part of that.

We’ve been hoping for silverware for far too long and it feels like another wasted opportunity. However, the players let us down again.

My son, my nephew and myself chose to volunteer and help the 1878s set up the banners and flags in the Park End to get the atmosphere going. Unfortunately, a bit like my flag-waving skills, it was a poor game for what became Goodison Park’s last-ever cup tie.

After 30 years we were hoping that we could gain a bit of momentum and have a cup run help keep the good spirits going as it’s far too long for this famous club to not have silverware in the trophy room. Given that David Moyes had said that the league has to be the priority, I thought he was going to make quite a few changes but he picked the strongest team that he could select so I was pleased with that and had a bit of optimism going into the game.

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Unfortunately, the bad habits of the players within this squad had come back to haunt us again. We’ve witnessed this before, we’re not good enough to take liberties, to drop gears and still win football matches.

Moyes will have learned a lot about these players he is trying to improve. You want improvement from each player week-on-week.

Of course, it’s not going to be perfect like a graph going up and up but that’s what you strive to do. Our mindset was just not there for the first 45 minutes.

We gave two sloppy goals away and our passing was very slow. I’ve got no qualms about trying to pass the ball from the six-yard box if you’ve got intent but that crisp, fast passing we’d seen in recent weeks wasn’t there.

It was very lethargic and that radiated around Goodison Park and the atmosphere went flat. As we were passing the ball there was no movement, there was nobody helping each other.

Apart from James Garner, nobody seemed to be showing the kind of enthusiasm that Moyes has brought back to the football club and this group of players. Going 2-0 down ensured it was a massive, uphill battle in the second half.

How we conceded those goals was not good enough. James Tarkowski had an off day, which can happen, but when you look back at the goals and how we conceded them, it was far too easy.

Bournemouth weren’t at the races themselves, but we just gifted them the goals. That gave them the confidence to see out the game.

When you look at the number of quality teams who have already gone out of this year’s FA Cup competition, it’s just really disappointing for this football club. It felt to me like there was a lack of belief and that it wasn’t important to them as they seemed to produce a pre-season type performance with the wrong type of mindset as Bournemouth had already beaten us twice this season. So you wanted the boys to pay that back but they just weren’t up for the fight.

As a group of supporters, we’ve witnessed this for far too long. The most-frustrating thing is that these players can turn up and put in performances – they’ve got it in them – but good players keep to a high standard, week in, week out, and they make the right decisions all of the time, no matter who the opposition is.

Would we have tried to take liberties, taking the chances that we did, against top teams? No.

So why even try it? What really frustrated me was that, when things weren’t working, we kept trying to do the same thing and it was very predictable.

We kept turning the ball over. Unforced errors have been a huge issue with this group of players.

That gave Bournemouth the momentum and confidence to press us. They set traps and we didn’t see that which is very concerning as we had senior players making the same mistakes, time and time again.

You can try something in a game of football but if it doesn’t work, you can change it up for five minutes and ensure you’re not predictable. You can say: ‘Let’s kick the ball forwards and mix it up and then when the game gets stretched, we can revert to our game plan.’

When players aren’t hungry enough to ask for the ball or run off the ball, we cause ourselves a lot of problems in possession. It was a much-improved second half performance, but it couldn’t get any worse after that first 45 minutes.

Moyes could have made the changes at half-time to set a standard and say: ‘That’s not good enough,’ but I think it was a case of: ‘You’ve got yourself in this situation, you get me out,’ putting a target on the players but they failed to do that.

Garner was the only one trying to make things happen in the first half but unfortunately his set-pieces weren’t working. We’ve got several players who are over six feet tall and we know what Goodison’s all about, we want to put it into the back post towards Tarkowski, Jarrad Branthwaite, Jake O’Brien, Abdoulaye Doucoure or Beto but three or four times in a row, he hit the first man.

As a player, you can tell your team-mates: ‘Look, I’m struggling to take corners today,’ and swap it up. Instead, it was poor delivery after poor delivery, so it was so easy for Bournemouth to defend.

As the game went on, I wondered whether the players were thinking of something else. Was it as important to them as it was to the fans? Or did they have one eye on the Liverpool game?

They didn’t seem to give it a full hit. As a fan, that’s really disappointing because you pay your money, turn up, and want that FA Cup fever which is a bit of a thrill, but it was just a flat performance.

Beto needs to become a space man

Beto couldn’t shake off his markers against Bournemouth. I know he feels he can outmuscle people but when he’s pushing and shoving with an opponent, he forgets to look at the flight of the ball that’s coming in towards him.

Therefore when it drops, he has to be reactive. There’s no quality to it and it bounces off him.

He needs to learn to find space. If you look at the other games over the weekend, strikers are getting in between centre-halves, finding spaces.

If you’ve got the strength, you can outbattle your opponent, but not every time. You’ve got to be able to get into the spaces and anticipate the danger areas for them to mark you.

When we needed Beto to have the outlay, he was too tight. He wasn’t set, he wasn’t ready and it all felt very awkward.

When Jack Harrison was putting the ball into the box, Beto was stood still, he was frozen. Yes, the centre-half had a great game but he made it too easy for him as he didn’t try and spin in behind or run the channels.

He’s going to be up against a top centre-half in the derby but no defender in the world likes a striker spinning in behind them, no matter who they are, it’s the last thing they want to do. They don’t want to be checking their shoulders, wondering where their man is.

He might be a strong boy but defenders love a physical battle because they’ve got you touch tight and can make your life difficult. No matter how we play football, whether we go long or pass the ball on the floor, Beto needs to add an ability to find space to his game if he wants to improve and be part of Everton Football Club going forward.

This is a huge opportunity for him to make an impact with all the other strikers injured. What a better time to show you can make an impact than against your arch rivals and one of the best centre-halves in the world – he needs to step up to the plate because we need him.