Fans Comment
David Booth

Champions League - we ARE indeed having a laugh!
10 May 2005

It’s a sad old cliché I know, but life is full of ups and downs isn’t it?

Fortunately, most are quickly forgotten and we are able to move on. Some do not fade so easily, such as 1985... Then, as none of us need reminding, Everton were denied what many justifiably feel was a real opportunity to win the European Cup by events at Heysel: made all the more hard to accept because it was Liverpool’s fault. What a rewarding feeling then, to have got them back. Now it’s us who could deny them: a feeling which will become almost orgasmic if they win the Champions League and are subsequently refused the chance to defend it.

Qualification via fourth spot has been validated and we all need to check our passports are similarly in order! But that’s not the point of this submission, delicious as it is to know the Kopites will be creased with frustration. It’s not even about how well we’ve done, or why, as that’s already been detailed, discussed and digested in many other places apart from here.

Instead, it’s about the manner in which we’ve done it and the pride we can take in the teamwork at all levels that has proved everyone wrong - including ourselves. Gordon Strachan summed it up perfectly for me on last night’s MOTD2, when he named Tim Cahill, David Moyes and Everton respectively as his player, manager and team of the season.

We’re here on merit and this really is the dawning of a potential new era for this great club of ours. We have been wonderfully, pleasantly surprised. Our success has not been received so charitably by many others though, who have branded Everton one-dimensional, physical, lucky and not worthy of fourth place.

We know a different story though don’t we? Yes, until the last few weeks, we have employed an uncompromising 4-5-1 system. Yes, we have refused to be brushed aside by ‘strong’ teams. Yes, we have undoubtedly enjoyed a fair share of good fortune. But if we don’t deserve fourth place, then why didn’t someone take it off us? They couldn’t, because we were better than the rest.

Rooney’s departure was hardly the sort of season-opener we would have chosen and the opening day rout by Arsenal just convinced me that, this time, things were not going to get better. With hindsight, selling the two-faced turncoat was the best bit of business we might ever do. Clearly the players had had enough of his constant ‘star billing’, while paradoxically allowing themselves to become far too dependent upon him when he played. His departure gave them an ideal chance to prove something, combined with the collective kick-up-the-arse they received after the shambles of last season. In came Bent and Cahill, to nothing more than murmurs of approval, and we all fastened our seatbelts for a bumpy ride.

Anticipation of nine months of turbulence proved groundless however, as David Moyes got our oft-criticised ‘journeymen’ to prove this is still a team game. Players who were in danger of being lynched last year stood up and were counted. Hibbert, Pistone, Stubbs, Weir, Carsley, Kilbane and Big Dunc all rolled-up their sleeves and proved the point we’d all demanded they do. I’ve deliberately left Gravesen off that list, believing him worthy of a special mention - albeit a cautionary one. If ever one player epitomised Everton’s complete unpredictability, it was him. Brilliant one day, completely infuriating the next.

Unlike all those people now salivating about the prospect of him returning I would advocate we leave him to ply his trade elsewhere. He was just one of a number of players who rediscovered the need to work for their highly-paid living this season. Besides which, Arteta looks far superior.

No player is irreplaceable - as Fat Boy and Mad Dog have ably demonstrated - but we do have someone that is. David Moyes has done a great deal more than make us the ‘best of the rest’ this season. He’s given us back our pride. Not only has he done what NO other manager could have done on such limited resources, he’s done it in style: a manner which befits our club and marks him as more than a bit special. His invention of our new identity as the ‘peoples’ club’ was a real headline grabber. But soundbites are all too easy.

What makes Moyes so different is his honesty and a refusal to pass the buck in an attempt to deflect the spotlight when things go wrong. The repeated lambasting of referees by the likes of Allardyce, Sickness, O’Leary, McLaren, Bruce and Keegan (RIP) and the holier-than-thou antics of Mourinho, Wenger and Ferguson deserve less credence than a second-rate politician. As for Beneathus... well, he’s more to be pitied than scalded right now.

But David Moyes is just the best. Magnanimous in victory yet forthright, not evasive, when things go wrong. And his comment about remaining humble after the events of last weekend was just typical. He embodies all the values we cherish at Everton. He’s got red hair and he really does care. So for once it looks like we will have the last laugh - all the way to that qualifying round in August!

David  Booth

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