So you think Walter Smith has brought discipline and structure to the chaotic lives of Everton's players?
Yea, right! Not according to M Dacourt.  

 LIFE IN THE BIG TIME  

While it obviously casts a very poor light on Walter Smith's management style, and on the club itself, we reveal these statements here to educate Everton fans about some of the reasons why Everton are performing so poorly at the moment, and why our great club seems to be sliding irrevocably towards relegation to the Nationwide League.

 THE INTERVIEW

"But amazingly, there is no set diet for the players. On the bus and even in the dressing room, the players are eating anything lying around (Mars bars, chocolate, etc). At the hotel for away games, they are drinking Coke from big beer glasses. You can eat and drink what you want.

"Before entering the pitch nobody knows who's playing for the other team. If you are a foreigner you have to watch TV to find out anything about the other team.

"The gaffer tells you only two words before the match: "Good Luck" – and a piece of paper on the wall of the dressing room gives directions for what we have to do on corners and free-kicks – something we spend about 10 minutes on in Thursday training sessions.

"Before kick-off, there is loud music in the dressing room, but four minutes before kick-off everybody is concentrating fully. The rest of the time, relations between players are very limited: 'Good morning, Good evening' – nothing more. Nobody apart from the foreign players invited me to a restaurant for a social meal.

"Relations with Smith are nonexistent. Only the odd joke from time to time. You never know what he's thinking about you. Only if you have been very bad....Then, after the match, he's saying that everybody – apart from one or two specific players – has played like a bunch of arseholes."

Smith did this once with Dacourt. At half-time against Huddersfield (with the score 1-0 to Everton), he laid in to the Frenchman. Smith told him to be more aggressive, that the club brought him to do a 'Dogs of War' job in midfield. Dacourt replied that he already had a lot of yellow cards so far and that the referee was watching him. Smith told him, "That's my problem not yours." But the day after, everything was forgotten.

And the day after a match, nobody talks about it – no analysis or port mortem.

The strangest thing for Dacourt was a break of 6 days that occurred back in October 1998. Smith and Knox were off on holiday in Cyprus! As a result, the players got no training whatsoever!!!

Despite these obviously puzzling cultural differences, Dacourt still thinks English football is great. "Great training pitches, great stadiums, great public, and a lot going on on the pitch."

Dacourt maintains that Everton will remain a great experience for him....