Fans Comment
Kevin Sparke

All lost in the Supermarket
15 January 2006

'I'm all lost in the supermarket
I can no longer shop happily
I came here for a special offer
guaranteed personality' (The Clash 1979)

There have been quite a few letters to this site recently musing about David Moyes lack of savvy in the transfer market and whilst it is blatantly obvious that those who he has signed have been a mixed bag ranging between the very ordinary (Neville) the downright awful (Wright) and the anonymous (erm that Scandinavian fella), there are solid grounds to suggest that not all of Everton’s problems in the transfer market are of Moyes’ own making.

I’ll explain further. Let’s assume for a moment that players fall in two loosely defined groups.

• • Those who will play for anyone if the price is right (Bread-heads). • Those who are hoping to further their career by playing for the ‘right’ team at the right time (Future-heads).

It is of course realised that hardly any players will fall neatly into either of these groups, rather that most players will exhibit a tendency to conform to one of the other definitions.

For example: a classic ‘Bread-head’ is Anelka. I get the feeling that Anelka would don an Everton Shirt in an instant if we were able to gazump any other teams asking price and be ‘generous’ with terms and conditions. I feel the same about Michael Owen, why else would he have chosen to go to a backwater like Newcastle Utd and play for ‘Fat Freddie’ and a joke of a manager like Souness if not for the lure of filthy lucre? Other players who fall into this category who have turned us down recently are Parker and Emre (both who coincidently went to the same club). Chelsea FC are jammed full of ‘Bread-heads’ Shaun Wright-Phillips, Joe Cole, etc who I believe are damaging their England prospects by being primarily bench warmers for Chelsea. (Are they worried about this?... I suspect not)

Everton cannot compete in the market for ‘Bread-heads’ because we just don’t have the ‘Bread’ or financial clout to pay over the odds (or the going rate if you like). Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, Newcastle United and to a lesser extent Arsenal, Birmingham, Boro and the recent new boys on the block Portsmouth, do have the financial flexibility to flatter some quite ordinary players’ quite extraordinary bank accounts.

Now let’s look at the other category of players: the ‘Future-Heads’ By this I mean players who have not quite made it yet but are on the ‘up’ and are looking to make a name for themselves. These players will not primarily be motivated by money, or perhaps more accurately money is not their only concern. Trophies and glory are their aims. They are looking to develop their careers and raise their profiles and saleability by playing for the right club.

Examples of players like this are Wayne Rooney and Mohamed Sissko, neither of whom saw Everton as being able to satisfy their needs. Okay, it is conceded that money played a significant part in Everton losing the services of both of these players, but I really do think that both saw their futures being enhanced by careers at clubs who have a realistic chance of winning a trophy or qualifying for Europe. Apart from a glorious history, what can playing for Everton offer such players?

The mantra we heard being repeated ad-nauseam by the ‘happy-clappy’ tendency of Everton’s support was ‘Dithering Davey’ has lost us another player — completely ignoring the fact that all of the players who Moyes contacted FIRST went to clubs who were able to offer far better deals than we could ever hope to offer. This leads me to conclude that, when contracts are being offered, Davey Moyes does not have the power to pay over a certain amount and is in fact operating under tight budget constraints and financial control emanating from ‘above’. Blaming Moyes does have a certain amount of justification, but we need to look beyond mindless caricatures to uncover what really goes on in a transfer deal.

Of course, this is only conjecture, but looking at how some of the deals panned out during the summer, when Everton were firm favourites to sign players only to be gazumped by others, leads me to conclude that this is an educated guess and might not be too far away from the truth. Again, this is not to fully absolve Moyes, as most of the crop of players he has signed are yet to cover the cost of the ink and paper used to construct their ludicrous contracts (Arteta and Cahill the obvious exceptions). But it does go some way to explain certain mysterious last-minute changes of mind and diversions to that hotbed of footballing excellence on Tyneside(!?!).

In the meantime, as our financial crisis grows (how can it not be growing when we were dumped out of Europe twice in the space of 6 weeks) and our prestige slips further into the red (excellent series of arguments re our shoddy media profile… thanks ToffeeWeb, I’ve been banging on about this for years) we look like were not going to add to our flimsy, paper-thin squad this January sales.

So, who are the players we can hope to attract in the future? The answer to this question is the ‘Dead-heads’, or the players who are on the downward slope, those who are never going to make it in a month of Sundays. In short, the only players who we can realistically afford.

The stark conclusion to all of this… we either find investment to attract the ‘bread-heads’, who will in turn attract the ‘future-heads’ … or we die! Unless, due to pressure from supporters who are tired of one horse races, the rules are changed that govern the financing of football to make it a more level playing field…

…don’t hold your breath.

Kevin  Sparke

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

©2005 ToffeeWeb