The Football Association. As soon as I see those words, through the power of word association, I’m thinking, ‘couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery’.
When Blackburn Olympic beat the Old Etonians in the 1883 Cup Final the aristos finally realised that they couldn’t compete against working class oiks, they’d have to ‘organise’ the game instead.
So since then we’ve been left with the fossilised relics; the incompetent, inbred gentry; public school Johnnies; faceless jobsworths and more recently compliant ex-players who won’t ask any awkward questions.
It was of course the FA that insisted that Liverpool fans should have the smaller Leppings Lane end at Hillsborough in 1989. Was there ever an inquiry? Was anyone sacked or disciplined? No index-linked pensions were lost as a result of the tragedy, just the lives of 96 football fans.
During the 1990s the FA failed to notice that the England away support had been infiltrated by the Nazi storm troopers from Column 88, only when they trashed Lansdowne Road and Belgium did they realise there was a problem (they’d been too busy shagging their secretaries).
23,000 tickets for the 2009 Cup Final will go to the ‘FA Family’, so every club from Budleigh Salterton FC upwards gets their share, we all know what market most of these tickets will end up on. Just to show they have a sense of humour the FA have organised a ‘Touts Out’ campaign. Despite the fact that every ticket is traceable, prosecutions or expulsions from ‘The Family’ will, as ever, be close to zero.
With the new Wembley you can also factor in corporate greed because 17,000 tickets will go to ‘season ticket holders’. That’s to ensure that Sir Fred Goodwin and his chums have a nice corporate away day. Ascot, Henley, Wimbledon, Twickers… it’s a hard life! You can always spot these ‘fans’ at Wembley, they’re in the posh seats by the half way line and twenty minutes into the second half they saunter back – one has to finish one’s champers and canapés.
By hook or by crook Evertonians will somehow acquire tickets even if it means bribing a few men in blazers and suits.
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Monday, 6 April 2009
Billy Not So Wonderful
I really wanted to like this play – young local playwright and the subject matter, the Everton v Liverpool derby game.
The Everyman theatre was transformed with seating all around the stage to create a ‘pitch’ in the middle. The ‘stadium’ was festooned with all those memorable banners, ‘Joey Munches Gladbacks’, ‘One Evertonian is worth ten Koppites’.
The play charted the life and times of Billy Wonderful from eight to thirty years of age and that unforgettable moment when a teenage Billy scores for Everton against Liverpool and then has to cope with the downfall.
The derby game should have given the play some cracking one-liners, they were there on the banners, but it wasn’t translated into the dialogue – dull, predictable and pedestrian. Was Alan Shearer employed as a consultant?
We could have had an examination of the changing atmosphere from the ‘friendly derby’ to the more poisonous times of today. Evertonians as ‘bitter Blues’ or Koppites hailing from the four corners of the planet, ‘Everton F.C. welcomes Liverpool supporters to Merseyside’.
The main character Billy Wonderful should have presented an opportunity to analyse and examine the demons that possess ex-footballers – drugs, alcohol, obesity, mental health problems and relationship breakdown. Billy Wonderful? Scores in the derby, loses his place in the team, gets transferred, has a bit of a hard time coping and lives to tell the tale. The life and times of Gazza it wasn’t.
Although the play lasted one hour and fifteen minutes, by the end I was looking at my watch, checking my pulse, I was losing the will to live. Where was the passion? Scoring a goal in front of 40,000 people is, according to Michael Owen, better than sex.
Theatre should be there to challenge your ideas and perceptions, getting you out of your comfort zone. The life of the modern footballer? Some of them end up hating the game, isolated by their teammates, excluded by managers or the butt of jibes and venom from the terraces. Money has changed everything, most Premiership footballers are ensconced behind security gates with a team of minders detailed to guard their every movement.
I’m more than willing to concede that it’s probably me being a nark and a contrarian, if you told me what day of the week it was I’d dispute that as well. All the other reviewers were glowing if not effusive in their praise. But for me it was Billy Not So Wonderful.
The Everyman theatre was transformed with seating all around the stage to create a ‘pitch’ in the middle. The ‘stadium’ was festooned with all those memorable banners, ‘Joey Munches Gladbacks’, ‘One Evertonian is worth ten Koppites’.
The play charted the life and times of Billy Wonderful from eight to thirty years of age and that unforgettable moment when a teenage Billy scores for Everton against Liverpool and then has to cope with the downfall.
The derby game should have given the play some cracking one-liners, they were there on the banners, but it wasn’t translated into the dialogue – dull, predictable and pedestrian. Was Alan Shearer employed as a consultant?
We could have had an examination of the changing atmosphere from the ‘friendly derby’ to the more poisonous times of today. Evertonians as ‘bitter Blues’ or Koppites hailing from the four corners of the planet, ‘Everton F.C. welcomes Liverpool supporters to Merseyside’.
The main character Billy Wonderful should have presented an opportunity to analyse and examine the demons that possess ex-footballers – drugs, alcohol, obesity, mental health problems and relationship breakdown. Billy Wonderful? Scores in the derby, loses his place in the team, gets transferred, has a bit of a hard time coping and lives to tell the tale. The life and times of Gazza it wasn’t.
Although the play lasted one hour and fifteen minutes, by the end I was looking at my watch, checking my pulse, I was losing the will to live. Where was the passion? Scoring a goal in front of 40,000 people is, according to Michael Owen, better than sex.
Theatre should be there to challenge your ideas and perceptions, getting you out of your comfort zone. The life of the modern footballer? Some of them end up hating the game, isolated by their teammates, excluded by managers or the butt of jibes and venom from the terraces. Money has changed everything, most Premiership footballers are ensconced behind security gates with a team of minders detailed to guard their every movement.
I’m more than willing to concede that it’s probably me being a nark and a contrarian, if you told me what day of the week it was I’d dispute that as well. All the other reviewers were glowing if not effusive in their praise. But for me it was Billy Not So Wonderful.
Sunday, 31 August 2008
It’s Shite The Bernabeu It Isn’t
Amazingly the plans for the Kirkby Stadium have been ‘called in’, which means there will almost certainly be a public enquiry and a delay of a year before building can start. As many people warned Everton have dumped all their eggs in the Tesco supermarket trolley with no Plan B. Just to confirm that when it comes to business and marketing the club belongs on its own in the Piss Up In A Brewery League, they managed to delay the launch of the new kit until after the school summer holidays, then a further delay was announced due to ‘quality control problems’ i.e., the teenage girls in the sweaty third-world factory couldn’t churn them out quickly enough.
The Labour Government was under pressure, Liverpool and Sefton councils had both lodged objections, rival developers St Modwen wanted a regional analysis of retail developments and there was significant opposition in Kirkby. In July, they announced that planning guidance would be changed to preserve town centres and stop the spread of ‘clone town’ (the danger is that we will all live in Tesco Town – of 121 postcode areas it is first in 81 and number two in 24). The current simplistic planning test - which only judges whether there is capacity for an out-of-town supermarket - would be replaced with an “impact test” which assesses the risks and benefits of new businesses on existing small shops and the town centre. The delay means that it’s beginning to look like King’s Dock II and Knowsley Council’s plans for Kirkby town centre have been left hanging in the wind.
In Kirkby sleaze and political dissent have always been strange bedfellows. In the 1970s council leader Dave Tempest built the notorious Kirkby ski-slope (it finished on the slip road of the M57) he was jailed for taking back handers from developer George Leatherbarrow. Alongside that there was also the 1972 rent strike, superbly captured in Nick Broomfield’s ‘Beyond the Rent Strike’, and the workers’ occupation of the Fisher-Bendix factory.
The latest manifestation of the tradition of dissent was in the recent council elections where ‘1st 4 Kirkby’ came within 16 votes of winning Whitefield ward. The Kirkby Resident’s Action Group (KRAG) have led a high profile campaign against the Kirkby Stadium, one of the highlights was Dot Reid’s campaign (her house will be demolished) to turn Tesco boss Terry Leahy’s luxury mansion in Hertfordshire into a community garden. With no sense of irony, the local planning committee refused it because a rare species of bats were found in his garden. All right, you couldn’t make it up – bats saved, homes demolished.
Kirkby became part of Knowsley when local government was reorganised in 1974. Knowsley was a conglomeration of all the bits around Liverpool that no one else wanted or knew what to do with – Huyton, Prescot, Whiston, Halewood, Cronton. So the Frankenstein’s monster that is Knowsley Council was created, ‘What have I done Igor?’
Two events shaped the council, firstly the massive loss of jobs, in Kirkby, between 1971 and 1984, 57% of all jobs were destroyed with the closure of factories like Bird’s Eye and Hygena. Then during the 1990s the left was purged from the council leaving only the unquestioning, unthinking automatons, the voting fodder that sit on the council benches today.
In Knowsley there are three types of councillors – the dead, the undead and the cryogenically preserved. They’re pretty much following a national trend; the average age of councillors is 58. However, in Knowsley Labour really could put up a donkey and they’d get elected, so there it is on the ballot paper – A Donkey (Labour). With dissenters or independent thinkers gone all that’s left are the dead-beats, bin lids, nonentities and no-marks the voting fodder who will do whatever they’re told to do, that explains the infamous 20-1 vote for the Kirkby Stadium.
It’s only when something directly affects you that you realise how utterly useless our ‘elected representatives’ are. A few years ago, for no apparent reason, our school was facing closure. We all dutifully trooped along to one of the phoney ‘consultation meetings’. I sat right opposite the councillors and none of them even bothered to even open the file we’d presented to them explaining why we should stay open. Only the whiff of the expenses cheque revived them and at the end of the meeting they finally asked a question, ‘where’s the buffet?’
You used to be able to challenge decisions and ask questions at committee meetings, but this was ‘time consuming’. So now all votes are taken in a small Cabinet overseen by the laughably named Scrutiny Committee. In truth the unelected officials run everything and tell the councillors what to do. No surprise that the turnout in local elections is about 20% with some councillors returned unopposed.
There is of course the prospect that if you keep your nose clean, don’t rock the boat and always vote the right way, that you will become Mayor of Knowsley. This is basically a year on the lash, all expenses paid, with a chauffeur driven car and chain of office thrown in for good measure.
Sadly when it comes to parliamentary representation the picture is just as bleak. For years Kirkby was the fiefdom of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. In the 1970s it was passed on to the perma-tanned Robert Kilroy-Silk. Regrettably, the ungrateful proles insisted that he make the odd visit to the area. With the prospect of being deselected by the Labour Party membership, Kilroy-Silk jumped ship and made a shed load of money as a reality TV host, where fake actors con the gullible public.
In the 1986 by-election, the Labour Party headquarters imposed George Howarth as candidate; they weren’t to be disappointed because he has proved to be a loyal placeman and fairly reliable voting fodder. In all his years in the Commons Howarth hasn’t exactly set the place alight with his fiery oratory, not helped by his hang-dog expression and overwhelming resemblance to Inspector ‘I ‘ate you Butler’ Blakey from the 1970s TV sit-com ‘On The Buses’. Howarth earns £61,820 as an MP and claims £127,073 in expenses (to be fair he’s only 494th in line at the feeding trough). You might think that as MP for one of the poorest boroughs in the country it would be a really time consuming job, but the bold George also speaks in Parliament for bookmakers William Hill – salary £25,000. Every Little Helps!
Howarth did reveal that he would be holding his own ‘investigation’ into the Everton/Kirkby Stadium, a few days later he announced the results and surprisingly found that it was a ‘good idea’. This view of regeneration, ‘what’s good for Tesco is good for Kirkby’, mirrors the Knowsley Council line – any employer no matter how crap the wages and conditions, or if they churn out pollution (Sonnae the prime example) it is to be welcomed because it’s ‘jobs for Kirkby’. There was a similar logic in Bhopal.
The most damning report on the Everton Stadium/ Tesco Megastore came from the government funded Commission on Architecture and the Build Environment (CABE). The proposed new stadium is being delivered by a Design and Build contractor, which means that the plans haven’t gone out to competitive tender and with everything being done ‘in-house’ the architects are much less likely to call for costly design changes during construction.
As for the stadium itself they state that ‘we do not feel that an inspiring sense of arrival, as would expect to have upon approaching a stadium of this size and significance, has been achieved.’
Regarding the impact on Kirkby, ‘There is a risk that when not in use for matches, the stadium will be inactive, with a detrimental impact on the public realm around it. We think that, to be a genuine catalyst for regeneration of the town centre, the stadium should be designed to accommodate a variety of uses. These could include links with local schools, use as a music venue, conference facilities or other sporting activities… we feel that this scheme is at best, a lost opportunity. The scheme proposed will have a detrimental impact on the town and is not of a standard that Kirkby deserves.’
Their conclusion? ‘Everton and Kirkby deserve a stadium of first class design quality, and we are not convinced that this has been realised by the current proposals.’ Or to summarise – ‘It’s Shite, The Bernabeu It Isn’t’.
The Kirkby Resident’s Action Group have also questioned Knowsley Council’s sale of the land to Tesco for £12 million, independent valuers estimated that it was worth five times that figure.
So there it is – a ballot of the supporters that only squeezed through because the players, who are normally never allowed to express an opinion about anything, thought it was the best thing since Extra-Value sliced bread; the lovely supermarket giant Tesco; the rotten borough of Knowsley and a second-rate stadium. We haven’t found the corpse under the floorboards yet, but something is a bit smelly. I wonder what a public enquiry will unearth?
Amazingly the plans for the Kirkby Stadium have been ‘called in’, which means there will almost certainly be a public enquiry and a delay of a year before building can start. As many people warned Everton have dumped all their eggs in the Tesco supermarket trolley with no Plan B. Just to confirm that when it comes to business and marketing the club belongs on its own in the Piss Up In A Brewery League, they managed to delay the launch of the new kit until after the school summer holidays, then a further delay was announced due to ‘quality control problems’ i.e., the teenage girls in the sweaty third-world factory couldn’t churn them out quickly enough.
The Labour Government was under pressure, Liverpool and Sefton councils had both lodged objections, rival developers St Modwen wanted a regional analysis of retail developments and there was significant opposition in Kirkby. In July, they announced that planning guidance would be changed to preserve town centres and stop the spread of ‘clone town’ (the danger is that we will all live in Tesco Town – of 121 postcode areas it is first in 81 and number two in 24). The current simplistic planning test - which only judges whether there is capacity for an out-of-town supermarket - would be replaced with an “impact test” which assesses the risks and benefits of new businesses on existing small shops and the town centre. The delay means that it’s beginning to look like King’s Dock II and Knowsley Council’s plans for Kirkby town centre have been left hanging in the wind.
In Kirkby sleaze and political dissent have always been strange bedfellows. In the 1970s council leader Dave Tempest built the notorious Kirkby ski-slope (it finished on the slip road of the M57) he was jailed for taking back handers from developer George Leatherbarrow. Alongside that there was also the 1972 rent strike, superbly captured in Nick Broomfield’s ‘Beyond the Rent Strike’, and the workers’ occupation of the Fisher-Bendix factory.
The latest manifestation of the tradition of dissent was in the recent council elections where ‘1st 4 Kirkby’ came within 16 votes of winning Whitefield ward. The Kirkby Resident’s Action Group (KRAG) have led a high profile campaign against the Kirkby Stadium, one of the highlights was Dot Reid’s campaign (her house will be demolished) to turn Tesco boss Terry Leahy’s luxury mansion in Hertfordshire into a community garden. With no sense of irony, the local planning committee refused it because a rare species of bats were found in his garden. All right, you couldn’t make it up – bats saved, homes demolished.
Kirkby became part of Knowsley when local government was reorganised in 1974. Knowsley was a conglomeration of all the bits around Liverpool that no one else wanted or knew what to do with – Huyton, Prescot, Whiston, Halewood, Cronton. So the Frankenstein’s monster that is Knowsley Council was created, ‘What have I done Igor?’
Two events shaped the council, firstly the massive loss of jobs, in Kirkby, between 1971 and 1984, 57% of all jobs were destroyed with the closure of factories like Bird’s Eye and Hygena. Then during the 1990s the left was purged from the council leaving only the unquestioning, unthinking automatons, the voting fodder that sit on the council benches today.
In Knowsley there are three types of councillors – the dead, the undead and the cryogenically preserved. They’re pretty much following a national trend; the average age of councillors is 58. However, in Knowsley Labour really could put up a donkey and they’d get elected, so there it is on the ballot paper – A Donkey (Labour). With dissenters or independent thinkers gone all that’s left are the dead-beats, bin lids, nonentities and no-marks the voting fodder who will do whatever they’re told to do, that explains the infamous 20-1 vote for the Kirkby Stadium.
It’s only when something directly affects you that you realise how utterly useless our ‘elected representatives’ are. A few years ago, for no apparent reason, our school was facing closure. We all dutifully trooped along to one of the phoney ‘consultation meetings’. I sat right opposite the councillors and none of them even bothered to even open the file we’d presented to them explaining why we should stay open. Only the whiff of the expenses cheque revived them and at the end of the meeting they finally asked a question, ‘where’s the buffet?’
You used to be able to challenge decisions and ask questions at committee meetings, but this was ‘time consuming’. So now all votes are taken in a small Cabinet overseen by the laughably named Scrutiny Committee. In truth the unelected officials run everything and tell the councillors what to do. No surprise that the turnout in local elections is about 20% with some councillors returned unopposed.
There is of course the prospect that if you keep your nose clean, don’t rock the boat and always vote the right way, that you will become Mayor of Knowsley. This is basically a year on the lash, all expenses paid, with a chauffeur driven car and chain of office thrown in for good measure.
Sadly when it comes to parliamentary representation the picture is just as bleak. For years Kirkby was the fiefdom of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. In the 1970s it was passed on to the perma-tanned Robert Kilroy-Silk. Regrettably, the ungrateful proles insisted that he make the odd visit to the area. With the prospect of being deselected by the Labour Party membership, Kilroy-Silk jumped ship and made a shed load of money as a reality TV host, where fake actors con the gullible public.
In the 1986 by-election, the Labour Party headquarters imposed George Howarth as candidate; they weren’t to be disappointed because he has proved to be a loyal placeman and fairly reliable voting fodder. In all his years in the Commons Howarth hasn’t exactly set the place alight with his fiery oratory, not helped by his hang-dog expression and overwhelming resemblance to Inspector ‘I ‘ate you Butler’ Blakey from the 1970s TV sit-com ‘On The Buses’. Howarth earns £61,820 as an MP and claims £127,073 in expenses (to be fair he’s only 494th in line at the feeding trough). You might think that as MP for one of the poorest boroughs in the country it would be a really time consuming job, but the bold George also speaks in Parliament for bookmakers William Hill – salary £25,000. Every Little Helps!
Howarth did reveal that he would be holding his own ‘investigation’ into the Everton/Kirkby Stadium, a few days later he announced the results and surprisingly found that it was a ‘good idea’. This view of regeneration, ‘what’s good for Tesco is good for Kirkby’, mirrors the Knowsley Council line – any employer no matter how crap the wages and conditions, or if they churn out pollution (Sonnae the prime example) it is to be welcomed because it’s ‘jobs for Kirkby’. There was a similar logic in Bhopal.
The most damning report on the Everton Stadium/ Tesco Megastore came from the government funded Commission on Architecture and the Build Environment (CABE). The proposed new stadium is being delivered by a Design and Build contractor, which means that the plans haven’t gone out to competitive tender and with everything being done ‘in-house’ the architects are much less likely to call for costly design changes during construction.
As for the stadium itself they state that ‘we do not feel that an inspiring sense of arrival, as would expect to have upon approaching a stadium of this size and significance, has been achieved.’
Regarding the impact on Kirkby, ‘There is a risk that when not in use for matches, the stadium will be inactive, with a detrimental impact on the public realm around it. We think that, to be a genuine catalyst for regeneration of the town centre, the stadium should be designed to accommodate a variety of uses. These could include links with local schools, use as a music venue, conference facilities or other sporting activities… we feel that this scheme is at best, a lost opportunity. The scheme proposed will have a detrimental impact on the town and is not of a standard that Kirkby deserves.’
Their conclusion? ‘Everton and Kirkby deserve a stadium of first class design quality, and we are not convinced that this has been realised by the current proposals.’ Or to summarise – ‘It’s Shite, The Bernabeu It Isn’t’.
The Kirkby Resident’s Action Group have also questioned Knowsley Council’s sale of the land to Tesco for £12 million, independent valuers estimated that it was worth five times that figure.
So there it is – a ballot of the supporters that only squeezed through because the players, who are normally never allowed to express an opinion about anything, thought it was the best thing since Extra-Value sliced bread; the lovely supermarket giant Tesco; the rotten borough of Knowsley and a second-rate stadium. We haven’t found the corpse under the floorboards yet, but something is a bit smelly. I wonder what a public enquiry will unearth?
Friday, 6 July 2007
MOYES MUST GO! February 2007
… but not just yet, let’s give the guy a chance. I’m not someone who sends in letters to the ‘Echo’ written in block capitals and green ink, I don’t constantly ring the moan-in after every defeat and call for the manager’s head. On the other hand there comes a time when you’ve got to ask where is the club going, is Moyes the right man?
Outlining the case for the prosecution the crucial evidence is the lack of trophies, not even a sniff of the LDV Vans Cup, the Zenith Data Systems Trophy or the Johnston’s Paint Cup. Our League form has been too inconsistent, after Moyes rescued us from relegation in 2002 with fifteenth place; 2002/3 we finished 7th with 59 points; 2003/4 – 17th with 39 points (in any other season that would have meant relegation); 2004/5 4th with 61 points and 2005/6 11th with 50 points, but our goals tally of 34 was one of the lowest ever.
In the FA Cup we’ve never even got to the quarter finals, 2003 we went out to Shrewsbury in the 3rd round; 2004 out to Fulham in the 4th round; 2005 Man United in the 5th round and then 2006 Chelsea in the 4th. In our only European games we lost to Villareal in the Champions League (stewards enquiry for Collina?), then the Uefa Cup debacle against the Romanian butchers – I thought Arteta was going to die. Add to that only two wins in games against the RS and it’s not that impressive. Moyes overall record at Everton is – Played 177: Won 68: Drawn 42: Lost 67.
When I hear fans accepting mediocrity or second best it makes me despair we ain’t some hick club that has never won anything, grateful to be in the Premiership, WE ARE EVERTON – Nil Satis Nisi Optimum. Even with our good start this season we’re beginning to look like top four chokers, throwing away games we should be winning.
Another allegation against Moyes is that he’s a Sergeant Major, bellowing out instructions and not listening to the players, too inflexible not willing or able to change his plans. Moyes can’t deal with “big signings” who have a mind of their own. In the last game of 2004, when we’d escaped relegation by the skin our teeth, there was the infamous no-show against Manchester City – a 5-1 drubbing with rumours that Moyes had lost the dressing room.
There’s also the dodgy signings, Per Koldrup the centre half with that tiny problem – he didn’t know how to head the ball, Andy van der Mayde - whose consumption of certain forms of liquid refreshment is rumoured to be in the St Vespaulus League, Simon Davies – yet to convince the fans and that enigma that is James Beattie – no goal in open play since March and running next to Andy Johnson looking like a lumbering cart horse.
Moyes tactics have become far too defensive, when he started he was willing to gamble, who could forget the Man Utd game when we were 3-0 down and we got back to 3-3 until we conceded a late goal? Yet at Old Trafford this November with twenty minutes to go and Beattie and McFadden ineffectual he left Vaughan and Anichebe kicking their heels.
The stark reality of our position was evident in the League Cup game against Arsenal; we couldn’t beat their reserve team. At Old Trafford Ferguson rested five players and we still got a 3-0 drubbing. There’s no real strength in depth to our squad, lose Cahill and Johnson and we’re fucked.
Moyes is a good lower league manager who works well with limited resources and mediocre players but he’s out of his depth in the Premiership, tactically he just hasn’t got it. All Moyes can offer us is a team of willing grafters –we should be the School of Science. He can’t take the club up to the next level.
The case for the defence starts with three words – ‘The People’s Club’. At his first press conference Moyes connected with Evertonians straight away, he gave us back our pride in the club. The first game was like an omen, Unsworth scoring after 30 seconds with a scorching drive against Fulham, when had he ever done that before?
For all those moaning, ungrateful bastards out there let’s remember how low the club had fallen Before Moyes (BM). The ravages of Agent Johnson have taken years to repair (Note to customers: Park hampers are no better or safer than Farepak as they don't have any insurance to cover their clients if they go bust), in the eleven seasons BM we finished in the top half of the table only once – season 1995/6, every other season we were flirting with relegation. There were the years of ‘Woeful Walter’ the panic buys to stave off the drop – Gaza and Ginola. Like an inmate on death row we were facing a certain inevitability, only good fortune and help from other directions saved us, i.e., the “goals” against Wimbledon, look at the TV replays again.
Giving credit to Kenwright he mortgaged his house and stabilised the club, he brought in Moyes and got the finances on an even keel. At last we are able to compete in the transfer market, instead of offering embarrassing long-term loan deals. With money still limited Moyes hasn’t signed dross Cahill, Neville and Arteta have been inspired signings. This season we’ve strengthened the squad with Howard, Lescott and Johnson, all excellent players.
The true test of any manager is how they respond under pressure, Moyes has been able to turn a bad situation around. At the start of the season in 2004 we were favourites for relegation with the Paul Gregg circling over the club like a vulture, Tommy ‘The Traitor’ Radzinski leaving and accusing Moyes of being useless and Rooney going. Moyes famously sat down with the senior players on the pre-season tour of America and listened, changed the way he did things and we had the best season for years. Last year after losing 4-0 to Bolton and Aston Villa and crashing out in the derby game we went on a great run up until Easter.
As Newcastle have discovered there’s no point in changing the manager every five minutes and wasting millions on dross. If we lose faith in the manager it’s the fans that will decide, we don’t need advice from the tabloids – that’s why the West Ham fans got behind Alan Pardew.
The way football is financed we are going to struggle to compete, Chelsea may be one dose of polonium away from financial disaster but as long as Abramovich bails them out (last year’s loss £140 million) you can’t match them in the transfer market. Manchester United has become a huge franchise with merchandising and TV money rolling in, but they can keep it, Old Trafford 75,000 fans from those famous Manchester suburbs Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Mayfair - consequently no atmosphere, shhhhhhhhhhh. Good luck to the Glazer breakaway club FC United of Manchester.
Moyes is always honest in his assessment of games, he doesn’t moan about referees (Souness) or complain the grass was too long (Houllier) he’ll just say ‘we didn’t play well enough’. The buck always stops with him. Moyes has insisted on high standards of fitness and discipline, he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Moyes set his stall out from the beginning when Jesper ‘Big Time Charlie’ Blomquist kicked over a water bottle when he got substituted, Moyes was right in his face and shipped him out at the first opportunity. He wants and expects the best for the club and its supporters.
But this season we’ve got to expect a place in the Uefa Cup as a minimum and a decent run in the FA Cup. Meanwhile we need to get behind the team and get off Beattie’s back – I like the guy, any footballer who gets guests at his wedding to donate to a cancer charity rather than buy presents deserves a break! However, I’m not giving Moyes or anyone a blank cheque. Not this season but at the end of the next one we’ve got to take a long cold look at the club, take stock. Is Moyes the right man for the job? Do we need a fresh face with new ideas to take the club up to the next level?
… but not just yet, let’s give the guy a chance. I’m not someone who sends in letters to the ‘Echo’ written in block capitals and green ink, I don’t constantly ring the moan-in after every defeat and call for the manager’s head. On the other hand there comes a time when you’ve got to ask where is the club going, is Moyes the right man?
Outlining the case for the prosecution the crucial evidence is the lack of trophies, not even a sniff of the LDV Vans Cup, the Zenith Data Systems Trophy or the Johnston’s Paint Cup. Our League form has been too inconsistent, after Moyes rescued us from relegation in 2002 with fifteenth place; 2002/3 we finished 7th with 59 points; 2003/4 – 17th with 39 points (in any other season that would have meant relegation); 2004/5 4th with 61 points and 2005/6 11th with 50 points, but our goals tally of 34 was one of the lowest ever.
In the FA Cup we’ve never even got to the quarter finals, 2003 we went out to Shrewsbury in the 3rd round; 2004 out to Fulham in the 4th round; 2005 Man United in the 5th round and then 2006 Chelsea in the 4th. In our only European games we lost to Villareal in the Champions League (stewards enquiry for Collina?), then the Uefa Cup debacle against the Romanian butchers – I thought Arteta was going to die. Add to that only two wins in games against the RS and it’s not that impressive. Moyes overall record at Everton is – Played 177: Won 68: Drawn 42: Lost 67.
When I hear fans accepting mediocrity or second best it makes me despair we ain’t some hick club that has never won anything, grateful to be in the Premiership, WE ARE EVERTON – Nil Satis Nisi Optimum. Even with our good start this season we’re beginning to look like top four chokers, throwing away games we should be winning.
Another allegation against Moyes is that he’s a Sergeant Major, bellowing out instructions and not listening to the players, too inflexible not willing or able to change his plans. Moyes can’t deal with “big signings” who have a mind of their own. In the last game of 2004, when we’d escaped relegation by the skin our teeth, there was the infamous no-show against Manchester City – a 5-1 drubbing with rumours that Moyes had lost the dressing room.
There’s also the dodgy signings, Per Koldrup the centre half with that tiny problem – he didn’t know how to head the ball, Andy van der Mayde - whose consumption of certain forms of liquid refreshment is rumoured to be in the St Vespaulus League, Simon Davies – yet to convince the fans and that enigma that is James Beattie – no goal in open play since March and running next to Andy Johnson looking like a lumbering cart horse.
Moyes tactics have become far too defensive, when he started he was willing to gamble, who could forget the Man Utd game when we were 3-0 down and we got back to 3-3 until we conceded a late goal? Yet at Old Trafford this November with twenty minutes to go and Beattie and McFadden ineffectual he left Vaughan and Anichebe kicking their heels.
The stark reality of our position was evident in the League Cup game against Arsenal; we couldn’t beat their reserve team. At Old Trafford Ferguson rested five players and we still got a 3-0 drubbing. There’s no real strength in depth to our squad, lose Cahill and Johnson and we’re fucked.
Moyes is a good lower league manager who works well with limited resources and mediocre players but he’s out of his depth in the Premiership, tactically he just hasn’t got it. All Moyes can offer us is a team of willing grafters –we should be the School of Science. He can’t take the club up to the next level.
The case for the defence starts with three words – ‘The People’s Club’. At his first press conference Moyes connected with Evertonians straight away, he gave us back our pride in the club. The first game was like an omen, Unsworth scoring after 30 seconds with a scorching drive against Fulham, when had he ever done that before?
For all those moaning, ungrateful bastards out there let’s remember how low the club had fallen Before Moyes (BM). The ravages of Agent Johnson have taken years to repair (Note to customers: Park hampers are no better or safer than Farepak as they don't have any insurance to cover their clients if they go bust), in the eleven seasons BM we finished in the top half of the table only once – season 1995/6, every other season we were flirting with relegation. There were the years of ‘Woeful Walter’ the panic buys to stave off the drop – Gaza and Ginola. Like an inmate on death row we were facing a certain inevitability, only good fortune and help from other directions saved us, i.e., the “goals” against Wimbledon, look at the TV replays again.
Giving credit to Kenwright he mortgaged his house and stabilised the club, he brought in Moyes and got the finances on an even keel. At last we are able to compete in the transfer market, instead of offering embarrassing long-term loan deals. With money still limited Moyes hasn’t signed dross Cahill, Neville and Arteta have been inspired signings. This season we’ve strengthened the squad with Howard, Lescott and Johnson, all excellent players.
The true test of any manager is how they respond under pressure, Moyes has been able to turn a bad situation around. At the start of the season in 2004 we were favourites for relegation with the Paul Gregg circling over the club like a vulture, Tommy ‘The Traitor’ Radzinski leaving and accusing Moyes of being useless and Rooney going. Moyes famously sat down with the senior players on the pre-season tour of America and listened, changed the way he did things and we had the best season for years. Last year after losing 4-0 to Bolton and Aston Villa and crashing out in the derby game we went on a great run up until Easter.
As Newcastle have discovered there’s no point in changing the manager every five minutes and wasting millions on dross. If we lose faith in the manager it’s the fans that will decide, we don’t need advice from the tabloids – that’s why the West Ham fans got behind Alan Pardew.
The way football is financed we are going to struggle to compete, Chelsea may be one dose of polonium away from financial disaster but as long as Abramovich bails them out (last year’s loss £140 million) you can’t match them in the transfer market. Manchester United has become a huge franchise with merchandising and TV money rolling in, but they can keep it, Old Trafford 75,000 fans from those famous Manchester suburbs Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Mayfair - consequently no atmosphere, shhhhhhhhhhh. Good luck to the Glazer breakaway club FC United of Manchester.
Moyes is always honest in his assessment of games, he doesn’t moan about referees (Souness) or complain the grass was too long (Houllier) he’ll just say ‘we didn’t play well enough’. The buck always stops with him. Moyes has insisted on high standards of fitness and discipline, he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Moyes set his stall out from the beginning when Jesper ‘Big Time Charlie’ Blomquist kicked over a water bottle when he got substituted, Moyes was right in his face and shipped him out at the first opportunity. He wants and expects the best for the club and its supporters.
But this season we’ve got to expect a place in the Uefa Cup as a minimum and a decent run in the FA Cup. Meanwhile we need to get behind the team and get off Beattie’s back – I like the guy, any footballer who gets guests at his wedding to donate to a cancer charity rather than buy presents deserves a break! However, I’m not giving Moyes or anyone a blank cheque. Not this season but at the end of the next one we’ve got to take a long cold look at the club, take stock. Is Moyes the right man for the job? Do we need a fresh face with new ideas to take the club up to the next level?
The Red Shite – a plea for tolerance April 2005
‘DERBY SHAME’ screamed the headline on the ‘Echo’ – and for once they got it right, it needed to be on the front page. Thirty three people arrested outside the Blue House for allegedly throwing cans and bottles at cars of Liverpool fans driving past. Everton spokesperson Ian Ross said the arrests were, “well away from the stadium and the question is whether this is a football problem or a problem in society” - that’s known as a cop out. How the hell did we come to this?
My first derby game in the early ‘70s, Red and Blue fans walking across Stanley Park together. I’ve stood in the Kop and been on the Gladwys Street with red scarves dotted around…. OK this is sounding a bit like Billy and Wally… “Years ago there was never any trouble at derby games, and years ago you could go into town for 50p and there weren’t any gorillas trying to start fights, and years ago yer mam sent yer out in the summer holidays with a bottle of water and yer shook it up and pretended it was lemonade….”
Fast forward thirty years and the atmosphere just isn’t the same, any Red fans spotted in Gladwys Street and it’s like hunt the asylum seeker, people standing up and pointing trying to get the stewards to eject them. Then you get the knobheads chanting, “murderers, murderers, murderers”. It just seems that some people can only live through hatred… not that I’m totally into peace, love and understanding …man.
Everytime I see Thatcher I still want to put my foot through the screen and I’ve got plenty of Room 101 hates-
· Personalised number plates
· Big Ron
· Dogs
· Kilroy
· The scrotum burgers that pass for school dinners
· SUVs with childkiller bumpers – it’s for knocking elk off the road in Sweden you dumb fucks
Yeah, there’s plenty of people I hate and while I’m on that I couldn’t believe the article in the last issue where the writer said that walking towards the ground before the Man U game the atmosphere was chilled. What planet had he been on the week before the match? Was he smoking waccy baccy? Everyone knew it was going to be a Rooney hate-fest and he got everything he deserved (Defend the Ellesmere Port Motor Auction Two).
Let’s just remember the background to Rooney’s departure – we miss relegation the season before by the skin of our teeth with the lowest points total ever, players leaving, boardroom splits and there’s role model Wayne who wore a blue shirt at his Anfield trial, the boy who converted even the hardened sceptics who watch the youth team into swivel-eyed zealots who had seen the second coming. After missing out on those erstwhile Blues, MacManaman and Fowler, here was one of our own. That final indignity the sale on the last day of the transfer window, denying Moyes the funds to buy any players.
You try and raise your kids to respect things like loyalty and what does Rooney do? Shit all over the club and its supporters. At times like this I remember Jack London’s definition of a scab, written in 1906,
“A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts he carries a tumour of rotten principles. The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife, his children and his fellow men. A scab is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class.”
A few years ago an old fella in his eighties applied to join a Miners Welfare Club in South Wales, his application was rejected. Why? Because he’d scabbed in the 1926 General Strike – some acts of treachery are never forgotten.
But getting back to the Red Shite, why the animosity and venom? Some people date it back to the Heysel ban in 1985 when Everton were denied the chance of winning the European Cup. Against that after Hillsborough there was the 1989 Merseyside United Cup Final – Reds and Blues travelling down to the match on the same coaches.
Fortunately we’ve never had the religious sectarianism where one club is identified as Catholic or Protestant. Although the city didn’t escape it – sectarian rioting in 1909 led to hundreds of families being forced out in tit for tat expulsions; Protestants from Scotland Road and Catholics from Netherfield Road. Houses were marked to denote the faith of the people living there. There was an Irish Nationalist MP in the 1920s and Protestant Party city councillors up to the 1970s.
Glasgow Rangers refused to play any Catholics until Mo Johnson was signed in 1989. By contrast Celtic have always signed players from Protestant backgrounds i.e., Jock Stein and Kenny Dalglish. Vicious sectarianism still scars football there, in 1999 16 year-old Catholic Thomas McFadden was murdered in the street after a Rangers – Celtic game.
We’ve never had anything like that, remember the outcry in 1977 when Liverpool came back with the European Cup and Crazyhorse grabbed hold of the mike and gloated, "Liverpool are Magic, Everton are Tragic". Hundreds of Evertonians who had turned up on St George's Plaza to watch the Cup brought back to the city for the first time made their point when they instantly went home, leaving gaps in the crowd. Crazyhorse was condemned by both sets of supporters.
There used to be great humour and banter at the derby; the Gladwys Street banner with ‘Bobby Latchford Walks On Water’, answered by the Koppites with ‘Latchford is a Duck’; Shankly in the directors box just after he resigned, thousands singing, ‘Hey Rock and Roll Shankly’s on the Dole’ and he stood up and waved; the stick Phil ‘Pinnochio’ Thompson took.
Now we get some knobhead getting his retaliation in first by throwing paint over the Shankly statue, then some low life defaces our beloved Dixie. Maybe that’s how ethnic cleansing starts and escalates out of control. Most families are divided, my son’s a Blue and my daughter’s a Red – I know she did it to wind me up but that’s kids for you. I don’t know why it’s all has changed. It’s not as though one club won everything in the ‘90s. Maybe there’s a new generation of supporters who have taken their cue from Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham and London. Or do we live in less tolerant times?
We’ve got a lot of things to be proud of in this city and I don’t mean a lorra, lorra things – Cilla (Big mansion in Surrey - ‘I didn’t know Thatcher would appear on the stage’) Black, The Echo, Tarby and friends, Stan (One Joke – ‘Dem Germans bombed our chippy’) Boardman.
The things I’m proud of – the only city to take on Thatcher in the 1980s, Terry Fields - the only MP to go to jail over the Poll Tax, the Dockers Strike and the Women of the Waterfront, Ricky Tomlinson, the Hillsborough Justice Campaign and the boycott of ‘The Sun’. You used to be able to say that the spirit of generosity and tolerance at the derby games was part of that as well.
Let’s be honest the atmosphere at derby games is poisonous full of venom and hatred. There have been instances of supporters being insulted and sworn at in front of their young sons. Is that how we want to live? They’ll always be the Red Shite but they’re also our family, our neighbours, our workmates, and even our friends (suspended on match day).
Remember the first scarf to be laid on the Anfield pitch in memory of Hillsborough was a blue one.
‘DERBY SHAME’ screamed the headline on the ‘Echo’ – and for once they got it right, it needed to be on the front page. Thirty three people arrested outside the Blue House for allegedly throwing cans and bottles at cars of Liverpool fans driving past. Everton spokesperson Ian Ross said the arrests were, “well away from the stadium and the question is whether this is a football problem or a problem in society” - that’s known as a cop out. How the hell did we come to this?
My first derby game in the early ‘70s, Red and Blue fans walking across Stanley Park together. I’ve stood in the Kop and been on the Gladwys Street with red scarves dotted around…. OK this is sounding a bit like Billy and Wally… “Years ago there was never any trouble at derby games, and years ago you could go into town for 50p and there weren’t any gorillas trying to start fights, and years ago yer mam sent yer out in the summer holidays with a bottle of water and yer shook it up and pretended it was lemonade….”
Fast forward thirty years and the atmosphere just isn’t the same, any Red fans spotted in Gladwys Street and it’s like hunt the asylum seeker, people standing up and pointing trying to get the stewards to eject them. Then you get the knobheads chanting, “murderers, murderers, murderers”. It just seems that some people can only live through hatred… not that I’m totally into peace, love and understanding …man.
Everytime I see Thatcher I still want to put my foot through the screen and I’ve got plenty of Room 101 hates-
· Personalised number plates
· Big Ron
· Dogs
· Kilroy
· The scrotum burgers that pass for school dinners
· SUVs with childkiller bumpers – it’s for knocking elk off the road in Sweden you dumb fucks
Yeah, there’s plenty of people I hate and while I’m on that I couldn’t believe the article in the last issue where the writer said that walking towards the ground before the Man U game the atmosphere was chilled. What planet had he been on the week before the match? Was he smoking waccy baccy? Everyone knew it was going to be a Rooney hate-fest and he got everything he deserved (Defend the Ellesmere Port Motor Auction Two).
Let’s just remember the background to Rooney’s departure – we miss relegation the season before by the skin of our teeth with the lowest points total ever, players leaving, boardroom splits and there’s role model Wayne who wore a blue shirt at his Anfield trial, the boy who converted even the hardened sceptics who watch the youth team into swivel-eyed zealots who had seen the second coming. After missing out on those erstwhile Blues, MacManaman and Fowler, here was one of our own. That final indignity the sale on the last day of the transfer window, denying Moyes the funds to buy any players.
You try and raise your kids to respect things like loyalty and what does Rooney do? Shit all over the club and its supporters. At times like this I remember Jack London’s definition of a scab, written in 1906,
“A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts he carries a tumour of rotten principles. The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife, his children and his fellow men. A scab is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class.”
A few years ago an old fella in his eighties applied to join a Miners Welfare Club in South Wales, his application was rejected. Why? Because he’d scabbed in the 1926 General Strike – some acts of treachery are never forgotten.
But getting back to the Red Shite, why the animosity and venom? Some people date it back to the Heysel ban in 1985 when Everton were denied the chance of winning the European Cup. Against that after Hillsborough there was the 1989 Merseyside United Cup Final – Reds and Blues travelling down to the match on the same coaches.
Fortunately we’ve never had the religious sectarianism where one club is identified as Catholic or Protestant. Although the city didn’t escape it – sectarian rioting in 1909 led to hundreds of families being forced out in tit for tat expulsions; Protestants from Scotland Road and Catholics from Netherfield Road. Houses were marked to denote the faith of the people living there. There was an Irish Nationalist MP in the 1920s and Protestant Party city councillors up to the 1970s.
Glasgow Rangers refused to play any Catholics until Mo Johnson was signed in 1989. By contrast Celtic have always signed players from Protestant backgrounds i.e., Jock Stein and Kenny Dalglish. Vicious sectarianism still scars football there, in 1999 16 year-old Catholic Thomas McFadden was murdered in the street after a Rangers – Celtic game.
We’ve never had anything like that, remember the outcry in 1977 when Liverpool came back with the European Cup and Crazyhorse grabbed hold of the mike and gloated, "Liverpool are Magic, Everton are Tragic". Hundreds of Evertonians who had turned up on St George's Plaza to watch the Cup brought back to the city for the first time made their point when they instantly went home, leaving gaps in the crowd. Crazyhorse was condemned by both sets of supporters.
There used to be great humour and banter at the derby; the Gladwys Street banner with ‘Bobby Latchford Walks On Water’, answered by the Koppites with ‘Latchford is a Duck’; Shankly in the directors box just after he resigned, thousands singing, ‘Hey Rock and Roll Shankly’s on the Dole’ and he stood up and waved; the stick Phil ‘Pinnochio’ Thompson took.
Now we get some knobhead getting his retaliation in first by throwing paint over the Shankly statue, then some low life defaces our beloved Dixie. Maybe that’s how ethnic cleansing starts and escalates out of control. Most families are divided, my son’s a Blue and my daughter’s a Red – I know she did it to wind me up but that’s kids for you. I don’t know why it’s all has changed. It’s not as though one club won everything in the ‘90s. Maybe there’s a new generation of supporters who have taken their cue from Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham and London. Or do we live in less tolerant times?
We’ve got a lot of things to be proud of in this city and I don’t mean a lorra, lorra things – Cilla (Big mansion in Surrey - ‘I didn’t know Thatcher would appear on the stage’) Black, The Echo, Tarby and friends, Stan (One Joke – ‘Dem Germans bombed our chippy’) Boardman.
The things I’m proud of – the only city to take on Thatcher in the 1980s, Terry Fields - the only MP to go to jail over the Poll Tax, the Dockers Strike and the Women of the Waterfront, Ricky Tomlinson, the Hillsborough Justice Campaign and the boycott of ‘The Sun’. You used to be able to say that the spirit of generosity and tolerance at the derby games was part of that as well.
Let’s be honest the atmosphere at derby games is poisonous full of venom and hatred. There have been instances of supporters being insulted and sworn at in front of their young sons. Is that how we want to live? They’ll always be the Red Shite but they’re also our family, our neighbours, our workmates, and even our friends (suspended on match day).
Remember the first scarf to be laid on the Anfield pitch in memory of Hillsborough was a blue one.
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