Well Done Mr Wyness

OK, I’ll admit it if it has not been obvious so far; I am not a big fan of Keith Wyness. The interview with MBE left the more probing questions unanswered, evaded, or met with a “politician’s response”, i.e. an answer to a question that was not asked. However, much to my surprise I found myself really warming to the Chief Executive as I awoke early on Sunday morning with yet another dreaded derby hangover – you know that horrible feeling when you are just coming into consciousness and you start sensing that any second now you are going to remember that something not very nice happened before you went to sleep. Anyway there was Keith being interviewed on the radio (Gary Richardson, Radio 5 – go the website and listen if you did not catch it live) along with a very smug sounding Rick Parry, Keith’s opposite number on the Dark Side. For a minute or two the interview followed a predictable path when suddenly Keith either forgot his usual circumspection or thought to himself that Parry was sounding just a little too arrogant this time.

There have been several excellent articles submitted to Bluekipper dealing with G14 and so I won’t go over that ground, but it was so refreshing to hear an Everton Chief Executive state unequivocally that G14, like all of these secret societies, exists solely to serve the interests of its own members and that Everton Football Club would never accept any invitation to join it. Even more explicitly, Mr Wyness made a remark, which had Parry spitting feathers, about Everton competing in Europe again “if G14 allows us to.” Now this is as clear an allegation as you are ever going to get from a CEO that dark forces were at work last Summer. Why was Collina brought out of retirement and then “retired” again after the Villareal stitch-up? Is it any coincidence that Collina then gets lucrative advertising contracts with sponsors of G14 clubs? Apologists for secret societies will always say that they “do no harm,” and that “there is no law against people with similar interests having meetings for their mutual benefit”, which sums up Parry’s defence yesterday, but their total rejection of transparency makes all secret societies a dangerous threat in a democratic world. The threat of G14 is clear: you might meet the criteria but in the end we’ll decide behind closed doors who really gets to play in and win “our” competitions.

So for a few fleeting moments I was able to forget the derby result but inevitably reality does bite. I think what hurts most is that not only was losing avoidable but winning was definitely an option this time. Again, I repeat David Moyes is my top man as best coach in the Premiership, but as a paying customer I reserve the right to raise some points:

       · As Everton showed against Blackburn a few weeks ago, playing with 10 men can actually work to your advantage – teamwork tends to          improve, you play as a tighter unit and you look to set pieces for your goal. So how do you prepare to play against 10 men?

       · Well what you should not do is leave things as they are. Why does the 10 man team change things (i.e. usually by leaving one striker up          front with others supporting from midfield in quick counters) while the team with the advantage almost always fails to reorganise? For          example, did we really need to double mark Crouch with two centre halves when the withdrawal of, say, Weir, would have allowed the          introduction of the pace of AVM after 18 minutes? Kilbane would have played more in the middle and the support supply line to Crouch would          have been nullified by our extra strength in numbers in midfield where it matters.

       · I was always coached to defend behind the ball, i.e. to be physically positioned between the ball and my goal. I am not blaming Phil Neville          here but rather the set-up to defend a corner which had a midfield player going in the wrong direction to meet the ball when better headers          of the ball who were also better positioned to clear the danger stood off.

       · While on the theme of setting up to defend corners, why don’t we ever leave a fast player a bit further upfield as an out ball?

       · When David Moyes first came he promised us that he would pick younger players. I think he needs to think about that promise especially          with regard to Yobo for Weir and Turner for Wright. What a pity that faced with a 6’ 7’’ forward we had the best header of the ball at the          club warming the bench. What a disaster that Wright was not unloaded as an expensive mistake a long time ago a la Kroldrup.

Having raised my issues I will also say that Moyes knows a lot more about football than I do. He has done brilliantly to lift the team so far up the table since the turn of the year. But the old excuse about not needing to change anything because you’re winning is not valid right at this moment, so let’s go for broke in these last few games. Give Turner a proper chance, bring Yobo back, and let’s see more of the future of Everton on the bench ready to come on and taste the action rather than the past in the shape of Ferguson or the not good enough in the shapes of Davies, Kilbane and Naysmith.

After that all we need is for Keith Wyness to find the investment that is surely there somewhere for Everton Football Club to enable David Moyes to coach a team that will challenge and break the arrogant cartel that is G14.

JOE 90. (28/03/06)

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