Fans Comment
Shaun Sparke

Thick 'n Thin
19 December 2005

No, that’s not the latest offer from Warburtons, to entice you to buy their bread. That’s is the cry you hear from many a disgruntled, loyal but somewhat myopic football fan when their team is going through “a dodgy patch” (When does a patch become the size of a whole quilt)? Like many others who visit this and other Everton Websites, I claim the dubious honour of being loyal to our team; I started watching them in the early seventies and have been going ever since. I stood and watched crap performance after crap performance in those years, all the way through to the early eighties, although Dave Thomas, Bob Latchford and Duncan Mc did provide a few years of tantalising “nearly team” glory.

I constantly had my nose rubbed in it throughout my entire school life from those glory hunters who never used to go to the game, but had all the bags, badges and scarves and backed their exercise books with pictures of Keegan and Toshack. I was grossly outnumbered, and remember the dread of going to school after Villa had finally beaten us at the third attempt in the “Mickey Mouse cup”. (Liverpool seemed to take it very seriously every year after 1977) But none of this mattered to me, as I was a blue like my father before me and I would stick with them no matter what.

The eighties were mostly glorious, well a few years were glorious, well ok, 1984 was a good year 1985 was a fantastic year; let's gloss over 1986, it should have been our double year. 1987 was somewhat of a surprise as we played some gritty if unspectacular football and ended up winning the league, but let's not be churlish, we still won it. Then sadly the decline of our club both on and off the pitch has been alarming ever since.

I watched our performance against West Ham on Wednesday night and could have cried. The next day I turned on my tv and watched our neighbours take apart a very poor team in the so-called World Club Championship. I could have cried. I read in one of the papers, Moyes saying that we will be up for the Bolton Game… This time I bloody well did cry.

How did we end up like this? We finished 4th last year, but let's not kid ourselves; we hung on to it like a dying man hangs onto his last breath, and ended up the season with a minus one goal difference. This is Moyes’s team now; he has had more money to spend then some of the clubs who constantly play better more attractive football than us. I have never advocated the “lets sack the manager” chorus that is far to common in the average football fan's vocabulary. But something has to give, we do not score enough goals and when we do score, we defend for the remainder of the game whether we score in the first or 89th minute. This attitude comes from the manager and it has to stop.

I am fed up of watching crap football, I know we can no longer compete with the likes of Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal and dare I say it Liverpool in the transfer market, but for god's sake how much more of this diluted, dispassionate crap football do I have to watch, before somebody finally wakes up and does something about it.

Sadly, I don’t think Moyes is the man. I used to when he first came and talked a good talk; he talked about fit young players wearing the Everton Shirt, no more has-beens looking for a final payoff. “Thank god for that” was the collective response from us long-suffering blues... then what has he just done? offered a lucrative contract to an ageing, sulking ineffective Roy Keane. That just stinks of panic.

Sorry, Moyes: you are not the man we all hoped and prayed would take us to the next level. Yes, you do have good qualities and showed your strength in keeping us in the top league with little money and a wafer thin squad. For that alone you should not be hounded out, as you deserve better than that. I don’t think there are many managers who could have done that, and I for one will never forget it.. BUT, I think the time has come for a bit of straight thinking.

I will still go to the game whether Moyes is there or not. Or whether we are winning trophies or fighting relegation. I don’t know why, I just can’t help it. Remember, Thick ‘ n Thin

Shaun Sparke

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