The Nick Armitage Column
Columnist: Nick Armitage

Time for a P45
27 December 2005

I thought I wouldn’t see another turkey until next Christmas but it appears that one escaped from a farm and decided to referee a game of football.  Not only does Mike Riley look like a turkey, he has now proved beyond all reasonable doubt that he thinks and sees like one as well.

But the typical incompetence of a wanker like Mike Riley and the usual cheating by Milan Baros should in no way detract from yesterday’s take home message for Evertonians – and that is Everton need a new manager.

Moyes bemoaned the fact that Riley cost us the first goal – and he did – but what about the other three?  Ditto West Brom.  The team aren’t even doing the very basics now.  I could go into great detail about where why and how things are going wrong on the pitch but what’s the point?  If there was ever an example where the management have lost the dressing room then yesterday’s game was it.  There are eleven players turning up for Everton but I haven’t seen a team for a while.

Again the usual suspects of Arteta, Yobo, Neville and Martyn did what they could but they are the string quartet playing as the Titanic goes down.  The players we have are good enough and have all proved their quality either at Goodison or elsewhere in the past but they playing for a manager who is dragging them down to a level I haven’t seen at Everton since Smith was sacked.  Their heads are down, they don’t show for balls and no outward bounds course is going change the direction this team are going.  Their confidence is shot to bits and the last thing the players need is a sadistic Sergeant Major style of man-management.

Moyes came in and talked the talk, but now he is relying on the old limited budget excuses.  Funny that, except for Yobo his best performers during his reign have all been brought in on the cheap or were already here and Moyes never considered a lack of funds to be a hindrance when he started the job.  Since then he’s had cash and he’s spent it and with that he should have delivered some kind of gradual consistent improvement year on year.  What Moyes has served up is boom and bust that puts Thatcher to shame.

Those who rave about the ability of Moyes because he took us fourth should be reminded of the inability he showed when he led the club to seventeenth the season before.  Those who support Moyes to the hilt probably wanted Smith to stay as well.  I’m gutted that it has come to this but enough is enough.  That was the fourth time in half a season that we have been beaten by four goals by average teams.

I will undoubtedly be accused of a knee-jerk reaction, being overly negative or not being a proper fan but I do believe that the time has come for the club to bring in a fresh face and new ideas.  Judging from what I’ve seen of late I no longer think Moyes has what is needed improve the team – I would love to be proved wrong.

The most important consideration in this is the prosperity of Everton Football Club but a club can’t prosper when a manager who is too stubborn to change his ways is strangling the very players he relies on..

Nick Armitage

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