Fans Comment

The more you know...
17 October 2005

It's the old saying: the more you know, the more you wish you didn`t.  Moyes should go now as he has lost total respect from the players.  He achieved this at the end of last season, while 12 players were waiting on new contracts and he sorted himself with a new 3-year deal straight after the Liverpool v Arsenal game and didn`t give a shit about the players who he was hoping to keep.

Moyes has released every Everton Academy youth player from the last intake under Harvey and Harper. There are no 19-year-olds plus until you reach Tony Hibbert.  The new Academy is finally under way...  the fact is that the FA told Everton if its facilities didn`t improve then they would loose Academy status, Fact!

Colin Harvey and Alan Harper both left under bad terms with the people that were brought in to see the development of the new academy structure — a Mr Neil Dewsnip.  Under Harper and Harvey, we always had players on the fringes; even if they were not quite good enough, we could sell them on and get a return on our investment.  Now, we are just releasing anyone and everyone that Dewsnip has convinced Moyes wasn`t as good as his new batch of kids coming through. 

Two of these (Anthony Gerrard and Daniel Fox) are now at Walsall and have been told by their manager, Paul Merson, not to buy any property locally because they have had offers from other clubs and would not be staying long. The biggest joke is Gary Naysmith, who was not going to sign a new contract because he thought Danny Fox was a better left-back than him and he wouldn't get a game! 

The only reason we are still holding on to young players is the efforts from the likes of Martin Waldron and his loyal scouting team who would run their own granny over to get a kid to play for Everton.  But this is no longer good enough and the club are letting these people down by having sub-standard facilities.  The budget they get to run the Academy is a pitiful joke — only the sponsors that the old guard had, who were there before Dewsnip and the rest of his cronies arrived from the ill fated FA National School of Excellence. 

Even in this most important of areas, we are running on the past history of the great name that was once Everton.  But this is no longer good enough as people see what other clubs have to offer and think: "Everton? What a joke!"  This trend is reflected in every area of the club with people at the top only employing people who haven't got a clue but are being told what at great job they are doing so they don't expose the incompetence that they display day in, day out. People who can do their jobs within the club are either frightened to speak out or are fed up of trying to put things right — nobody listens to people with experience and a wise head, or long-term knowledge of how a football club should be run. 

As supporters, we have been putting up with this shambles for the last 15 to 20 years.  It doesn't matter who is Chairman, unless they have got endless pots of money, we have missed the boat.  There are three clubs who are so far ahead of the rest (Chelsea, Arsenal, and Man Utd) that the rest will always be playing for fourth place as their championship.  We have got to face reality and tell it how it is to all Everton fans. Let's stop kidding ourselves that things are going to get better because there not. We haven`t even got a five-day plan, never mind a five-year one.

Why is nobody using the corporate suites? Because you get a better meal in the chippies and snack bars.  We all know a person who has wealth and is a mad Everton fan but who will not invest anything into the club currently because the business is being run so poorly. 

Let's get another fact straight: Sir Terry Leahy has come on board because he is fed up of Liverpool City Council shafting Everton in favour of Liverpool all the time.  Yes, when the local elections come around, it might be time to ask questions of who your local councillor supports. 

Why do you think the new ground move for Liverpool has gone quiet?  Because Sir Terry has made it as difficult as possible for them to get the grants that the local council usually throws at them.  Three years to get permission to build an academy in Halewood, while Liverpool get the go-ahead to build in a Grade 2 listed public park within months!   This is because there are too many people at the Club who think that Everton is a Nine 'til Five job and it doesn't matter if they mess things up because we, the customers, will still come back for more, while they can go and use their season tickets for the club they support — all at our expense. 

The only way we are going to survive is to bring in people who have the desire to prove themselves at the top level, and who will go and try to buy four players who might make the grade, rather than somebody of the likes of Beattie.  Here are just a few that Moyes wouldn't go for because he got us into the Champions League and needed instant success because he had the money to do it:  Reo Coker, Aaron Lennon, Wayne Routeldge, Darren Bent, Andrew Reid, Tom Huddlestone, Ryan Taylor .. the list is endless.  But no; he wants players who — let's face it, not one of them have made us excited.

Even the most unknowledgeable person on football knows we needed a striker with pace who can score goals.  I could go on for hours about the state and plight of the club but its breaking my heart realising the truth.  For all those who have been labeling Ian Macdonald a crank and a trouble-causing rebel over the last few years should hold your heads in shame.  If we had taken notice of him and a few more a long time ago, we wouldn't be in this mess. 

Moyes out. Wyness out.  And anybody who has a season ticket for Anfield and is in an important position in the club must also leave now.

Name Withheld

Responses:

Do you really think that holding onto youth players even if the manager doesn’t think that they will make it at the top level is the way out of this mess? How infantile is that? Just because they are nice people or they’ve come through the club doesn’t mean that they will make it at the top level. Look where Grant and Cadamarteri are now.

And this mythical pot of gold that you think is going to appear by keeping hold of youth players until they are 19 and getting £250k each for them, just wont happen either. Its not until players are playing week in, week out in the first team that you know how good (or not) they are, and even then it's only a gamble. It's in everyone’s best interests to let them go so they can find a suitable club. No one is going to pay a fortune for a youth team player with little or no first-team experience.

And if you’re suggesting that the youth team players would have helped us out of this mess then you would’ve got us into more trouble than we’re already in. Can you really imagine the scenario, we’re playing Chelsea next week, so Moyes is going to field half the reserve team??? Not to win it but just so they can get experience and we can sell them on… Actually can you even imagine that scenario if we were playing Birmingham or Boro, never mind Chelsea?

You say that we should buy 4 untried and tested strikers instead of one who has proved he can do it in the premiership. Conversely you then go on to say that “even the most unknowledgeable person on football knows we needed a striker with pace who can score goals”. This shows schoolyard thinking at its best.

With hindsight yes, Darren Bent has proved that he’s been a good investment for Charlton so far this season, but then again didn’t Marcus Bent do well for us in his first season? Are you suggesting that Moyes shouldn’t have gambled on Marcus Bent and should have bought Darren instead? Or is that your famous hindsight starting to kick in again?

And if you remember correctly Moyes did try to sign potential, in Nugent, Etuhu, Sissoko, but their clubs priced them out or they went elsewhere.

Talking of going elsewhere, even if Moyes had wanted Darren Bent, who do you think Everton are that we can just go out and get any potential rising star we feel like, without the likes of Charlton, Man City, West Ham, even Liverpool, having a sniff too? Do you really think that Reo Coker is going to drop everything just because Everton call his agent? Those days have been over for 40 years, and it’ll take a lot of hard work and time to get us back there.

And while we’re on the subject of buying potential rather than proven talent, I bet you were one of those screaming for Parker, Emre, Bellamey and Baros but, surprise surprise, they went to clubs who’s pockets were deeper and who were desperate enough to pay silly wages. As I said, its been a long time since we were the “Mersey Millionaires”.

And while we’re on the subject HOW DARE YOU tell us that we, or any other club, will never break into the top three. You’re a shitbag if you think that we’ve given up on Everton already. Yes, it might take a while, and it might take bottle, but look at what Villarreal have managed in Spain, and what Hearts are doing in Scotland. We know we’re not there yet, and we know our morale is low, but I’m not giving up all my hopes and dreams just because someone who is too gutless to even be named is on here crying like a baby just because he’s not happy with the way the club is being run. If you were that good, you’d be running the club yourself, you’re not, and it shows.

But that does bring us to your only real point, you’re not happy with the way the club is being run. Well that at least I can agree with. There are people at all levels in the club who have been there far too long and who treat the club as a hobby, who are not competent for the job, and who assume that because they are loyal Evertonians then they don’t need to be able to do their job, but they are wearing the club down.

It's not the playing staff, nor those associated with the playing staff. It’s the administration of the Club that bothers me. And that doesn’t mean Bill or Keith, but the people who work for them, from the marketing team right down to the staff at the ticket office. In fact the only person that I have faith in is the Accountant, he’s making sure that the purse strings are tight, for today and for the future.

Am I happy with being bottom of the league, of being out of the Champions League, or being out of Uefa Cup – no I’m not. Am I happy with Moyes’s purchases, yes I am. Everyone must agree that we have a much better team and bigger squad than we had last year. Would I have liked us to have purchased a striker over the summer? Yes, but not any striker, I wanted an Owen or a Kuyt, not a Keane or a Baros, we already have average strikers at the club.

So what are we to do as a club? How have we got in this mess then? If it's not the manager’s fault who’s is it? Outside of injuries our only problem is morale. We were looking for a Champions League place and we lost it, and we lost a little heart with it. We now need to pick ourselves up, get behind the team and show them that we still have faith in them, and maybe that will give them the faith that they need to in themselves.

If you whinge and moan at them, telling them that they are no good, that the manager is no good then.... they may end up believing you, and your words will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, so if they do go down then you yourself may be partly to blame. If we get behind them week in, week out, they may start believing in themselves again, and we may start climbing the table.

We may not get back to 4th place, but it’ll only take a relatively short run to get us back into contention for a European place. Come on Blues, support your local team….

Sack The Juggler

"Fans Comment" articles are submitted by outside contributors to ToffeeWeb and are edited to meet our publishing standards.  The views contained therein may not correspond with those of the site owners.  Editorial policy

©2005 ToffeeWeb