Season 2011-12
Fan Articles
We All Bleed Blue
By Paul McAllister :: 26/08/2011 The current situation at Everton has supporters split like never before. An increasing amount of fans are voicing their discontent with the job our Board of Directors is doing while many others continue to show support and believe everything they?re told by the club hierarchy (not much).
18 Tensions are growing between sides and it?s beginning to spill over. I?m a long-term season ticket holder at Goodison Park and have attended well over a 100 matches in the past 7-8 years and I thought I?d experienced every type of atmosphere you could feel at a football game.
Yet, at the QPR match, I felt something I?ve never felt before, possibly the worst atmosphere I?ve ever felt. Fans were angry, anxious and plain and simply down in the dumps after the worst summer in recent memory. This was the first game of the season, supporters were meant to be pumped up and desperate to see some football. But that spark never materialised at any point of the afternoon and the fans left feeling even worse after an embarrassing performance from the team.
Blues are now taking their frustrations out on each other, as revealed by a man writing to the Echo, at the QPR game a fight broke out between groups of fans whose opinions on the Club?s problems differed. For me, what really underlined these tensions was an incident that I myself was involved in shortly after full time...
Whilst waiting for my regular lift home from the game, I was standing opposite Walton Sports Centre, a fellow fan accosted me because he took offence to the protest scarf I was wearing (the blue and yellow one which reads ?No Status No Optimism?). I won?t repeat the majority his colourful language but the gist of what he said is for me to stop being a ?Kopite? and if I wasn?t willing to get behind the club I should ?Go support someone else.? This for me summed up everything that is wrong at Everton and the bad feeling surrounding us right now.
I love Everton and so do the Blue Union and the rest of its supporters and they should not be accused of anything otherwise. The accusation that these fans are nothing but troublemakers who only want to ?stick the boot into Everton Football Club? is grossly unfair. The only reason these fans are speaking out against the current regime is because they care about the club and the future. When you love something and you think you see it suffering, you try to do something to help it.
There are lots of other supporters who feel that protesting and condemning the Board and even in some cases the manager, at games and on the internet, is the wrong way of going about things. I personally respect that view, even though I disagree with it, but EVERY fan should be able to have his or her opinion and be able to voice it if they wish without the fear of being labelled a clueless idiot who?s ?in the minority.? I believe that currently this is not happening.
It?s not right when we Evertonians take our anger and frustrations out on each other. Some of us are angry with the Board, some with the manager, some with the players, some with other the lad in the seat next to us, some with just the whole negativity surrounding the club. Now all this anger appears to have reached boiling point and it?s making the situation and the bad feeling black cloud above Goodison Park worse.
Fans like me should be able to wear a protest scarf and let their dissatisfaction with the bigwigs in the stands be known if they wish too; likewise for the their supporters. I think both sets of fans will agree though that the club itself isn?t helping the situation.
Firstly, old Blue Bill by acting like a child after the transcript of his meeting with Blue Union was made public has only angered his detractors further. David Moyes and Phil Neville by labelling these fans a ?minority? have only succeeded making them even more determined to voice their views and even more aggressively.
As I see it, only one thing will truly unite our great fan base again and that is if the team starts performing like we all know they can. We are badly in need of some positivity, but not in the form of countless players giving countless interviews promising to improve, but by actually getting on the pitch and showing us some improvement.
The club?s off-the-field problems don?t look like they?ll be solved in the near future but, until they are, we need to stop fighting each other and instead help our team fight our opponents on the pitch. Evertonians are great supporters who are famed for our togetherness and team spirit. Let us not ruin it now and respect that the club is as much yours as the man next to you.
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I dont always agree with what you post but uve nailed it with the divorce comparison
If anything we care too much
i have no idea where the club that ive loved and cried over so many years is going
What a fuckin mess indeed
The Blue Union have successfully taken the fight off the message boards and forums and into the wider public domain. The arguments have spilled out on to the terraces. This is a good thing. Using Wilson's marriage analogy, it's better to have things out in the open so the issues can be worked through. For too long a lot of us have bottled up our emotions about Kenwright, too scared to talk about it in public, scared in case we rock the boat too much. But we care too much to sit on it any longer.
It's healthy that fans are now talking about it. It may lead to some heated exchanges but now there's enough of us 'dissenters' to stand up for ourselves. I won't be put off by someone who's only defence in the argument is to call me a kopite.
The course of true love never did run smooth!
Unfortunately as this drags on it will only get worse. I genuinely feel sympathy for BK in the regard that this cannot be good for his health. Sadly, reading the BU transcripts, I think he will hang on, the division will get worse, and there will be vitriol a la the Peter Swales regime towards the end at City.
That won't be good for our image. The divisions will remain for a generation, irrespective of the outcome. Whatever happens, people's opinions of certain players, institutions (eg. Echo) will be changed forever.
This will NOT happen if we continue with the behavior that we showed against Qpr.
I think Bill and everybody has got the message and that we should now focus fully on winning the next game. Lets start by beating Blackburn and take it from there.
However if Moyes is stupid enough and pulls the same crap he did against Qpr than I say go for it, make him change his ways.
One group thinks that you cannot love the club if you criticise the regime, if you want change.
The other group thinks that we criticise because we love the club.
I happen to be in the latter and think the former idiotic and uneducated. They surely think I'm a sunshine supporter and disloyal.
The result - we're busy fighting each other while the club rots.
There is only so much shit a man can take before he loses it. Seeing Everton lose is one thing; I can more or less handle it although it is by no means easy to stomach.
However, seeing the team play gutless football and lose and the club take your support for granted is quite another matter. I don't think we would hear many Evertonians complain so bitterly if the club management tried their best to move the club forward and on the field our boys go out all guns blazing. We Evertonians aren't an unreasonable lot. While we demand only the best, I daresay that effort shown is just as important, if not more so.
Fans should not be falling out with each other as it plays right into the Board's hands "divide and conquer". Vocalising our views on a matchday is a very real, in your face challenge to Kenwright and those willing to do it should be applauded; just as those who choose not have every right to stay stumm, (but please don't fight with those who want to have their say).
The one issue that unites us all is that we support Everton and want to see Everton do well. Am just getting ready to go to Blackburn - will be getting behind the lads as always.
We've seen it here on ToffeeWeb and it was only a matter of time before it would spill onto the terraces in one form or another, the catalyst of course is when things go pear shaped, like they did against QPR.
Some fans see those that argue against the regime as being disloyal (either BK or DM), I understand that, but my personal point of view is that by being quiet you provide tacit support for it, and therefore nothing changes.
I respect other blues points of view and genuinely admire their unwavering support, although I feel it is misguided at times. The one thing I find unacceptable though is Evertonians belittling other Evertonians and making patronizing comments. It's destructive and doesn't debate the real issues. It has to stop.
But I?m beginning to feel like a regular in a restaurant, where the waiter abuses and insults you, you?re kept waiting for the meal and when it comes, it tastes like a burnt turd (not that I would know what a burnt turd tastes like), would you go back there. To my mind the board and the manager knew the situation and should have moved some players on, and if necessary put Bily etc on the transfer, but at very least drawn up a list of who stays and then called a meeting of players? agents and told them to start pimping their players around.
What we got was total inertia, complete silence and more of the same problems that blighted last season all funded by soft bastards like me, Paul and anyone else that wishes to be taken for granted with the cry of get behind the lads.
BTW good analogy from Dave#2, but I'll add that in those circumstances you sometimes become to detest the cow.
But at the team level we are and we should be. I have said countless times before that the ramifications of the boards actions would end up affecting the team and splitting the fanbase. Worse still the credit card has been cut up and we are left without hope.
We HAVE to support the team irrespective of what we think of the board. Moyes may make some odd ball decisions but we have to support to ensure we survive, its the best we can do. ( No striker to start today..lord help us..)
Off the field is a different matter, sadly.. because you have to chose between incompetence, self interest, ignorance, which is it? Its not bad luck, its not circumstance.
We have been in far worse positions than we are now, playing far worse football and with far worse behind the scenes mayhem but we supported the club. A few moans and groans but not the reams of bile that we see now.
I recognise that things could be better but I personally am hardening against the protesting minority who are trying to drive the agenda in favour of what I see as the majority who want to support the club. I feel the disruptive element are far more likely to drag the club down than make one scrap of improvement.
You say - "We have been in far worse positions than we are now, playing far worse football and with far worse behind the scenes mayhem but we supported the club".
Hmmm...'FAR worse behind the scenes mayhem.
Well I'm sure you'll be MORE than happy to tell us WHEN there have been 'far worse' behind scenes mayhem.
Away you go then! (REALLY looking forward to a precise, fact-filled response to this)
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1 Posted 27/08/2011 at 06:20:06
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So when it all changes ( for better or worse is another debate ) your detractor will no doubt be cheering the new regime.