Koeman: It's a long-term job

When Rooney had a few too many during his rest time at that wedding, when he knew he wasn't playing in the next game, he was slaughtered.

When a certain other player breaks the law by driving while drunk and putting members of the general public at risk the backpage headline in a certain paper, after he scores in a recent match, reads "the drinks are on me." A fucking disgrace.

Think the game ended in a draw and he absolutely slaughtered us. Awful reporting from a supposedly local paper.

Remember there was an awful lot of complaints about it but nothing was ever done about it. Considering it was around the time that the derby games were getting nasty with the fans, that report was just throwing flames on the fire.

The man is just horrible. Don't ever read any of his shit anymore.

The very same week, Brendan Rodgers, whose team were going for the league, was confronted by his son wielding a cricket bat, at his new bird's house. The same women he had left his wife for after meeting her working in the offices of Anfield? It got ten lines on page 16!

I assume that is what the 'project' will turn out to be, whilst we as fans want a decent team playing good football in the here and now, the money men will show patience if it means that they have all the pieces in place at the right time.

As for Chris Bascombe he is just one of many RS supporters in the press and media, so unfortunately we have to sometimes read their articles or listen to their broadcasts if we want to know what's happening at Everton FC.

This will only change when we once again become the best team on Merseyside and have a state-of-the-art stadium. Our image has to change into winners ,then the press will be begging for news and interviews.

In the end 90% of the media report according to the vested interests of the owners/shareholders. That applies to football too. I bet each paper or network could produce stats that show their readership (including online across the world) has more people interested in the reds that the blues. Hence they cosy up to them. Still a worldwide legacy of when the reds won everything a few decades ago when the owners and journalists were little boys and girls.

I read the press for amusement but not for facts and balance and in many ways I would hate it if we became darlings of the tossers who make up that industry.

Have faith, we will flourish soon despite them and to force them to acknowledge us will be a joy.

In that game the commentator pointed out a foul which he suggested was a yellow card type foul, unlike the "Ross Barkley" type red card foul that he got away with. If, anyone missed it, he repeated it several times and he sounded angrier each time.

That is the level of shit our players have to live with, let alone anyone loosely connected like the fans.

Point in case today in The Times. There is a 6" x 2" box by Paul Joyce at the bottom of p.61 on our game tonight. The whole of p.62 and 63 (so more prominent in sporting terms as closer to the back page) are dedicated to Liverpool's game tomorrow (which surely could have waited until tomorrow's edition?), written by Chief Football Correspondent Oliver Kay with the emphasis being very heavily on the LFC side of the debate, a column by Paul Joyce three times the size of our pre-match report on Klopp's "success at combining passion with possession" (complete with photo of Klopp) and a section by Bill Edgar explaining his formula as to why Mane is the signing of the summer – complete with 10" x 5" photo of him in action bedecked in home kit to pull the whole section together nicely.

These aren't sports sections – they're LFC fanzines.

I stopped reading newspapers in 1980, and I read The Guardian. Papers like the Sun are okay for lighting fires.

The new stadium is the big one, and let's see some cash being spent (which I'm sure we will). All this is at least a 3 or 4 year plan, so that's what he's looking at as minimum stay with us.

Over to you, Ronald lad, to deliver over the coming years. Personally I'm wetting myself at just the prospect of a water front stadium. Imagine the bitter Reds!!

I just found some figures that also describe exactly why we cannot hope to compete for the top for some time yet. The table at http://www.transferleague.co.uk/premier-league-last-five-seasons/transfer-league-tables/premier-league-table-last-five-seasons shows the gross and net spend on players (only capital spend, not wages) of all Premier League clubs over the last five years.

The sobering fact is that both Manchester clubs have spent close to ten times as much as Everton every year. Add on wage bills three timesours and you start to see why success is expected at the other end of the M62.

We are 15th biggest spenders – so we could argue that we are outperforming our spend very comfortably - as we are also currently doing for our wages spend. In order to join the top pack of four we need to spend five times as much. In order to compete with Liverpool we need to spend three times as much.

No owner can spend £70 million year and £100 million a year on wages out of their own pocket – the only way it can be done is by boosting profits and investment. However there are exceptions - obviously Leicester for one but also Tottenham who appear to have balanced their books in terms of capital spend on the team and yet are steadily rising into top 6.

Spurs our new model?