Season 2011-12 Fan Articles

Not in My lifetime

By Conor   Skelly  ::  22/01/2012   12 Comments (»Last) A typical response from a naive old-skooler like my dad, a Norris Green native ever present on the Gwladys Street terraces through the 70s & 80s before meeting my mum, where I came in... and moving over to my mumA typical response from a naive old-skooler like my dad, a Norris Green native ever present on the Gwladys Street terraces through the 70s & 80s before meeting my mum, where I came in... and moving over to my mum?s home town in Dublin in the early 90s where we all remain to this day. It was at this time that I had reached the age of 7/8 that I was watching VHS videos on loop (as kids do) and learning my scouse heritage. It's still the same footage today you have to watch to see us as Champions. Is nobody else sick of fucking 80s videos???

Anyway, the affair started in real time around the time Bruce Grobelar and Shaggy had their handbags in the 2-0 Mark Ward derby.

A small renaissance under Joe Royle was the ham in a relegation 'miracle' sandwich of the 90s. Luck being the main theme here ? brought on, I believe, by the hard work on the pitch that is willed on by a mystical Evertonian force... or, in other words, near 40,000 home fans and a fantastic away following from a fan-base built up by sporadic generations of success and being based in the home of football. We created our own luck as a club, if ever anyone did. We just deserved to be in the top flight. We are Everton.

I was there for the Coventry match in '98 as a 12-year-old. I remember instinctively running on to the pitch at the final whistle and joining the thousands in the chants of Johnson Out! I wonder.

Change in ownership followed... but let?s not even bother with the Smith era apart from a few 'exciting signings' ? and when I say 'exciting', I mean John Collins, Olivier Dacourt and Marco Materazzi. Hardly world-beaters. Okay, Materazzi, but we all know that we can count on two hands the major signings we have made in the last 20 years, which is ALL my conscious life.

Kanchelskis is the highest profile signing in all that time. It was also the last time we bought a current first team player from a big club. We didn't kick on then and, without boring you all to death with more timeline, I'll fast forward to how we didn't kick on in the same way 3 years ago. No board ever has faith in Everton.

Moyes has done an unbelievable job with the budget that Everton have been affording him. Moyes, bar the odd blip, did what the others didn?t and built a team. He got us ? with practically no expenditure and paying players average wages ? to consistently challenge for the Uefa Cup spots and succeeding. He raised our win percentage by 10% from when he took over. Which is great by all accounts but, without any money, even relative to the teams he was consistently finishing 10 points above, the feat of silverware would really need another, far more expensive, Everton miracle.

His making us punch above our weight became his identity as a manager and ensured he took the moral high ground and loyalty rewarded £65k a week.

Moyes has in some respects lived the dream as a manager at Everton. Okay, he hasn?t won anything but he has gained the admiration of the Sky Sunday supplement and a sympathy from the press that lets him off the hook when we play like we have all this season. It?s not just the press but the
majority of the fans and, most tellingly, the Billy the Bullshitter have given him an air of invincibility. He doesn?t even feel he has to act bothered when we stink the house out, like we have all season. He doesn?t have to answer to anyone because, at the end of the day, it?s our ? Everton's ? fault if anything goes wrong in Sky's eyes.

Right now, he is like a soul-destroyed wife who has run out of love with her deadbeat husband and is sticking it out until a better, richer man comes along to sweep her away. He?s only here because of the house and the kids. When he sees his girlfriends getting ever increasing sums of money from their sugar daddies to splash on new players and making the PL almost pointless as a contest (if it wasn?t already), his mind was made up: ?It didn?t work out?.

This type of gloom is rubbing off on the whole club.
Moyes has lost the hunger since not getting the investment 3 years ago to improve the side and, in the same way, so have all the senior players. They are now too old and will either take a pay-day with a smaller club or retire soon... so what exactly are they playing for? It?s definitely not for any common cause.

To add to that, we can?t even buy our loanees, so they are effectively in the shop window for other clubs and not even playing for contracts with us. As that's probably the whole arrangement in the first place:

• Players like Drenthe who can potentially land a very lucrative contract with say Spurs.
• Transfer policy ? a shop window for nomads to find a real club.
• A fed-up manager out of ideas.
• All the senior players who are playing shite, running the rule around Finch Farm. And no junior players standing up to be counted in their place.
• No strikers
• No folk hero in sight like Super Kev, Big Dunc to lift the mood of the place.

It is no wonder that Goodison is so quiet and the football is so awful. Nobody is smiling. Everyone concerned about their own future. This might be a dangerous cocktail that has come to the boil at a time when the teams below us are finding their feet and it spells danger.

A change of Manager is absolutely necessary, which is something, a year ago, I feared the most when Villa were hovering. If we continue to wait for something to change, and the gloom to lift, it will be too late and we WILL go down. Regrettably, after all these years of being the under-achieving but ever-present runt of English football?s elite, the complex Moyes situation we have at present, I fear our Last day survival luck from years gone by, when even then there was hope, may well be up.

Whatever happens, I will be along for the ride, in the hope that someday Everton will record Glory on DVD.
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