Fans Comment
Martin Kulkarni

Getting Real
22 March 2005

Enough is enough.  Let’s get this into perspective once and for all.  Are there really any of us still believing after Sunday's disgraceful (non-)performance and capitulation against arguably the worst Liverpool team in living memory (and even then mostly reserves and only 9 and ½ of them left at the finish!)? Let's stop beating ourselves up with outrageous expectation that an Everton side will finally deliver!!  When will we ever learn?

The only reason we are still 4th after losing 6 of the last 11 games and 4 out of the last 5 is because the Premier League is a joke!  We are a bottom-six side at best, evidence of which we are now seeing!

Sure, Moyes got lucky pre-season in stumbling across a system which he utilised to make us ‘hard to beat’; however, neither he nor anybody else could have foreseen just how successful it was to become (for the first 4 months or so anyway) and only then just as a consequence of how poor this league really is.

Where our limitations have finally come to light has been when visiting teams, á la Everton style, started ‘parking the bus’ in front of their goal: Spurs, Charlton and Blackburn.  Even in games which we have actually won in recent months (Man City, Portsmouth, Norwich) the performance or manner of these wins was hardly convincing.  I know that if people get to read this they will be saying a win is a win.  I’m sorry but that isn’t good enough.  Will I tell you how I know?  Spurs, Charlton and Blackburn which could very easily have also read … Man City, Portsmouth and Norwich.

Are people forgetting how Newcastle played under Keegan when they were in the top four?  They played with belief in their home games (and away usually).  Yes I know ultimately they won nothing, but then neither will we qualify for Europe this season and why?  Not having that belief, not ‘going for it’, because deep down we know we are in a false position even though many of us are still kidding ourselves.  I think Sunday’s shameful display should change all that for ever.

Of course, we are the only soft, sentimental club in this league who would sell their best player mid-season from a position of strength so he can realise his dream of playing for some club or other.  Good grief!  If they want him that badly, they can wait till the summer.  Any proper club would have told them that.  Not us, oh no!  Good money for him?  How much have we now lost by not qualifying for Europe?  Lunacy as only this club knows how!

We had a great chance at Anfield and I am not talking just Champion’s League qualification per se.  No, I’m talking about putting the ‘Dark Side’ out of business as a major club into the bargain.  They need CL football.  All the pressure should have been on them, and was on them.  Pity we are so taken in believing in our own publicity that we did not resemble them throughout the game. 

Whose bright idea was it to turn the teams around at the kick-off that had Liverpool in front of the Kop first half?  That didn’t put pressure on them, it just wound them up.  Even then, that’s okay as long as we are up for it as well….. What a joke that turned out to be!  Result?  Outplayed and outfought by their reserves.  And this is hard for me to say, but, given their injury list before and during the game, they were absolutely fantastic!  I know my brother as a Liverpool fan will be full of pride.  Wish I could say the same.

At least next season things will be back to a more familiar situation.  They are in the CL and we are back in the bottom 3, 4, 6?  Just as it should be, just as it has always been since the PL started.  I now think the club should concentrate fully on retaining some semblance of a squad next season given that so many players are out of contract.  It could be only us who having been mismanaged to such an extent as to be in this predicament!  We could and probably will make the ‘Ipswich’ effect look positively lame in comparison unless this is addressed! 

Quite frankly though, I wouldn’t say that any of them deserve a place except for Cahill.  Osman is too often ineffective and lightweight to be seen as future great hope.  Beattie, what a waste of money he is.  An ancient central defence,Yobo can go-go cos’ he is suddenly a liability!  Full backs distinctly average.  Kilbane now looking like the player my Sunderland-supporting friends say he is.  The future, given this ridiculous situation we are in, is not looking very good...

So, how is it that I knew it would come to this?  Same reason I winced every time I read the web sites with people positively verging on the cocky and over confident, especially approaching the derby.  Simple: 36 years as an Evertonian — that is how I knew.  Bitter experience on the whole really.  Indeed, as one fan admirably expressed recently….’aaaaaaaaarrrrggghhh!!!  I hate supporting Everton’.  Couldn’t put it better myself. 

Am I really the only one who just couldn’t find it in himself to join in the hype, to build up the team’s performance and league position this season despite the media’s indifference at best and ignorance of us at worst?  Maybe I am.  Frightening!  Fact is, they always let you down.  Quite bizarre really cos’ players come and players go, but you can bet that any group of eleven players wearing the royal blue, will, when it comes down to it, when it matters, when push comes to shove will bottle it, let you down, kop out, blow it …..FAIL!!! 

Having said that, we are actually very successful at escaping relegation — just as well really as we will be back to that familiar scenario from next season, although with the lunatics still running the asylum, still no money, and no Moyes if the Celtic seat is vacated this summer, we will eventually fail at this also and none of us will be able to say that it wasn’t coming.

Martin  Kulkarni

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