Everton 0 v 1 Arsenal                             Sun. 10th Feb 2000  

Kick-off: 4.00pm   Live on Sky TV.                                      Att: 30,859
    
Report from last season's game

Everton: Simonsen, Clarke (Moore 86), Weir, Stubbs, Unsworth (Gascoigne 70), Blomqvist (Pembridge 77), Carsley, Linderoth, Naysmith, Campbell, Ginola.

Subs : Gerrard, Cleland, Pembridge, Pembridge, Moore.

I still don't like Sunday matches. I didn't even make it for a pint before the game. So for once I can give a sober point of view to the proceedings.

I was very pleased to see David Ginola in the side, but very disappointed there was no Duncan. Apparently he has got some calf strain. Is he ever going to put a run of games together for Everton again?.

I had just got myself settled when Ginola nearly gave us a dream start. He cut in from the left and produced a tremendous shot with his right peg that Wright did well to save. What a start that would have been.

After 11 minutes Super won us a free kick on the edge of the box. There was only one that was going to take it. David Ginola . He hit a curler round the wall, beat the keeper and hit the fuckin post. Bastard.

It really was all Everton in these early stages. We needed to score, and should have after 25 minutes. It was a great 1 2 with the impressive Lee Carsley and Jesper on the right. Lee squared the ball to Ginola inside the box, but our French friend screwed the ball well wide.

We had dominated the half reducing Arsenal to only one shot. A free kick by Henry well saved by Simmo.

Half-Time 0-0

Everton should have had a pen in the first minute of the second half when the Skipper was pulled back by Stepanovs. But Winter waved play on.The PRICK.

A bad ball from Unsy gave Palour a shooting opportunity. His shot produced a brill save from Simmo. The Arse were starting to get on top now.

And it was another poor clearance this time by Toby that gave the Gooners the lead. He hit the ball straight to Viera who put it through to Wiltord, who miss-hit his shot but it sailed over Simmo into the net. The poxy shit.

Everton's challenge ended with that goal. Gazza and Pembo came on to try and get things going.It just didn't happen.

It was good to see the fans over Main Stand side give it to Jeffers. The gobshite.

The Blue Kipper Star Man goes to Peter Clarke. He produced a great display in keeping the ever dangerous Henry quiet. And what kind of a tackle was that at the end? I can't wait to see that on the box. How can he only be booked?

I'm determined not to go to a game again without having at least a St Ivel (5 pints). It's just not the same.

Quotes

Walter says: “I felt that we were worthy of an equaliser and were denied the chance of an equaliser. For me these were clear penalties which were conveniently ignored by the referee and I think it would have got us back into the game. The least we deserved was a point."

Everyone knows Second Hand Rose From Second Avenoooooo
by
Mickey Blue Eyes.

As the dust settled on the Ipswich débacle everyone took a not-so-cool look at the league table and understandably went apeshit. Genuine concerns apart, sadly, whenever we suffer a bad loss like that you get the same misery-mongering spectres reappearing too. It's almost boring. Almost, but not quite. Our playing position is too, too parlous for that. This time it really looks as though we might not get clear. If not, we can't complain. We have had enough luck to win a casino in avoiding the drop for the last five years.

By Sunday evening most Evertonians were so embroiled in frustration you couldn't even lighten the atmosphere by taking the piss out of the Melledrew Tendency. Easy though it is there's no point using an electric cattle prod to flog dead horses. Best leave 'em to decay in their own hides. It's almost enough to make you wish for their sake that the Kings Dock scheme falls at one of the remaining hurdles. Almost, but not quite, even though we might soon have a case of Tendency sapuku on our hands. Gawd help them if we DO get the KD, as seems ever more likely as the objectives are achieved one by one. Alternatively, you can imagine them ending up like those Second World War Japanese soldiers who hid in the jungle for years after fascist right-wing Nippon rightly had its arse kicked, atomic bombs apart. So there'll they be, covered in foliage, muttering samurai mantras and living off dead rats and insects while the world moves on. How needless. How sad. For them.

Staying with the electric cattle prod for a few seconds, it would also be interesting too to do an analysis of the local press who used to idle on board Peter Johnson's yacht while he owned the club. You know, lickspittles like Prentice and McNulty. Both of whom are useless and untalented hacks with nothing better to do than manufacture the kind of copy the loathed Sun would approve. But maybe that's why they do it. After all, Murdoch pays better for lickspittles. Victor Melledrew lives in many guises but essentially it's still the same old sour persona who sits reeking of caffeine and nicotine at the keyboard. Interestingly, our fans are getting even more spontaneously restless over the cheap and faintly ridiculous behaviour of these divvies. Yet more condemnations were voiced at the Regional Supporters Conference before the Ipswich match. One day it will likely boil over. The hacks can't say they weren't warned. But they'll never learn. All our fans ask for is a fair deal from the local press and we aren't getting one. All we get is a series of cheap shots even by hack standards.

Nope, no point walking all over the Tendency and the hacks. It's too, too easy and anyway we have a club to support as best we can. It doesn't extend to wasting our time with dickheads who appear to hate everyone. Probably hate themselves too.

But I digress.

So, the loud arguments went, what do we do now, footy-wise? Good question. And frankly I haven't got a fucking clue how to answer it, anymore than you. Like you, I am not involved in the day-to-day running of our club. My life is more important to me than that. Oh sure, I can say, "Do this" or "Do that" but the fact is we need to solve so many problems it is going to take a long, long time to get it right. What is the old Chinese proverb, "A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step"? And didn't madame Du Deffand say something like, "The distance is nothing; it is only the first step which is difficult"?

Of course most of the off-field stuff would evaporate if our playing fortunes were up to scratch, which they aren't. As I said a some months ago, I wish Smiffy had resigned then so we could give a new man a fair opportunity to avoid the looming playing mess. Not because he has "failed" but because it hasn't worked for him or the club. Nobody's to blame. That's just the way life goes sometimes.

He HAS had money. He HAS bought players. Some were good buys and some were goodbyes. Occasionally the team has even looked like it might be about to do something. Equally, fate has stillborn his best efforts. Some of his team selections HAVE seemed to show an extremely cautious or even perverse trend. Equally, he HAS had to sell because we're in deep doo-doo financially. Since Johnson went we haven't had monopoly money to play with. The club continually say so through Bill Kenwright, have now refinanced and have also reiterated support for Smiffy. It couldn't be clearer. We may not like it, and you can count me in there to put it mildly, but that's the simple fact of life. If you find it too tough nobody would blame you if you baled out. It's your free choice. Shouldn't join up if you can't take a joke.

Me, I like Smiffy and very much admire his determination. Without him, no question we might well have been relegated during the darkest hours. But just as Churchill was a reviled peace time politician, maybe Smiffy just can't hack it in English footy. If so, there's no shame. It's only a game of footy, not a Nuremberg rally or a Salem-style witch hunt. That's why I wish he had gone when we couldn't raise enough points when we had relatively "easy" fixtures before Christmas. The writing was on the wall then. Fact, he's staying. Fact, he should get our support and gratitude to the end of the season. Fact, everyone, Smiffy included, should reconsider at that stage when our fate is known. Be interesting to see what happens in the extremely unlikely event we win the Cup.

And on this question of team-building money I do wish people would grow up. There ain't no such thing as money-trees, not for you, not for me, not for footy. So the club have now refinanced as the whiners in the Tendency wanted and sold our season ticket sales for years ahead. And now of course, exactly as I predicted, the same Tendency is wittering on about increased debt! So let's see how Smiffy uses the relative pittance he will have available. Anybody who thinks he doesn't have full control of team matters is living in cloud cuckoo land. Which also means he bears his share of responsibility for what happens on the pitch.

Kenwright's Radio Merseyside interview also laid the ownership situation on the line: Anybody who wants to buy the club can make an offer. He'll stand aside if the offer is right. Right now, with theatreland suffering the results of September 11th., he has more than enough problems, poor bastard. But here's a safe bet: There wouldn't be any viable offers. And even the take-over wouldn't have happened without his friendship with Paul Gregg, who has limited interest in football………………like the corporate owners of Leeds, the pinkies, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs and all the rest. That's the way the game is now. I loathe this aberration at least as much as everyone else but again that's life. Temporarily the game is in the grip of the kind of madness which blights every true fan's peace of mind. But it won't last forever, it only seems like it.

I have already said it wouldn't take much for me to take myself elsewhere other than the current overall rotten footy climate. Too many loony bastards banging on about balance sheets and corporate finance these days, too many hate-filled softshites altogether. Next season, whatever happens anyway, I won't be going to so many away games. So, once again, NO MAGIC WANDS. It's like that when you engage in grown-up talk. Me, I love the game of footy, not the parasites sucking out its lifeblood or the white noise of a claque of Victor Melledrews, media or otherwise.

Talking of loving the game, another game, TV's best sports commentator by a million kilometres announced his end-of-season retirement. I speak of marvellous Bill McLaren, a jock who loves his rugby, his country and loves telling us about both in one of the best common sense voices you've ever heard. Not for Bill a flood of venom or which set of accounts is best. He's far too busy telling you who he admires or who can play rugby. Of course my admiration stops short at rugby itself, which is a thug's game played by thugs, veritable wrestling on wheels and therefore with all the aesthetic attraction of a bowl of decapitated blisters. But Bill is a wonderful one off who will be greatly missed. If only we had someone fit to lace his boots among the footy talking heads. Sadly, as with the press, we're mostly stuck with a bunch of jeering airhead spivs with the collective ability of a Saturday night drunk on speed.

Monday delivered an object lesson in the way our game, The Beautiful Game, is run now. Horrible Suit Ridsdale of Horrible Leeds did what all one-dimensional Suits do in the face of adversity: Issued threats of redundancy and unemployment. The pinkies ran rings around them the previous day so what does Ridsdale do? He said a lot of players would have to go if they don't qualify for Europe because their finances couldn't take the strain, that's what. So much for the new system, the biggest load of unwanted shite since a farmer dumped manure outside the local faceless corporation intent on making everyone redundant. Ridsdale and all the other Suits stink as badly as the same steaming goo. Friends, I show you the whole rotten-to-the-core system.

So take this example to its logical conclusion. Suppose the Sheepshaggers don't qualify and get rid of some good players. Suppose they begin a long slow fall down the division. Suppose crowds start dropping off. Which means their (it's those words again) "revenue streams" begin to run lower. Which means they can't attract good players any more. Which means they fall lower and then even get relegated. Which means they get less TV money. Which means the debt burden increases and even bankruptcy looms. Which means…………………………oh to hell with it, you get the sickening point. And this is the kind of absolutely insane economic mêlée the likes of the Tendency want us to join! Suggestion: Fuck the system and fuck the Tendency right off. They deserve the same fate.

It's all a bit like those loony OPTA stats. You know, the ones which allegedly tell you how many times some player's kicked someone's arse while lacing up his boots on the first Tuesday of every leap year but only if there's an "x" in the month, plus or minus the square root of l over g, times the velocity of light. Surely it's only obsessed loonies who believe that inconsequential and generally meaningless cack. You can visualise an anorak member of the Tendency with a clipboard, stopwatch and measuring tape counting the number of times a corner flag flaps when Gazza or The Yin lets out a fart. Like the stats, they know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

On Tuesday, Fergy said he wanted to stay at the Mancs after all. Graham Taylor was re-appointed at Villa. The managerial carousel gathered speed. The system is alive, unwell and decaying by the day. Talking of which……………

[REALITY CHECK: Heyyyy!! Lookee here! Right on the heels of the Enron collapse comes apparently a mere half a billion dollars ripoff at an Allied Irish Bank subsidiary in the Land of the Free. The patsy this time is named John Rusnak, yet another tribute to well-scrubbed suburban Yank orthodontistry. Seems he's a forex dealer extraordinaire along the lines of hapless Nick Leeson at Barings. See, no sooner do I mention Barings last week than we get AIB. Must be something in me water. Rusnak too is styled a "rogue" by the media. Actually of course he is nothing of the sort. He is typical. The AIB and he just got found out, is all.

It does happen occasionally. Those who despair of American culture should watch a great Michael Mann movie, "The Insider," starring a very ungangster-like Al Pacino, a fat Russell Crowe and vet Christopher Plummer. You'll have your faith restored. Well, partially at least. Your average Yank loathes the Suits as much your average Brit. It's just that their right-wing media is even more self censored than ours, a point well made in an outstanding work of film art.

Forex dealing is mostly a disgusting occupation which ruins millions of lives across the world by straightforwardly milking the system of its surplus dosh. Don't believe anybody who tries to tell you otherwise. Essentially it is a computerised gambling casino like the stock exchange. Ask George Soros. You won't be able to get anything out of the dealers though because most of them have gag clauses in their employment contracts; anyone who blows a whistle is unlikely to get re-employed. Which is why you hear so little about foreign exchange scams. It is a bought silence.

Usually what happens is the patsy initially has a run of good luck (remember that scene in Stone's great polemical movie "Wall Street" where the grizzled old stock dealer takes our hero aside and says, "Enjoy the good run while it lasts, son. Because it never does"?) and the Suits allow him free rein in the casino, maybe even style him "gifted." Later, his luck turns bad and he tries to conceal his losses. The losses build up. Maybe he even takes a cut of the surplus himself. After all it isn't too difficult for somebody with a modicum of intelligence, not with so much dirty dosh sloshing around in the sewer.

Hey presto, he's up to his bollocks in deception, self- and otherwise administered. Alas, the real losers are those with no medical cover, no job, no prospects and a bleak future for their kids. Meantime, the "experts" mutter arcane lingo such as, "……subverting revenue streams……disinclined investment……added value……" etc. etc. and all the rest of the rationalised thieving muck taught on the average MBA course for bright-eyed, Suited-up commissars on a mission to ripoff the entire planet. It never seems to occur to these balloon heads that if there's a middle class there must be classes above and below, and if so who are they and how did they get there? Genuine free thinking forms no part of any MBA course.

Thing is, it is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg. There are many other examples. For instance, Equitable Insurance and the CIA scam, BCCI. In the Land of the Free two of the typical Awful Eighties carpet-baggers were Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky. In fact, Stone based the "Wall Street" Gekko "greed" speech on a uni address made by Boesky From Sea To Shining Sea. Consequently, Generation Xers rushed to join the Suit Army intent on showing just how low human nature can sometimes fall when it is formed into herds. Our own home grown variety had long included Slater-Walker, Ernest Saunders and co., dear old Reggie Maudling, John Pulson and Ernie Marples.

But of course it extends much, much wider across the globe. If you are so inclined you can do your own research by starting here:

http://www.transparency.org

and following it up. Keep a sick-bag handy, all the while remembering that the single AIB score amounted to about 3% of the NHS turnover. Which demonstrates just how much you are lied to about how much genuine dosh is available for genuine investment in things we genuinely need.]

Then after week-long Evertonian breast-beating Friday arrived and swipe me! So did Lee Carsley and Daveed (Because I'm Worth It) Ginola. Needless to say it brought with it the usual circus of media clowns breathlessly shouting into microphones, tripping over TV cables or filling the press with pages of useless shitespeak. Sense Of Perspective where are you when you are most needed? Fans' expectations suddenly went off the Richter scale in yet another demonstration of shepherded survival instinct in an earthquake. Sensible individuals who had just been belabouring their forehead against the nearest vertical surface were within seconds smiling insanely and gibbering about finishing in the top ten. You wanted to go outside and check we were still in orbit around the sun. It was crazy. And I speak as an eternal optimist.

As usual my best friend got an almost automatic handle on the signing of Daveed: "See we've signed Second Hand Rose," he sniffed down the phone. I spilled me coffee everywhere. Doubtless beloved Yentl would trip over her nose in an attempt to get at the dazzling acquiline features of our itinerant Gallic hero. He didn't mention Carsley. Hardly anybody did, including me.

On a totally trivial and mundane level, what we needed against Arsenal was a win. Pre-match gatherers in Wetherspoons were decidedly upbeat. And it was a raucous table heavy with woozy cognoscenti. The Editor in particular had a face like a blood orange in receivership. All except for Stu the pinky that is, but he did the right thing and diplomatically held his peace for almost all of the proceedings, which is just as well because likely he would've been incinerated by rabid anti-pinky Keith. Generally it was felt that if Shampoo 'Ead could make enough difference to deliver us, say, three more points than expected then he would Be Worth It. The feeling was that he would. Nobody mentioned Carsley, including me. Damn these late afternoon Sunday games. By the time the kick off rolls around you see everything twice, usually in brighter colours. There are some people who confuse this for a better life or "a good time."

And so to GP, wending our way in a light mist of drizzle. It covered everybody with a fine diaphonous liquid cobweb. None of us thought it ludicrous that we expected to see a first class footy match in the kind of conditions you wouldn't wish on your neighbour's annoying cat or dog, the ones you aim a kick at if given the opportunity. Everybody in the queue was talking about Ginola. Nobody mentioned Carsley, including me.

And there he was, a self-appointed D'Artagnan in footy boots, magnificently tossing his magnificent mane (no, his MANE, you adolescent dirtbag) in the magnificent air and prancing around in his magnificent boots. Gosh, but he's narcissistic with a capital N. He's also undeniably, well, thick around the waist, and you can't get much more fashionable than that. (But who wants to be "fashionable" amongst penisbrained Generation Xers with hairgel? Me, I'd rather strain minestrone through a sweaty sock. No, WAIT. That's exactly the sort of thing Xers consider classy when they're not tripping over the dance floor in their pastel shirts trailed outside baggy pants and shod in weird, square toed Ted Lapidus brothel creepers. The ubiquitous fleece is an optional fashion accessory, the one which makes anybody of measurable taste shudder. Right, got that out of me system now. Rant over. Back to biz.)

Teams, Ginola, Carsley, Clarkey in. No Yin. Gazza, Joe Max and Pembo on the bench. They were missing half a team but so were we. Given the chance, this was the team most of us would have picked between beers in Wetherspoons. Actually we knew the team while we were there because Mac told us and he ALWAYS knows. That's what mobile phones are for.

We played well in the first half into the Park End and more than matched them. They stepped up a gear in the second half and got the flukiest goal you'll see this season. Since we don't have a second gear we couldn't step up with them, consequently blew a gasket and didn't get near them in the second period. Why does everything remind me of women when Daveed is around?

But in the first half we were much better than for a month or so, combined well and could have had a few goals, no shit. Ginola himself, mon dieu!, almost scored on three occasions. A neat little combo on the left got him into a small space at an angle about twenty five metres out and he loosed a tremendous right foot shot. It looked even more spectacular because he delivered it with a very small back swing of the boot. Hence the surprise. Early in flight it was a cross shot which might well have defeated their uncertain looking 'keeper. Instead it took a deflection almost immediately and screamed toward the opposite corner and he made a good flying save. Immediately the crowd woke up. Hey, maybe we'll get something out of this after all.

It took Arsenal half an hour to have their first shot. By which time we should have been in front. Not perhaps, not maybe, SHOULD have been. And one of the main reasons was the solid display by Lee Carsley in centre midfield, the same player I groaned about when he arrived. He kept doing something we've needed all season in midfield: Win the ball, pass it short and to one of ours. Nothing at all spectacular, just did his job, the one The Gravedigger couldn't do because he was too busy waving his fist and drifting out to the right wing. I am happy to report that if he can keep this up I will readily concede I was talking through my arse about him. We'll see.

Daveed had two more opportunities. One of them was from roughly the same position as the one described above. This time it didn't take a deflection, swerved two metres around their defence, completely deceived their 'keeper………………and brushed his left post on the way out. It was the kind of thing you pay your entrance money for. The other opportunity, and isn't it typical, was far easier than anything else he had to do all afternoon and he missed it. A quick move down our right pulled them all over the place and a ground cross found him just inside the box, right side D. All he had to do was sidefoot it home, which he tried to do. Just before contact the ball bobbled up, hit his ankle and trickled wide. You wanted to weep.

In between he was attempting his circus act all across the front line but mostly wide left. Flicks, back heels, dribbles, all the time with an arrogant straight back and upright head, exactly what the coaches tell you not to do. The crowd loved it but mostly it didn't get us too far. It annoyed the fuck out of the Arsenal defence though and you could see them getting narkier by the second. Yellow cards proliferated throughout.

Our first half play was the most encouraging it has been in a long, long time. Not because we pinned them back, but because we had a coherent team framework for once. We were stringing passes together and making progress down the park. But we all knew we had to score whilst in the ascendancy. It couldn't go on. Arsenal had too many expensively good players, most of whom you've never heard of, a veritable riddle of Olegs, Olafs and gawd knows who-all else. I wasn't in the least impressed by them and can't see them lifting the title, not with this lot as back up. On this evidence my money is still on the Mancs.

Inevitably the second half was quite different and completely turned around. It was us who didn't get near their goal, not really. Our subs didn't make the least difference. By then Arsenal had a solid grip on the game.

The pattern was established within minutes of the restart when somebody in a red shirt hit a hard shot from right side of the D and it took a deflection to the left as Simo dived to his right. He had the presence of mind to stick out a hand and just kept it out and it got scrambled away. By this time Arsenal had sussed our team formation enough to start creating time and space of their own. Their passing improved and gradually began to take its toll. The dictum is, make the ball do the work and leave the opposition to chase around and wear themselves out. This is exactly what happened. It isn't rocket science. All you need are the players with requisite skills……………………

On the hour I turned to my match companion Peter and said, "Arsenal have to get one in the next five or ten minutes or we'll dig in and get a draw out of this." Two minutes later they got one. Shit. Me and my big mouth. You won't see many flukier goals either. It could have gone anywhere.

Their man got in a midfield tangle with two of ours just outside the box, right side. In the tussle he swung a loose boot at the ball as he fell backwards. It scooped up in the air. About the only thing to be said for it is he did what all front men are supposed to do: Can't get it to one of your own? Then hit it toward the goal. It sailed high up and then plummeted down in the only place a madly scrambling Simo couldn't get it, near vertical, just inside his right post. It was a loony goal but they deserved it for their second half determination.

Meantime, we had two very good penalty appeals turned down. The ref's name was Winter. Of course. Hell would freeze over before we got anything out of this one. This was never better demonstrated than shortly before the final whistle when Henry launched himself (the only applicable words) on the worst two-footed aerial "tackle" I have seen in years. It should have been a red card and then some, but guess what……………nothing. It was disgraceful play and reprehensible refereeing.

Glumly surveying the voodoo signs I wonder if our luck has finally run out in this tiresome business of fighting relegation. As I write we are fifteenth, just three points clear of the drop zone. One more loss and we're in deep shit. And our next two league games are away to the pinkies and at home to Leeds. Erk. Still, faint heart never won fair lady.

There were genuinely good things in this game though. The team pattern was encouraging and the midfield formation competed successfully for most of the game. Usually they won and passed the ball competently, certainly to a standard high enough to keep us safe from relegation. It is unprovable of course but I figure this formation would not have dropped the ten or so points we lost through carelessness earlier in the season.

But the cold hard fact of life is that we DID drop them and we ARE in trouble again. And if my prediction of bottom three by mid-March is correct then the trap door might spring with matches to spare. Maybe that's why the Goodison crowd is so quiet these days. After five straight seasons of it, maybe they're just tired of fighting against fate. You can't blame them.

The question is, as it has always been, does Smiffy and the team have the necessary fortitude? In the end it is up to them, not whether the fans behave like they're at a Nuremberg rally. All those who bleat about something called "atmosphere" better ask themselves where all that "atmosphere" and media jeering of the seventies and eighties led us to. It's a game, people, A GAME.

Even if we get relegated.

Team News

What a day. A crakerjack pen for anyone who can name the side for Sunday. I'm not even going to try. David Ginola and Lee Carsley are both expected to play some part in Sundays game. But we don't think that we will see Gravesen somehow. Anyway its all exciting stuff. It's great to be an Evertonian(08/02/02)

Who wrote that below? Gemmill is suspended & Carsley's not coming. (07/02/02)

Don't be surprised to see Tommy Gravesen back in favour, after a chat & a cup of tea with Walter. A couple of games ago, we had a centre forward, a centre half & a full back in midfield. On Sunday, we now could have 6 midfield players fighting over 2 places. Gemmill, Gascoigne, Carsley, Gravesen, Pembridge, & Linderoth. (06/02/02)

Pembo returns to the squad, & it looks like he could start along with new boy Toby. Steve Watson (ankle), Tony Hibbert (ankle), & Nick Chadwick (ankle) are struggling to make the game.

According to the official site Tomasz Radzinski now has a mysterious knee injury to go with his stomach upset. It must be all that bending over the bog to spew, that's knackered his knees. Also Thomas Gravesen still has an ankle injury. Funny that! He looked fine in the car park, after the Ipswich game, & his National team manager says he's not injured & will play in the next International. SOMETHING DOESN'T ADD UP. Alexandersson & Pistone are out.

Walter says: "I felt it was a little bit too early to be pushed on Saturday, but he(Pembo) is coming back from injury just now and will be back for the weekend." (05/02/02)