One game at a time?
Ant McKeown makes and then breaks his own rule in this rather optimistic article

16 November 2003

At the time I begin this, my clock reads 3:33pm and, in my state of insomnia, [Ah... an afternoon sleeper!] I'm scouring the Internet for everything on Everton.  Mostly comments left on message boards and fan columns — every one of these seems to be doom and gloom.  How the rest of the Premiership has our gameplan down to a tee, and there's going to be another relegation battle this year, etc.

Personally, I don't see it like that.

I see a team struggling for form, yes.  An injury-hit team that needs a decent run of results to get confidence back and to start climbing the table as quickly as possible.  Too many people are treating last Monday night's loss to Blackburn as the end of the world.  The media aren't helping by running stories that Rooney is on his way.   And when he discounts those rumours, they start on our next asset — David Moyes, and how disgruntled he is because 'the Everton Board doesn't have the funds to match his fierce ambition.'  They make it sound so real, too — and who can blame them?  It's what they're paid to do.

After the Chelsea game a couple of weeks ago, I was sure (like many other supporters) that the game at Ewood Park was the game that would turn our season around and send us skyrocketing up the table.  We were treated to a shambolic first-half display which left us chasing the game like so many other times before.

I'm only 18 years old, so in my lifetime, Everton have won the League Championship (1986-87) — which I was too young to remember — and the 1995 FA Cup.  In that time, they have finished in the top half of the table just twice.  So my formative years of football were:

• Kendall's second reign;
• the second caretaker tenure of Jimmy Gabriel;
• the misery of Mike Walker (although he did bring in Limpar, Ferguson and Amokachi if memory serves);
• Joe Royle, without question our most successful manager of the barren 1990s;
• the ever dependable Dave Watson's 4 or 5 games undefeated before Kendall, Part III;
• Smith (enough said!);
• and now, Moyes.

So I think I could be forgiven for thinking, maybe this year, last year's form will be recreated and we wont even hear the word relegation, but only 12 games into the season, already its being bandied about by our own fans.

On Monday night, we had 11 players missing, ten of whom would be considered for the first team (omitting O'Hanlon).  This coming weekend, after an international break, there's a good chance Mr Moyes will have a healthier squad to choose from.  As with any Messiah, we must keep the faith —  especially with our run of the next 5 league games: Wolves (H) Bolton (A) Man City (H) Portsmouth (A) Leicester (H).  At the absolute minimum, we should be looking for 13 points:

• Wolves should be beaten, I don't care how much their form has picked up recently, they're there for the taking.
• Bolton at the Reebok could be tricky; Jaaskalainen does seem to produce some fantastic stops against our strikers, and I just hope Jardel doesn't (like so many other strikers) come good against Everton.
• Man City are probably the best team in that run, and that defence has all the pace of a dead snail — Radz should ghost through with ease — although I admit whether or not he puts it in the back of the net is another story altogether.
• Portsmouth are a practical revelation under Redknapp, and most of their results come at Fratton Park, this game is the reason I say we might get 13 points.
• Leicester, like Wolves are there for the taking.  I know they've had a few surprise results recently, but hopefully we'll be in our stride by then to show them they're not good enough for this division.

Even though those next 5 games couldn't be much kinder, the one game we need to look at is Wolves on Saturday.  I'm not sure the panic button would have been pushed so hard if the table was looked at, since a win for us and all the right results on the day could see us jump to 13th.  We need to be in the here and now, not thinking about January, not about relegation.  Just one game at a time.  [And there's you, predicting four wins and a draw from the next five!]

Just remember, people: We're only just over a quarter of the way in to the season; we've been a hell of a lot worse off than this and still survived.  No Blue wants a relegation battle — God knows we've had our share and if we can just find our groove over the next 5 games....  I think the sky's the limit.

Ant McKeown

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