The Nick Armitage Column
Columnist: Nick Armitage

Chill Out
14 September 2005

One thing that has typified the Moyes era at Goodison so far are extended periods of dreadful form which are broken by spells of play that are as hot as anything that Amsterdam has to offer. 

No prizes for guessing what kind of spell we are going through now and before everyone starts screaming knee-jerk take a look at some simple stats.  In the last 20 league games we have amassed 21 points.  To put that into perspective if you extrapolate that kind of return over a full season you get relegated.  During that period we have crashed out of the FA and League Cup as well as witnessing an early exit from the Champions League.  The dickhead pundits call this a transitional period, that basically means we are shit. 

And right now we are shit, that cannot be disputed.  Route one hasn’t worked even when Ferguson was a player and it is a sure fire way of spotting that the team is short of confidence.  Midfielders are hiding and defenders won’t take responsibility so they hump it into the ‘danger’ area.  Unfortunately this type of play is about as dangerous as a blind kitten and that is demonstrated by looking at the games won column.

For the second half of last season we were in freefall.  We hung on and limped home in our fourth place, which was undeniably fully deserved, but in the end it was close – and a lot closer than it ever should have been.

Fourth was a stunning achievement but it was achieved as a direct consequence of the form in the first half of the season.  What is worrying now is that, in this new campaign, we have reverted to the form that followed after Gravesen departed and that form is inconsistent, with an absence of any creativity.  This has happened before and it took a whole season to wake up from the stupor we were in.  We finished seventeenth that time…

The failure to capture a striker over the summer is coming back to haunt us even earlier than anyone had thought possible.  I’ve listened to the radio calls-ins, especially Barry Horne on City, and his response to the striker situation is, “who could we have signed?”  How about Dean Ashton?  How about listening to Joe Royle’s endless hints and signing Darren Bent?  The whole league outside of the top three are looking for that 20-goal-a-season man but when your attack won’t be mustering twenty goals a season between them, the need for a bit of guile and penetration becomes all the more pressing.

Moyes is a man who has made do with the hand that has been dealt to him; he was in the market for a top class forward but he couldn’t sign one, so he should have made do with what else was available in the transfer market.  A striker that is 70% of what you wanted in an ideal world is surely better than nothing. 

I agree with Moyes in his desire to sign players for the long-term but I think that short-term stopgaps are necessary on occasion to fill in.  Other Premiership teams have signed forwards who will get into double figures this season and there is no doubt in my mind that we should have.  This situation simply must be rectified in January; another period of procrastination by Moyes will be unforgivable but addressing the state of the team’s play at this moment in time must rank higher on Moyes’s current list of must-do jobs.

The reign of Moyes has been stop-start and this has rightly led to frustration from the fans; how can a team play quick tempo incisive football one week then resemble Wimbledon dosed up on Valium a month later?  All of this frustration is manifesting itself in a sizeable chunk of the Goodison faithful questioning whether Moyes is the right man for the job.  Like everyone on the face of this planet (except for me!) he has faults, but his positive attributes far outweigh his negative ones.  Let me just clear one thing up — he is the right man for the job; end of conversation. 

Over the summer the squad has been undeniably strengthened in both depth and quality.  At the risk of sounding like a kopite during the Houllier years, I do genuinely believe we are a couple of signings away from something a bit special at Goodison.  The form right now is concerning but, after a few arses have been kicked, we should have enough in reserve to turn it around.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and we’ve all sat through a lot worse than this in recent years.  Believe it or not, although we appear to have taken a detour, we are still heading in the right direction.

Nick Armitage

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