Respect the manager
Ken Stewart suggests the players should buckle down and get on with it
2 December 2003

"You don't "lose" a dressing room, it's the players who can't be arsed anymore - ken Stewart"

We linger in the bottom 3 of the Premiership, 2 points off bottom place with only 13 points, 3 wins and all of them at home, it's depressing to say the least but who can really be to blame in this whole issue? I've heard countless 'rumours' that Moyes has 'lost' the dressing room, well what a load of b*llocks. You don't lose a dressing room, David Moyes has been inspirational for Everton FC and if it wasn't for this man we may not have had the chance to finish 7th last year and not even the chance to be in the bottom 3 of the Premiership because if he had not come in when he did so I feel we would be a 1st Division side at this very moment being in huge amounts of debt and an attendance of 20,000 a week. But we're not, we're a Premiership side and at last a side with a bit of belief that we can actually go somewhere and again its all thanks to one man, David Moyes. You do not lose the players, it's the players who cant be ars*d anymore or so it seems.

Last May if you recall a programme on Granada was shown called Moyseside in which it was a small tribute to the achievements of David Moyes that season, we where shown coverage of the Gwladys St hall of fame dinner at the Adlephi and all the fans where singing one song 'HE'S GOT RED HAIR BUT WE DON'T CARE DAVIE DAVIE MOYES', then later on, the programme showed an interview with defender David Unsworth in which he said to not exactly these words referring to the contrasts between when Walter Smith and David Moyes 'You go round full circle, worrying about how many points we'll need and how other teams are doing around you and coming in dejected etc. but now its totally different there's a buzz about the place and it's great'.

So whatever happened to that buzz we all remember hearing so much about last season? Well I believe it's the players who have lost the buzz and certainly not our manager. So many times last season we seen what our players could do with the right management, Arsenal, Newcastle, Leeds, Southampton all beaten in memorable games as well as 12 other league games and 2 League cup wins. Moyes will not have changed anything so much that the players now feel 'tired and shattered' after training sessions and should not be criticising if it is true, a lot of players have Moyes to thank for getting them back into shape such as Gravesen, Unsworth, Stubbs, Linderoth the list is endless in my opinion.

Players should respect their manager and if they don't like certain ways of his then they should get on with it, but there's nothing to dislike in Moyes ways, he got our players fit last season and many times Everton where dubbed the fittest team in the country by journalists and managers alike. I saw a piece in the Echo today which said that Kevin Ratcliffe didn't like Howard Kendall at first and its well known that the players where petrified of Harry Catterick but what all the players had was respect for their managers and so therefore never doubted his ways but today's players don't need to respect a manager cause they know they only have to turn up to training and get £20,000 a week and after Saturday it was clear that none of them showed any heart which Moyes indicated honestly and frankly as per usual.

I started off writing this with no idea what was wrong but I ended it with a clear indication of what is wrong, the players. They have to listen to their manager to get that buzz back which was around last season because I have no doubts in Moyes but I've always had my doubts with our players.

If the players showed the same heart as us and the manager then we'd be a lot higher up the league table.

Oh and another thing I'd like to get off my chest as well, the rumours that Moyes will quit for Park Head or Arsenal's reserves then I'd like to end with a quote from Davie in the Moyseside programme-

"The way the club look after their ex-players, the way the ex-players come back and talk so highly of the supporters and the club, the way their supporters treat their players, it's really one big circle here, it's never-ending and I think once you're in the circle, there's no way out of it, I think you're stuck with it and....I'm certainly in that circle now"

Ken Stewart

�2003 ToffeeWeb