On The Beach

So we stagger as usual towards the finishing post with only Phil Neville straining every sinew to compete for every ball and every point as though they mattered, a habit formed elsewhere. As fans we are used to questioning “which Everton” will turn up to play, but when even the professional commentators on the game refer to our players as “being on the beach already” we do have to wonder what’s going on.

Going into the derby game we, the fans, believed the club had a realistic chance of a UEFA place. Ah but then in the wake of the abject performance of the team and management during that game we were reminded by the professionals who run the club that “the fans have very high expectations.” Am I supposed to be sorry that I expect Everton Football Club to live up to its own motto? Is it acceptable for me to pay the club over a thousand pounds per year to settle to watch mediocrity?

Take off a defender, probably David Weir, and bring on an attacking midfielder, AVM, at the same time as Liverpool go down to 10 men and you’d probably win the game. Go out and take the game to “minds on the cup” Charlton and you’d probably win the game. Turn up and play with passion against Sunderland, as opposed to just turning up, and you’d definitely win the game. Such a scenario would have meant that we’d have entered the game against Spurs needing to win to go level on points with a team hotly tipped to finish where we did last year. Instead we exited that game 13 points behind them!

My memory of that game is of Neville exhorting the referee to note the time-wasting by Spurs, while several of his team mates looked at him as though he were mad. Most of the rest of the team had long since settled for the fact that Spurs were younger, faster, stronger, more skilful, and with more to play for. In fact they really did not need to bother with the time-wasting at all, because Everton were never going to bother them too seriously anyway.

Until quite recently both Everton and Spurs were often referred to as being part of the “big 5” of English football. The game last week provided ample evidence that Spurs are intent on restoring former glories while Everton seem to lack the strategy to match that same ambition. I have been going on for some time now about David Moyes being a good coach who could do with the support of someone behind him to assist in bringing top players to the club. I’ll go further now and say that he also needs more help on the coaching side.

Let me explain my thinking with reference to the two clubs which met last weekend. In a nutshell Spurs are building for long-term, sustainable success. As a club they share this one vision. The chairman, Daniel Levy, is a shrewd and successful businessman who over the last few years has brought other shrewd and successful business colleagues into the club. Their combined spending power has enabled Spurs to punch above its weight in the transfer market because while these people are rich by anyone’s definition they are not in the Abramovich league and so they have to ensure that their combined brain power is actually greater than their spending power. The money they put in to the club, in other words, is an investment rather than the philanthropic whims of a multi-billionaire and they expect to see a return. So to protect their investments they structure the club in a way that maximises the chances of on the field success. The current manager, Jol, and his immediate predecessor, Santini, see themselves as “Head Coach.” Crucially, behind the Head Coach sits a person tasked with identifying and recruiting new playing talent. Until Chelsea poached him earlier this season this role was undertaken by Frank Arnesen and those impressive young players we saw last Saturday were by and large the product of Arnesen’s work. The investors who provided the transfer funds can be well pleased not only with the team’s success but also that the system they introduced has identified so much young British talent at a fraction of the cost of established imports.

So how do we compare? Well let’s start at the top. As much as we all like him personally, I think most fans would agree that Bill Kenwright has failed in what should be his prime function, bringing massive investment into Everton Football Club. Worse than that, it appears that relations between him and the only other significant board member, Mr Gregg, are cordial at best. If this situation goes on for much longer it will be disastrous for our football club. Surely it would not be too difficult to put together a team of people with definite leanings towards Everton who could lend the club the benefits of their expertise and success in their own fields. Sirs Terry Leahy and Paul McCartney spring to mind, and there are many other less high profile successful people who perhaps only need to be encouraged to get involved. It is a problem that Everton Football Club appears to many of us to be a closed shop.

Now just imagine for a moment that you were a successful, affluent individual and you were asked by Bill to come on board, if you’ll pardon the pun. Just like the Tottenham people, you’d need to know that the club has a vision, one shared by your fellow Board members, coaching staff and players, Chief Executive and all staff employed by the club, and, very important, a vision that is communicated to the paying customer, the fans. OK you like the vision, it has words in one short statement that ignite the passion in you, words like “Everton” “winning” “in style” “nothing but the best”, and so now it’s time to put your hand in your wallet. But you’re not that rich that you can afford to write off your losses so you need to know what strategy is in place to achieve the vision, or better still with all your expertise and experience you become actively involved in the formulation and implementation of that strategy. So what would you do?

Well let me be self-indulgent here, what would I do? I’d want to ascertain that my fellow board members and I were as much a team as any that trots out onto the hallowed turf. Anyone not willing to commit totally to the team ethic of the board room must be forced out. Once that is sorted, I’d want that board team to interview key staff. If we like what David Moyes has to say we should offer him a long-term contract as Manager, if that is the preferred nomenclature, but his main priority will be to oversee the training and preparation of players and to pick teams that will win games. Our next interview is with Keith Wyness, but it would take another essay to go into detail on what needs to happen here. Suffice it to say that there is much room for improvement at every level in the running of Everton Football Club as a business and Keith will need to pull his socks up if he wants a contract as long as DM’s.

So is the structure right to support the Manager in delivering the most important part of our shared vision? Patently not. There is simply too much for one man to do, or try to do, on his own. I’ve been down the road of “Director of Football” before and too many people get hung up on the nomenclature but there is surely a need for someone to oversee the ongoing development of playing talent available to the Manager. Maybe that person would be a former player with high profile, or maybe not. It just has to be someone with the nous to organise a comprehensive national and global scouting network and the ability to “sell” Everton FC as a club players desperately want to sign for. Alan Stubbs could probably do a good job in the latter category!

However, anyone with a passing interest in psychology will have noticed another flaw in the current structure – the seeming inability to stop playing yo-yo. When DM took over from the much overrated Smith his momentum took the team away from rock bottom. The next season we rocketed up the table and then we managed to plummet back down again the following year. Then came last season and the barely credible achievement of qualifying for the Champions’ League. So anyone who knows what a yo-yo is knew what to expect from this season. But in a sense this season is like a microcosm of all of DM’s previous seasons; we seemed to need to get into trouble before we started to play the attractive and winning football that not only got us out of trouble but had us vying for at least a top 6 finish again. And then the same lack of inner belief that almost cost us dearly at the end of last year kicked in again, the voice inside the head that says, hey what am I doing trying to beat Liverpool on their own ground, what am I doing trying to keep up with these Spurs lads who have something to play for, who am I to playing for a top 4 team, and so on? All good managers, not just football managers, use psychology to get the best out of the people they work with. It is obvious that somewhere in the structure we have to have a motivational coach, someone who knows how to win and how to keep on winning so that it becomes an addictive habit. The guy I’d go for, imagining that I’m still anxious to protect my investment, is a mate of DM’s, Ian Millward. Forget the poisoned chalice that was Wigan and look at what the man achieved over 5 years at St Helens and the legacy of playing talent he left behind there. Oh and before anyone raises the point that Millward comes from a different sport, I would say, yes, that is exactly why I want him. Anyone who can recover from a life-threatening injury that ended his playing career prematurely to go on to become a highly successful coach in probably the most innovative spectator sport on the planet probably has one or two ideas about how to make winning a habit for every player lucky enough to be selected by DM to pull on the royal blue jersey. And one thing is for sure, none of them will be “on the beach” if they know Millward is waiting for them at the end of the game.

* On a completely unrelated matter, can I just say how moved I was by Ian Collins’s memories of Hillsborough and his brother who died there. It served to show two things for me; 1) how intertwined support for Everton and Liverpool is in this city that families can have both red and blue under one roof. You just don’t get that in any other city and the yobs on both sides who are trying to undermine what should remain an intense but non-violent rivalry do not deserve to be supporters of either team, and 2) it is time to move on, never to forget those who died and those who loved them, but to move on. Boris Johnson, can’t really stand the man myself, but he wasn’t totally wrong when he wrote of the penchant of Liverpool as a city for “mawkish sentimentality.” As I walked to Goodison last Saturday for the Spurs game on the Hillsborough anniversary I was already thinking even before I knew about Ian’s experience that hordes of people drinking on the pavements and roads outside the pubs around Anfield was hardly the right way to show respect. Nor was the torrent of abuse and bile hurled at us by some young men, probably not born at the time of Hillsborough let alone Heysel, as they passed in a car also on their way to “show respect.” Will we never learn?

JOE 90. (21/04/06)

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