Bill and Keith's Excellent Adventure

End of September. Bottom of the table and all but out of Europe. Sack the manager?

Kevin Latham’s thoughtful piece last week cleverly showed that the only people calling for DM’s head are those who clearly lose their own at the first sight of trouble. I’d go further though and ask how many players at our club have the bottle we are looking for right now. I for one would not like to be relying too much on Kilbane or Bent (not to mention Pistone) if I were fighting for my life in a trench.

Sacking David Moyes is not an option. We need to do everything possible to support him and keep him at the club. However, I think the biggest danger is that he may well walk away of his own accord. He is trying to do too much on his own and the people in the position to support him most, his CEO and his Chairman sadly are not up to the jobs they hold. This takes me back to a theme I have touched on before with Bluekipper, when I was shot down for having the temerity to suggest that DM could do with a “Director of Football” to support him. Let’s not get hung up on the title, you could call the job anything at all so long as the role and the person were right. Take a look at most of the managers in the Premiership. Most of their roles are weighted towards managing the football club as opposed to coaching the team. Most of them employ specialist coaches to train the first team leaving them to concentrate on player relationships and player purchases. At Everton we have the exact opposite. In the week leading up to the Villareal return game we needed the best coach in this country to be able to prepare the team for what was a massive and winnable game (G14 corruption aside). But the transfer window clock was ticking at the same time and DM needed to be involved in that as well. He was probably thinking, as I certainly would in his position, “I can’t leave this to Bill and Keith!”

Bill and Keith. One is too much in love with the club to see that he is now holding it back and the other too much in love with himself to have any real ambition for the club. I happened to be invited into the Directors’ Lounge after the Bolton game in August. I didn’t stay too long because it is abundantly clear to me that the people Everton employs to run the club have no real idea of or interest in what genuine fans (and there were very few of us that day in that lounge) want for the club. I am particularly incensed with “Sales Manager” Harvey Smith who talks glibly of “re-branding” and “different lounge ambiences.” For those of you who don’t know, the vast majority of seats in the old Legends’ Lounge were bought out of their own money by fans like me. All Smith has achieved by his re-branding is that the corporate's (and we do need them, too) have migrated down from the more expensive Alex Young suite into the ludicrously re-named Peoples Lounge. So now they have vacancies in the Alex Young and have broken up match day friendships of ordinary people who can’t or won’t pay silly money (over £1000) to have a plate of scouse before matches.

I’ve noticed that Keith has adopted a more visible image of late, giving his views on how football clubs should develop in one newspaper article and informing national radio listeners yesterday that we premiership fans have never really had it so good. It is almost as embarrassing as reading the opinions of the self-appointed team spokesman, Marcus Bent. Concentrate on the football, Marcus, no interviews and hours and hours of practise on how to put the ball into the net would do you the world of good. Now that Keith has gone public with his remarks that very little money will actually come in from Europe, which is his way of saying to DM that there is no money to spend on a striker, perhaps that is the best we can hope for.

As I read back on what I have just written down I realise I need to be more blunt. David Moyes is the best man for the job he is in and I hope he stays with us for a long time to come, but he is not a miracle worker. I’m sorry but I don’t buy into all this “in Moyes we trust” stuff. His high profile signings have not been successful and he has often missed the wood for the trees. Instead of £6m on Beattie in January it should have been £8m for Keane AND Ashton. Having got Beattie though, it would have made more sense in the Summer to spend £750,000 on his favourite partner Kevin Phillips to play alongside him in the short term, as Vaughan develops. Who will replace the now beginning to show his age Nigel Martyn? I don’t want to even mention the new contracts for Pistone and Naysmith. But I do want to mention again the team captaincy. I have always liked and respected David Weir but a captain on the pitch he is not. Nor should he be guaranteed the place in the team that a captain’s armband usually demands. Neville is the captain on the pitch and Yobo, despite his lapses, is one of the best centre-backs around and needs to be boosted with the self-confidence that being told that would give him. All these things are mistakes that lead back to the same conclusion, that DM has too much, on too little support, to get right all the time

Well I was berated last time for suggesting that Peter Reid might fit the bill of supporting DM. I don’t know Peter personally but I saw him at the Bolton game and I wondered again at how we could use his driving play and personality. His playing skills are no longer available to us but his personality might be. He loves football, he loves Everton, he is hugely respected in the game. Instead of DM having to spend days and weeks and months tracking new players and then actually persuading them to sign for Everton, Reid with his passionate approach and expert knowledge would be ideal. Then DM could get on with being the best coach in the country bar none. Then Bill and Keith could also get on with their excellent adventure, preferably with Bill finding a part for Keith in a West End farce about a Chief Executive who calls the people who pay his wages “stupid” yet who by his own stupidity over ticketing, flights to Bucharest, lost marketing opportunities, and most of all failure to support his manager with hard cash, loses more than just the patience of the audience.

JOE 90. (26/09/05)

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