Fan Comment

A mixed bag of Evertonness

After spending most of my day engaging in petty online arguments with ‘so-called’ Blues fans who would rather us lose against Manchester City than obtain a victory which would potentially leave Liverpool in the title driving seat, I visited Goodison Park and sat in the Park End near the opposing fan base.

During my pre-match pint outside the Winslow, I contemplated what it would mean if Everton were to emerge victorious today, a mid-season turn-around and push for Europe, a two-finger salute to Manchester and their billions, a two-finger salute and flip of the bird to our rivals across Stanley Park, almost a ‘There you go, you go and mess it up, again’. Or, on the flip side of the coin, I wondered if all of my statements online and to friends all day have been nothing more than my tedious mind trying to not be concerned about how that lot over the road do and concentrate on what we do at Everton FC.

For all of my muttering about seeing Everton fans in Man City shirts this evening and watching Everton fans jump for joy if and when City scored and calling them a disgrace to our club, I hoped that our boys would give me a performance to be proud of. And if I was the only person inside the ground celebrating if we won, then so be it; I’m an Everton fan, I have been since my Dad took me to my first match and I will be until the day I die.

What frustrates me is Everton fans wanting us to lose because Liverpool are challenging for a title which is to me, a three horse race and whether City won tonight in my opinion will have little bearing on where the title goes. If this season has shown us anything so far it’s that no game is a certain win and anything can happen. I really couldn’t believe some fans and actually thinking about it after the fact, I still can’t believe some fans who will of taken joy in watching City score two goals both in injury time and had a little thought to themselves of, ‘oh well, I wanted them to beat us because it hurts Liverpool’. To me, you’re not fans; you’re a disgrace to our club and you should have been sitting with the City fans.

Speaking of the City fans, they sang all evening. It was actually quite amusing to listen to and quite refreshing to hear what it’s like for proper football fans to get involved. Apart from the odd ‘Everton, Everton, Everton’ shout we really are becoming a library. City sang songs about Ederson, Stones, Aguero, Sané, Sterling, and even threw in some about Benjani. It made me wonder what’s happened to our songs — songs about our own players, and former stars. I haven’t heard a Barry Horne song in an age.

City fans to be fair sang all evening and when you’re as good as they are I suppose they give you stuff to sing about. It just makes me so sad that we seem to have just given up in every way. Given up our season, given up on the players, given up singing and building an atmosphere, given up on our backroom staff, given up on the manager. And I totally get it, because quite frankly, so have I.

In a week where Farhad Moshiri has come out and told the world that Marco Silva is a long-term appointment, I wonder what this actually means. Long-term for us right now is anything over two seasons and by all accounts if this carries on Marco surely can’t get this far. What strikes me is that the plan of action doesn’t seem to be working. What’s our best starting eleven? What’s our best centre back pairing? Who are the best midfielders that compliment each other? Who are the goal scorers? Who deserves to be Captain? Who is the leader? I expect any manager to know this from a pre-season, never mind 26 games in.

What I do know is that we are far too sentimental as a club with our staff. Why is Duncan Ferguson a coach at Everton? Why do we seem to let Joe Royle back in whenever he wants? Why, because they have played for us and are legends? I just think it’s a joke. I was watching Arteta with his players before the kick off and he was demanding and commanding his players during the warm-up. It was actually brilliant to see and I’m sure Pep is rubbing off on our old Spanish Maestro.

What I’m getting at is that Marco doesn’t seem to know much about his squad and it frustrates me. We should be playing our strongest team, week-in & week-out and instead we chop and change. Why? It’s awful in my opinion. How about finding a tactic, working on it in training, and then playing the strongest starting eleven?

I do believe Walcott, Sigurdsson and Cenk Tosun shouldn’t be near that starting eleven. Quite simply put, they are not good enough. Don’t let the £50m for Sigurdsson fool you; Swansea saw us coming a mile off for him. Oh, and Yerry Mina is looking like another massive waste of money. Barcelona centre-back, please. Watch Rondon’s goal at Goodison this season. I was screaming at Mina to not lose his man at the back post. Who is coaching and training these guys? It all needs to change.

Why haven’t we had the balls to go out and find a winner of a manager and offer him a package that he could be proud of? Unfortunately, we have hired unproven failures instead of going the other way and offering good money to managers such as Mancini, Conte, Mourinho, Ancelotti, Benitez. These type of managers are winners, they have won things in different leagues in different circumstances, but what do we do? We go out and hire Koeman after a good season with Southampton, then Big Sam in a strange ‘we need him to keep us up this season’ way, yet we give him a 2-year contract and now we have this pretender.

This is a problem that is not going to go away and if Denise Barrett-Baxendale’s 10-year plan is to come to fruition then the foundations need to be in place by now. The last few seasons, we have ripped them up and now I get the feeling we need to rip them up again but start with a new foundation, albeit a stronger one.

How can we keep conceding from set plays? Gana gave away a needless foul at the very end of the first half and yet again it comes back to haunt us, just like the derby. A foul in their half, into injury time, gave them one last throw of the proverbial dice and, lo and behold, what happens? We can’t keep doing this, it’s crazy that we are conceding such terrible goals and are failing at the most simple of equations.

If there’s a man in the box, mark him, big men on big men, little men on little men. I don’t understand what the problem is, neither does Marco so it seems, or he doesn’t see it as a problem. This is all getting very Martinez-esque for me. I kind of like him, I want him to do well; at the end of every match I say, ‘well we did ok, but we get beat’.

As I left the Park End, I went to the gents and saw that scribbled on the wall in the end cubicle was ‘Martinez Out’. Much like this article, I kind of laughed to myself and in a strange way I thought, ‘Things were so much better under Roberto weren’t they!’ I know they weren’t but that’s what I feel we are accepting; mediocre displays, a ground as quiet as a church on a Sunday, and our own fans wanting us to get beat just to keep our little bitter envious souls at bay.

I say forget them, let’s concentrate on Everton, about being heard and getting our own message out there that we can’t keep moving forward like this. Because we’re not, we’re moving backward. If only I had a pen with me in that cubicle as the word 'Silva' instead of 'Martinez' above the word ‘out’ would now be sitting there proudly in the Park End bog.

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