The Rob Fox Column
Columnist: Rob Fox

Who the hell are we?
21 April 2006

I’ll tell you who we are.  We are a mid-table Premiership club.  Average.  Mediocre if you prefer.  If you were an outsider, looking at our run down facilities and lack of media profile this would not surprise you.  If you are an Evertonian, you know that this is not acceptable.  But it is reality.

Evertonians are the most passionate and staunch set of supporters in the world.  We are extremely knowledgeable about our club’s history and heritage.  We are rightly proud of it and very suspicious of anybody who tries to interfere.  We look down our noses at supporters of small-time clubs like Bolton, Middlesbrough, Blackburn, and supposed big-time clubs such as Newcastle and Tottenham as well.  We know our history; they don’t.

It isn’t supposed to be like this.  1992 was Year Zero and we missed the boat.  Big time. Face it.  Our rose-tinted view of the past is meaningless.  It doesn’t put food on the table.  To us, we are the greatest club ever.  In many respects, we are.  In terms of being successful in 2006, we are also-rans.

In the eyes of the world at large, we are a provincial club, in the shadow of our richer, more successful and more fashionable neighbours.  We are stuck in the past and have ridiculous expectations of where our club should be.  Economies of scale dictate that the richer clubs get richer and the rules are bent where necessary to keep the status quo.

At present, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Newcastle and Tottenham are far more affluent than us.  That’s the two most famous and successful English clubs in history, three teams from the capital and Newcastle.  Middlesbrough probably can be added to the tail end of that list.

In terms of turnover, we are on a par with the likes of Manchester City and Aston Villa, and not too far ahead of the likes of Charlton, West Ham and Bolton, if at all.  Like it or not, they are our competitors.  Interestingly, ourselves, City and Villa seem to be saddled with debts, while Charlton and Bolton appear to be sensibly run, not overstretching themselves.  Even West Ham seem to have adjusted their expectations and run themselves more prudently.

David Moyes, like the managers who preceded him here, is charged with making the most of the resources available to out-do all the clubs we are bracketed with financially and compete with those who are now richer than us as equals.  Surely anybody can see that to achieve that consistently is a very big ask.

When David Moyes first arrived, he was like a breath of fresh air and for a while he exceeded expectations, bringing a more professional approach to all aspects of the club.  We finished 17th. in his second full season but most of us accepted that he was stuck with Walter’s Wallies and it wouldn’t be fair to judge him until he had his own team.  Last season we finished 4th and qualified for the Champions League.

Or so we all thought.  As it turned out, actually getting into the Champions League proper was slightly harder than we imagined.  From the second that bug eyed twat blew his whistle erroneously, it all fell apart.  If only that goal had….  Well, in truth the reality is we probably wouldn’t have done that well anyway.  Maybe we saved ourselves from further embarrassment.

The truth is that finishing 4th was an outstanding achievement and we were nowhere near ready for Champions League football.  Villarreal have shown what a low-profile club can achieve but their rise has been gradual, winning the Intertoto cup along the way and being steadily bankrolled.  Watching the recent Arsenal v Juventus tie reminded me just how far away from that standard we are.  It also made me wonder how the hell Liverpool won the same competition last year, but that’s another story.  Let’s be fair, they have certainly put us in our place this season.

Somewhere in there is my point.  We turn up for a Derby fired up, convincing ourselves we can match them red twats.  But we can’t, not consistently anyway.  They are better than us, and so they should be when you compare the value of their team to ours.  All things considered, the odd victory is the best we can expect, and that goes for all of the richer clubs.  As they get richer, it only gets harder.

We have a squad of 25 players which cost a total of £36M to put together. T hat includes the fee of £3.7M attached to Matteo Ferrari.  This works out at an average of approximately £1.4M per player.  The 10 men who beat us cost around £45M. (average £4.5M per player).  Our 11 that day cost in the region of £20M.

I can’t be arsed working out the value of the entire Liverpool squad, but bearing in mind it includes the likes of Cisse, Morientes and Agger I reckon it’s more than £4.5M per player.  When we sign a Danish centre half for £5M he has to be mustard right away.  When they do it they can ease him in gradually.  That’s without even looking at wages.  Zenden might have cost fuck all, but I reckon his wage demands took this into account.

Quite simply, the margin for error is very small for an Everton manager.  Our expectations are still very high, and we are in many ways still a big club.  There is no doubt that the Krøldrup fiasco was a major cock-up, as was the whole European ‘adventure’.  Last summer, Moyes spent the best part of £18M on six players.  Six months earlier, he spent £6M on James Beattie.

To my mind, only Arteta and Valente have been definite successes.  I like Beattie, but the fact remains he has only performed in fits and starts.  It can rightly be argued he needs a proper partner and some decent service, but he seemed to have a spell where that didn’t really matter and he pushed himself to the limit.  Is it cynical to suggest that since Sven invited his fringe players to a get-together to prove their fitness, Beattie’s effort has dipped again?

Maybe, but at present he looks an average player in an average team.  Speaking of which, Phil Neville often looks the same.  He brings a lot of good qualities, but is certainly limited as a player.  Despite this, his versatility aside, I think he has been a decent signing and makes the midfield look more balanced.

Which brings us back to David Moyes.  There is no doubt this season has gone badly for him and he has made a number of mistakes.  I just think that some people have lost their sense of perspective.  The use of the word ‘twat’ in this article with relation to Collina and our neighbours was done for effect.  I hate them both and think they are, indeed, twats, but that’s the hard done to Evertonian in me talking.

A lot of people spout their opinions and say they are facts.  I have tried hard to include as many facts in this article as possible.  David Moyes deserves criticism for this season.  But he is not stupid.  His job is very difficult but this season he has been out-performed by the likes of Paul Jewell and Alan Pardew.

Clearly, he must do better next time, but he has been in the position of Jewell and Pardew himself and knows that the hard part is not only sustaining your new found position, but improving upon it.  Rightly or not, the expectations of Wigan and West Ham will be much higher next time and if the managers don’t meet those new found expectations they will be deemed to have ‘taken us as far as they can’.  The reality is that this usually really means the club has gone as far as it can reasonably go.

Nevertheless, just as David O’Leary’s whingeing about lack of money when we were finishing 4th sounded pathetic, similarly Moyes can’t make too many excuses about our season.  What he has to do is put things right.  The question is, what exactly does ‘right’ mean?

Does it mean a return to Nil Satis Nisi Optimum?  In the current climate, no.  That is unrealistic. Does anybody really think he signed Kevin Kilbane because he thought he was a great left-sided midfielder cum winger in the traditions of Kevin Sheedy and Dave Thomas?  (Sorry, I’m not old enough to remember too many more).  No, he signed him because he thought he was the best available on a limited budget.

Does it mean out-performing the likes of Pardew, Allardyce and Jewell?  Well, yes it does and so it should.  If Newcastle get a decent manager and take off next year, as Tottenham seem to have done with Jol, is it fair to compare Moyes’s achievements to theirs with much bigger budgets?  The answer has to be no.  Given that there are at least 7 clubs richer than us, anything above 8th has to be seen as a genuine achievement.  And that goes for lots of other clubs as well.

Last summer, Moyes had a limited budget.  More than we have had to spend in many years, but we had a very small squad of mainly average players, several of whom were nearing pensionable age.  Whatever anybody might say, Carsley, Naysmith, Kilbane and McFadden are the epitome of average players.  Weir was a cut above that a few years back, as potentially was Ferguson.  Now they are as good as finished at the top level.

Like last summer, Moyes will be expected to replace several out-of-contract players and strengthen the squad on a limited budget.  Out of a squad of 25 players, we can reasonably expect to lose Stubbs, Weir, Ferrari, Li Tie and Duncan Ferguson.  Martyn and Vaughan have their careers hanging by a thread, and we have two very young goalkeepers.

Potentially we could be down to 16 experienced players.  Ideally, Moyes would like to sell Wright and probably Kilbane, with question marks remaining over Van der Meyde and Davies.  With an expected budget of less than £10M, it will be hard to simply maintain current squad levels, let alone drastically improve them.  If we can get big money for one of our stars, maybe we would have a bit more leeway….

Unpalatable, certainly, but that’s the probable reality.  Some of it is of Moyes own doing, but in fairness Wright looked a good signing at the time — personally, I am surprised little has been made of the role of Chris Woods in our continuing goalkeeping problems — although Davies has been a major disappointment.  Neville’s versatility has probably justified his price tag, whilst a fit and flying Andy van der Meyde would have been out of our price range.  Fancy a dour Scotsman gambling our hard-earned on a potentially top class, if unpredictable and colourful, flair player available on the cheap when he could have signed a hard working Championship player!

Moyes has been castigated for not preparing properly for Europe.  Some of the criticism is probably justified, but it largely smacks of unrealistic expectations.  Villarreal were a lot further down the road of progress than us.  They haven’t had the financial ups and downs we’ve had in recent years and have been able to progress steadily without the weight of unfair expectation.

In the midst of our European debacle, Bill Kenwright was interviewed live on television (before the Bucharest first leg) and admitted that we had budgeted for a minimum of a good Uefa Cup run.  I saw it with my own eyes yet it has never been mentioned since.  Since then, we have heard rumours that we couldn’t afford the installments for Krøldrup, and that Yobo, Arteta and Cahill will be sold to fund the new training complex.

We have heard lots of other rumours as well.  Some may be true, maybe they are all bollocks.  But there is no denying that our financial situation is still precarious.  We seem to be just about able to make a small operating profit these days.  Where any transfer funds will come from, let alone funds for a new stadium, is hard to imagine.

Maybe this summer we will see one or all of Yobo, Arteta and Cahill depart.  If they do, any number of conspiracy theories will raise their heads.  We’re still getting the Wayne Rooney ones.  Apparently David Moyes, yes the one who is out of his depth and has no idea what Nil Satis Nisi Optimum is all about, is too much of a perfectionist to give young kids a proper chance.  What?

Given Wayne’s apparent lifestyle and ego, moving to Manchester United seems to have suited his ambitions in life.  Similarly, it is hard to imagine where we would be without the £20M or so we got for his transfer.  Certainly David Moyes wouldn’t have been able to spunk all that money on the likes of Davies and Van der Meyde rather than getting reliable, hard-working players such as Jimmy Bullock.  To be fair, I don’t know if Moyes thought Davies was a flair player or not.

Speaking of ironies, given that Moyes wouldn’t know how to sign a decent player if he tried, how come everybody is bricking it in case our young, athletic centre-back, our skilful and stylish midfield creator, and our ‘free scoring’ (or more appropriately this season ‘three scoring’) midfield dynamo — all bought by Moyes for a total cost of under £10M — are sold to the Premiership top 3?

You see, it’s not the fact that David Moyes is coming in for criticism I have a problem with. I t’s the lack of consistency and perspective.  It would have to be said that Moyes’s performance this season has been average at best.  Mid-table.  He claims there are mitigating circumstances.  Next season there will be no European disappointment to recover from so we will see.

We can reasonably expect to see progress.  We can reasonably expect that any money spent in the summer is spent wisely.  So long as we don’t have to sell our best players to stay afloat, we can reasonably expect us to be competing in the top half and making a push for Europe.  We can hope for a more expansive style of football, but we have to accept that results come first.  We all understand that pretty football can get results, but it can also get you relegated.  West Ham are testament to both.

If we see no real progress next season, then I think a parting of the ways is inevitable.  Whether David Moyes or Everton Football Club will be better off as a result is not as cut and dried as some people seem to think.  Moyes will need to perform better next time, but I think some people need to cut him a bit of slack as well and open their eyes to the reality of football in 2006.

I could go on.  And on. And on... But I won’t.  Feel free to slag this piece off in the mailbag. If you do, then I would be interested to know specifically which bits you disagree with and why because obviously I think I’m right in all of this, just like everybody else with an opinion.

But please, don’t mention our bloody motto.  I know what it means, I’m pretty sure David Moyes does as well, but these days it’s virtually impossible to live up to.  Sometimes, there isn’t a solution, just reality.  Maybe, barring a miracle, mid-table mediocrity is as good as it gets, for a while at least.  If David Moyes isn’t the man to take us beyond that, I really hope the genuine Messiah is out there somewhere.

Rob Fox

©2006 ToffeeWeb