View from the Blue
Columnist: Lyndon Lloyd

Thomas Gravesen: The midfield inspiration of "Dr Jekyll" will be sorely missed ; "Mr Hyde" will not!

As much as it pains us to admit it, Thomas Gravesen has played his last match in an Everton jersey.  The £2.1M deal was completed today with a medical and the Dane will be winging his way to Madrid to begin a 3½-year contract with the biggest club side on the Continent.

His departure will be greeted more with abject disappointment than anger by most Evertonians — after all, how could you deny him the chance to play for Real Madrid, with not only immediate Champions League football guaranteed, but also a genuine crack at winning that competition?  Thomas is at the peak of his career and this will likely be his last chance for major silverware. As much as Everton have improved in the last few months, we're still some way short of being able to promise European football let alone guarantee it.

And that will have been one of the deciding factors for a player who had finally become the player he always promised to be for Everton and, as a result, a firm fan favourite.  Why, oh, why, though, did he have to accomplish both in the final year of his contract, a contract he never really looked like extending despite the Blues' meteoric rise to the upper echelons of the Premiership?

It's enormously ironic that the loss of "Mad Dog" Gravesen will be such a wrench to us, though, seeing as he has been such an infuriatingly erratic performer for Everton since arriving from SV Hamburg in 2000.  In that move, it should not be forgotten, he turned his back on European football — both Hamburg and his other suitors at the time, Bayern Munich, had qualified for Europe for the following season.

The word "mercurial" could have been invented for Thomas Gravesen and his unpredictable form right up until this season earned constant references to "Jekyll and Hyde."  There have been times, particularly last season, when I have wanted to wring his neck through pure frustration — the lethargic tackling, set pieces that don't make it past the first man, "headless chicken" impersonations, and wayward shooting.

Then, on the flip side, are the undoubted moments of international class — his first goal for the club against Manchester United at Goodison, for one, our consolation goal against Arsenal on the opening day of the season where he deliciously scooped the ball over a wall of defenders for Lee Carsley to score for another. And yet, while this season he had finally developed into the driving, midfield force Everton have been lacking for years, he was still prone to significant swings in form. At Blackburn, Charlton and Tottenham recently he was as anonymous and ineffective as anyone else on the pitch at precisely the time we needed his inspiration.

And his erraticism is what makes Gravesen such a curious phenomenon and is why most Blues are so perplexed that clubs like Real, Manchester United and AC Milan are so interested in him. While he is almost indispensable to us because of the paucity of our resources, it's almost amusing to those of us who know his tendencies so well that Madrid will shell out a rumoured €3m to sign him six months earlier.

Then again, perhaps it was the nature of the English Premiership that brought the worst as well as the best out of "Gravedigger." Certainly, his form on the international stage for Denmark — the pace of which is more easily compared to Spain's "La Liga" — has been superb. At the 2002 World Cup and last summer's European Championship, he looked every bit the world-class performer, a fact that made his domestic form all the more frustrating. So, it could be argued that he will excel at the Bernabeu Stadium and completely outshine one of his competitors for a midfield place there... one David Beckham.

For Everton, Gravesen's departure is desperately disappointing and potentially damaging at this critical point in the season. We will, of course, be without him for Sunday's crucial clash at The Riverside with Middlesbrough, one of our rivals for European qualification. Unless David Moyes has a comparable or superior replacement already lined up, the Blues will struggle in Thomas' absence. They have been struggling enough to score as it is without losing their prime source of midfield invention and a contributor of five goals already this season.

It may, however, have come down to a chiefly financial decision by the club.  The rhetoric from John Sivabaek, Gravesen's Proactive Sports agent, has put the ball in squarely in Everton's court, suggesting that his client wants to play for Real but that he would also be happy to stay at Goodison until the end of the season.  £2.1m is a lot of money for a player entering the final six months of his contract, though, and is also a hefty sum to a club like Everton.  It would almost represent the club getting back what it paid for the Dane five years ago and go a long way towards funding a midfield replacement.

It could, however, be immaterial if we fail to qualify for the Champions League because of Gravesen's sale. The loss in income would dwarf what we receive from Real Madrid if no suitable replacement is brought in and we miss out on Europe altogether.

Five years is a long time at any club, and a particularly long spell with a team that hasn't been challenging for major honours, so Gravesen's decision to move on is, again, understandable.  It is just immensely worrying that we either won't have the time or money to replace him effectively or we won't try and replace him at all, thereby scuppering all the incredible work that has gone into the season so far.  While Tommy G might be leaving to guarantee himself Champions League football, it is absolutely crucial that we take all measures necessary to keep our own European dreams alive.  David Moyes, over to you...

Lyndon Lloyd

Reader Responses:

©2005 ToffeeWeb