Fans Comment
Laurence Jones

Get a bloody grip
24 March 2004

This is the first time I’ve bothered to write to ToffeeWeb.  I’ll be honest, I rarely even bother reading it these days.  Instead, I spend my free time attending the funerals of complete strangers, where the wailing lamentations of the grieving widows and orphans does far more to help me maintain my happy outlook and sunny disposition than browsing the suicide notes that most of the contributors seem to pepper the site with these days... 

What’s with all the misery?  We’re enjoying the best season Everton have had in more than a decade.  We’ve got a manger who shows every sign of knowing what he’s doing, without needing to mortgage the club for the next 25 years to pay for it.  We’ve got players who actually want to play for the club, and what one or two may lack in talent compared to other clubs around us they make up for by giving every single bit of effort they can every single week. 

We’ve also brought in someone to keep an eye on the books who gives every impression he might even be able to count beyond ten without taking his shoes off.  There’s even a vague rumour floating around that there may be one or two people out there who’d be willing to put money into the club.  Who would have believed it? 

And how do the happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care ToffeeWebbers react to this new golden age of Everton?  By stringing themselves up from the nearest lamppost, by the sound of things.  I doubt so many angst ridden; self absorbed, manic-depressive misery wallowers have been gathered together in one place since the Smiths split up.  What the chuff is wrong with you people?  It’s as if you’ve spent the entire season waiting for things to go wrong, suffering horribly through the great performances and sickened by our ridiculously high league position, but now that tiredness and the limitations of the squad size have finally led to a drop in form, up you all spring again.

• “I told you so.”
• “All the good performances were just disguising the fact we’re really rubbish”
• “The first 25 league matches of the season were just a fluke”
• “I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows I’m miserable now”

You must all be absolutely gutted that the predicted relegation and administration haven’t happened (oh, I forgot, there’s always next year).  At least you can now bemoan the fact there’s a chance we might not be able to hang on to fourth place, and suffer the indignities of a 5th or 6th place finish, with only teams that have spent 10 times what we have on transfers finishing above us. 

Whatever you do, don’t mention the fact we have already exceeded everyone’s predicted points total for the season, will definitely finish at least 5 places higher than the most optimistic of us were expecting, and could still finish a good 13 places higher than a lot of us would have taken at the start of the year.  Sweep that right under the carpet. We’re Evertonians, and we’re in it for the misery.

I was particularly stung into writing this when I had the misfortune to be pointed towards the ‘Getting Real’ article by Martin Kulkarni.  Martin, I pray nothing genuinely bad ever takes place in your life, because if this is how you react to this season, I dread to think how you’ll cope with a real setback.  Now it would be the job of a lifetime to point out every absurdity, inaccuracy or out-and-out lie contained in that article, so I’ll just pick on a few highlights.

“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!”

The reason we are 4th is because we have accumulated more points than the teams in 5th, 6th, 7th etc.  I’m having a mental block as to how we can be a bottom-six at best side, without being in the bottom six, or are even in a position to end up so at the end of the season.  We are currently a top-four side, and the bookies' favourites to stay that way.  It’s also worth noting in our ‘joke’ of a League, two teams currently placed below us reached the knockout stages of the Uefa Cup, and one is still in the Champion’s League.  Perhaps you mean all European football is a joke?  I’m sure we wouldn’t last 5 minutes in the MLS.... 

“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!”

I don’t know if you’ve spotted this, but football has changed a bit since the 1950’s.  There are a handful of clubs who collect the top players, and everyone else sells when they come calling.  Charlton with Parker and Fulham with Saha are recent examples, and wait three months and we can add Liverpool and Gerrard to that list.  Did they cave in out of sentimentality?  No. They, like us, caved because they were realistic. 

Picture the scene around Christmas… Tommy is called into David Moyes’s office.  “Hi there, Thomas.  I’ve called you in today to tell you we’ve had a bid for you from Real Madrid.  Yes, that Real Madrid, biggest club in Spain, home of the Galacticoes, and Europe’s most decorated ever team.  They want to bring you to in, double your wages, and give you a chance at more glory than you could possibly achieve, at least in the near future, with Everton.  Now I’ve spoken to the Board, and we’ve decided not to let you go, thus taking your dreams, crushing them into a little ball, throwing them on the ground and spitting on them.  So I’d like you to get straight back out to training, forget this has ever happened, and play the rest of the season with the effort and intensity you have to date, never once giving a second thought to the fact you’re doing all this for a club you would have rather left, and who shot down in flames your one big chance that will never come again.  That OK with you?”  “Er... Yes, boss”. 

See where I’m going here?  A certain chubby ex-Evertonian striker demonstrated quite neatly in August that you can be brought up a blue, move from the terraces to the team, give every indication that merely pulling on the blue shirt is your every dream fulfilled, and yet still piss off the second the big boys come calling.  Grav’s only links to us were that we were his employers.  Sure, he seemed to like it here, and had a great rapport with the fans, but at the end of the day it’s just a job, and when a better offer came in, he took it.  Can’t blame him.  If someone told me I could do the same job for more money at a more prestigious firm, you wouldn’t see me for dust. 

I’ll admit the transfer fee received pales into insignificance compared to what we stand to make from a season playing Champion’s League football with the big boys, but do you honestly believe if the transfer had been blocked Tommy would have shown even half the desire and commitment he had before?  Considering our successes this year have been built on team spirit and togetherness, holding a key player against his will could easily have poisoned the whole dressing room atmosphere, and caused more problems than we have right now.

“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...”

Where the hell do I even start with this drivel?  We’re in 4th place.  We’ve won 15 and drawn 6 of the 30 games we’ve played.  We have 51 points.  And in your opinion we’ve done all of this with only one player that’s worth keeping?  All I can say to that is that little Timmy must be one hell of a player then.  I’ll expect a £50M bid from Chelsea in the summer.

Every single player who’s taken to the pitch for us this season deserves nothing but praise from everyone who claims to be an Evertonian, because for most of the seasons they’ve worked miracles.  Christ, there have been a few games this season where Pistone has looked good.  Only three teams have conceded more goals than our ‘ancient defence’, and you can put your house on those 3 teams having put theirs together for a little bit more money than we have. 

It wasn’t long ago Yobo was one of the most promising defenders in the country.  One or two high profile mistakes, coupled with most of his appearances this season being out of position, and suddenly he wants shooting. Kilbane’s been poor lately.  Can’t argue with that.  He was also one of our few players who cared enough last season to make an effort and, up until Christmas this season, he was as good as anyone.  I know as football fans we tend to have short memories, but to judge the entire season on the basis of one bad derby game and ignore everything else is really taking the piss.  Get some perspective. The jury is still out on Beattie though.

“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.”

There’s a little song that has something to do with knowing your history.  It normally annoys me when people constantly go on about how great their club once was.  Makes you look like a Spurs fan.  But I’ll make an exception in this case, and throw a little light on Martin’s 36 years of bitterness:

• League winners: 1969/70, 1984/85 and 1986/87.
• Runners Up: 1985/86
• FA Cup Winners: 1984 and 1995
• European Cup Winner’s Cup: 1984/85.

I bet you were crying yourself to sleep all through the 80’s, weren’t you?  Things haven’t been so rosy lately, it’s true, but 36 years of bitterness?  95% of league clubs would kill to have had the successes we’ve had in that time.  Short memory letting you down again mate.  Back to the start to round things off:

“Let's stop beating ourselves up with outrageous expectation that an Everton side will finally deliver!!  When will we ever learn?”

Never, if I have anything to do with it.  Why the hell would I want to learn to be a miserable cynic, hoping for the worst just so I get to shrug my shoulders and say, “I told you so”?  I may be an optimist, but anyone with a clue about the game can see signs that things are starting to look up for us.  I love Everton Football Club, and very few things in life give me more happiness than seeing the signs that things might be coming together.  With the resources at our disposal we have totally blown away all expectations this season.

If we nosedive and finish 10th, it will have been a good year.  But we won’t.  I know this because I trust the players, and I trust Moyes, and more than anything else, I have faith in Everton.  The glass isn’t half empty, it’s full to overflowing, and in a few months time I’ll be using it to toast the end of a glorious season that sees us back in Europe where we belong.  And I know I’ll be enjoying this far more than Mr Kulkarni, and the other 75% of Toffeeweb contributors that are just waiting to see us fail. 

Right, this has turned into an epic, and I’ve got to go and make sure my passport is valid ready for next season.  Keep the faith....

Laurence  Jones

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