A Smoggy day, near rundown town
by
Mickey Blue Eyes.

The day after our Charlton débâcle the Leeds horror show took its final twist and then went full circle. O'Leary signed a new contract and slimeball Suit Ridsdale said Woodgate and Bowyer should be selected for England. No mention of the Najeib family yet again. Leeds? Everything a good club shouldn't be and everything the modern game and its rotten economics have produced. I hope the Najeib family and their battered son take Leeds Inc. all the way to the cleaners and back. And then get up in the morning and do it all over again. I can only hope justice prevails when the Najeibs have their day in court. But it wouldn't do to mistake a Brit court of law for a court of justice.

If we had an honest Fourth Estate the case would be a watershed. Instead, it is merely another news event to be manipulated by them. In the meantime, Leeds have learned nothing since they kicked their way out of the second division a generation ago under Revie and became the most detested club in the country. It would be nice to think Ridsdale and O'Leary saw this as something more than a lousy and unfortunate PR exercise. Then again, maybe they're under orders from their corporate owners and invisible Suits, ENIC or some such. You'll probably never get to know of course since large corporations only exist self-admittedly to rip you off and send you on your way with empty pockets. It is your choice how you deal with them, just as it was Woodgate and Bowyer's choice how they behaved that night.

I motored up to The Bus meeting point on a gloriously sunny, clear and freezing morning. Snowdonia's peaks glinted with snow away to the west, way beyond the river. I turned on Radio Five for a daily dose of media diatribe. It was Nick Campbell's usually impeccably moderated phone-in. They were discussing the long-overdue intro of the euro into the European Union, everywhere except backward old Blighty that is.

A guy came on on a slash and burn mission and, er, right out of the blue, did a comic hyperbolic number on Smiffy's reputation. To his credit, Campbell let him get it out of his system. When he finished, Campbell said straightfaced, "Will Walter Smith's status affect the value of the euro?" I laughed so hard I skidded badly on black ice, which left me sort of identifying with Smiffy's position. It wasn't my fault, it was the people who paid for the car to be made, the workers who made it and the people who designed and built the road. Yes, they all played their part. Nothing wrong with MY driving, la.

The sports news came on. Seems the Football Foundation carried out a survey which delivered the following data:

(a) Three quarters of fans think players and clubs are too greedy.

(b) Two thirds of fans want fairer play.

Both of which are the wrong questions of course. Might have got interesting had they asked for suggestions as to how the game should be owned and administered. But don't hold your breath on that one. Until then, accept the existing state of the English Scab League and its inevitable and logical conclusion or simply don't give it your money…………or try to change it. Well…………………what're you waiting for? A skid on black ice?

The real news told us that the American military have allegedly bombed and killed a hundred village innocents in Afghanistan and that the Americans allegedly blamed the Taliban. Quite how the Taliban might have got into the American command-and-control centre was not made clear. India and Pakistan edge closer to war with comments from both sides that it appears "inevitable," thus proving that some people have still learned absolutely nothing from October, 1962. Footy dwindled to its rightful place in our lives.

So, there we were, ready for the trip to the Smoggies of Middlesborough, and four points off the bottom three. Not exactly the best welcome to the new year. As always though The Bus had its optimistic chin up and plenty of smiles and laughter to go with it. Great company, the best, great Evertonians all. But not much point mentioning the euro and yet another possible sub-continent war, not with the relegation bogey floating in the air yet again, all of it accompanied by varying stages of new year hangovers, some of them quite acute. One traveler looked close to death, somewhat like our playing fortunes.

For the third time in very short order we were Going Over The Top to the land of the Venerable Bead. This time we were going to be greeted by the indefatigable nazi inclinations of the Middlesborough bizzies. Why they should be so bad I leave to your own research methods. Take it from me, these neanderthals would kick the life out of your pet hamster so they could get at and trample all over your kids' toys. Yeuk. Small wonder their reputation is as narrow as their chief constable's forehead. True to reputation, one of them boarded to read the usual tiresome riot act as we pulled up outside the stadium. You get a bit pissed off with this after you've just had to join a police-escorted convoy, and even more so when you recall this kind of muck is deemed unnecessary everywhere else in the country. For once, the riot act was read with a smile. Maybe too they've stopped chaining their kids, though I would want to see the evidence first. From the moment you arrive you can't wait to get the hell out of the place and leave it to the unfortunates who live there.

Teams, The Rad out, The Yin, Stubbsy in……………and Danny the streetfighter in, the one we said wouldn't play for us again after he clocked some judy and then we shipped him off to Barnsley. Which just goes to show how much we are scraping the barrel now. Still, at least it wasn't a gang of four kicking a prone figure near to death. It could be worse, but not by much.

Our away allocation was maybe three quarters full, the clearest indication yet of expiring fans' patience. Everybody at the club, top to bottom, better take note. I said before the season that a repeat of last season's horrors would have a dramatic affect. Our slight improvement delayed the reality. The recent slump in form delivered it. I also said a repeat of the injury cycle would indicate something wrong with training, fitness and treatment. The injury cycle has repeated. So what are they up to at the training ground every day?

The match of course was awful. The first half was ours, the second half theirs after they scored within a few minutes of the break. We never remotely looked like getting back into it. Heads went down and never really got up afterwards. In the end Boro deserved it.

For us, there was some slight promise in the first half. There were even patches of quite good passing. For a short while you could even fool yourself that maybe the bad patch was over. Then The Yin goes and misses three clear chances. The first was the kind of free header he's supposed to bury in the unlikely event he's left on his own, the second a good volley which hit the face of the bar and came out, and the third a miskick as the ball dropped. After the third went a-begging you could almost feel the will drain out of our fans and they seemed resigned to the seemingly inevitable. You couldn't blame them. The last week's traveling has been difficult to say the least.

A relatively slimline Danny (he was ovoid instead of round) chased everything in a familiar anarchistic way. And then he straightened up with a pulled hamstring and joined the rest in the out-patients department. Just after half time Stevie also got something out of joint and went off just in time to see the Smoggies get a stupid and untidy goal when our centre backs failed badly to get a corner away and their man couldn't miss from close in.

Later, Simmo made a superb save from Ricard, low down left, as we kept giving the ball away all over the place. It was almost ludicrous.

Meanwhile The Yin fell for all their niggling, got booked and very nearly got sent off.

Grasping at straws: Blomqvist's play was a little better but I don't see him as anything other than a member of the over-the-hill gang, Tony Hibbert at least got another run out (and then had a difficult time trying to cope) and Simmo's confidence took another gentle step forward.

For me, one alarming feature was the way huge gaps kept appearing in our central defence and midfield. No, I mean REALLY huge gaps in open play, not the type exposed by a quick and clever raid. A better team than Boro, which is almost everybody, would have crucified this. Fortunately they were almost as useless as we were. Both sides did a passable imitation of Buster Keaton at his best.

There's no question a continuation of this form means an early cup exit and relegation. Right now, it really is worse than last season. How the players could be so plainly up for it against the Mancs and then appear not to give a shit for most of the rest of the time is a matter for them. For the fact is they CAN play because they have shown it. You can talk psychological motivation all you like (there are few more laughable sights than a group of adult professional sportsmen gathered in an arm-clutching circle like they're hatching an egg) but in the end it comes down to what is inside each of the individuals. So motivation is matter for the players and the management. Arm-clutching circles, fist-waving and badge-kissing is not required. All fans just want their players to do their best, in which case they will be forgiven almost anything. That is the English way.

Which brings me to Tommy Gravesen. Assuming the stories are true, here's my message to him: Fuck off, Tommy, and the sooner the better. I hope we get more money for you than we paid. But fuck off anyway. You were never that good. Any expat of any nationality will tell you how to deal with the situation. But don't bother us, just get your arse off our patch and go lie to someone else. We have enough problems of our own without your fist-waving shite.

Where he's concerned it should be remembered that he signed his existing contract last April after almost one season of not very convincing football from him. This season he has played marginally better and has been central to our slight improvement in earlier months. That doesn't make him indispensable though, far from it. All of which indicates that he and his agent are simply trying to make more money while banging on about other alleged motives. Standard procedure these days, standard garbage.

And garbage brings me right back to the way we are playing. The fact is, our form has gone downhill since the injuries again accumulated. Our scoring rate has diminished almost to zero since SuperKev went off. Our midfield is nothing short of a joke (Mancs display excepted) since Pembo disappeared. Davey hasn't had a settled centre pairing, and the full backs have been perm-any-two-from-four and now Sandro has gone off the radar screen too. In short, the arse has fallen right out of our season. If we don't restore a semblance of equilibrium in the next three or four weeks I have no hesitation in saying we will get relegated. How we do it, I haven't a clue. I have a feeling that our substantial luck has finally run out.

Somehow, players and management have got to get themselves in the right frame of mind. Nobody else is going to do it for them. Witchcraft, like religion, is a figment of fertile and vivid imagination and nothing more. Short of the board plunging us into truly unmanageable and irresponsible debt (and in any case there's no guarantee that expensive new players will do the trick, ask Boro) we are stuck with what we have.

Oh the players and management can do it alright. They have the ability because they have shown it to us this season. The question is whether they have the will. Once again the jury is out. It may be that the jury end up caring as little as the accused apparently do. Which would be a pity because we will end up in a lower division for the first time in almost fifty years. Seems to me and all of our fans this is something worth fighting against.

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