Everton 2 v 0 Middlesbrough                           Sat. 25th Aug 2001

Report from Last Season's game

Scorers: Gemmill & Campbell

Att: 32,829

Everton from:Gerrard, Watson, Pistone, Weir, Stubbs, Alexandersson, Pembridge, Unsworth, Gemmill, Ferguson, Campbell

Subs: Naysmith for Alexandersson ( 88m) Tal for Pembridge (27m), Simonsen, Moore, Chadwick.

Everton went into this game with a chance to go top of the league for the 2nd time in a week. Although it's early days & most Evertonians don't think this top of the league stuff will last. It's nice to think that if the shite win on Monday we will still be Top.

After a good few slurps in 'Lulu's', a 'Top Toffee Ale 'ouse' indeed, it was down to Goodison to cheer Big Dunc and boo Ince. I took a close look at Ince today. I took off my blue tinted specks, & can honestly say he did nothing. If, as a lot of the media think we will buy him sooner or later, we will just be getting an ordinary player, who for the last 20 minutes was not up with the pace of the game at all.

Everton started brightly, when Niclas Alexandersson crossed, but Ferguson's header went wide. Again the big man won a header. This time from a Wato throw in, & the incoming Unsworth goalbound shot was blocked. It was all Everton in the early stages, & Alexandersson dispossessed Ince to set up Campbell, but again his shot was blocked.

The best move of the match so far came when, Stevie Watson, who again was linking up well down the right with Alexandersson, crossed to Super Kev who controlled the ball at the byline, & turned to cross for Ferguson, who showed all his strength to beat Ehiogu & Schwazer, but his header went tantalizingly wide of the post.

At the other end Everton's defence were playing well, with Alan Stubbs in commanding form, ably assisted by Sandro Pistone, who has come in for some well deserved criticism lately.

Everton went 1-0 up after good work again by Watson & Alexandersson won us a corner. From it Pembridge sent in a corner for Captain Campbell to head home after out jumping goalkeeper, Schwazer. It was shortly after when the Street end came out with that old favourite shanty,'kopites are gobshites Come on lads 22 minutes into the game. You are slipping.

After such a bad refereeing display at the Spurs match, it came as a pleasant surprise to see Rennie letting the game flow, & not reaching for the cards by the minutes. One example of this was when an over zealous challenge by Gemmill, looked a certain booking, but the official let him off with a quiet word. The crowd actually applauded the ref. Whatever next? Clapping Ince. No don't be soft.

Everton kept playing all the football, but couldn't get the second goal their play deserved. Tal, who had come on for another injury. This time to Pembridge, swung over a cross, which reached Unsy steaming in. Everyone was thinking duck! This is going to hit me in the head. But to the lad's credit he kept it down, but again it was blocked.

Boro finally had there 1st shot after 42 minutes. Ricard & Job were completely outplayed by Stubbs & Weir.

Half - Time 1-0

Everton went two up when Scott Gemmill, crashed in a 25 yarder, giving Schwazer no chance. Everton were cruising now. Boro through on a couple of subs, but they didn't look up to much at all. Stubbs & Watson combined to clear the danger again, as sub Windass gave chase. Everton, looking for a 3rd, nearly got it when Dunc beat Ehiogu once again to give Campbell a chance, but this time Schwazer saved.

Ferguson was winning everything in the air. I only wish that we would get a few more players around him for the flick on's. One defensive header by Ferguson had the crowd on its feet. With both teams tiring there were a few bookings. Firstly Unsy going in a bit to hard on Ince, then Pisto booked for hand ball, when he claimed it hit his chest.

The crowd had given Ince a torrid time. A clear indication that he is not wanted at Everton, regardless of the injuries. This was highlighted when the ball went into the family enclosure, or Goodison Rd for those watching in black & white. Ince signaled to a fan to throw the ball to him. The fan held hold of it, making Ince walk to get the ball. The fan even dropped it when Ince reached out for it. This received howls of laughter from the Ince haters.

From a free kick Ferguson headed on to Alexandersson, who pushed a ball over to Campbell, who hit a shot wide. Even Gerrard got in on the act, when he actually caught a cross right on the full time whistle. So onward & upward 7 points out of 9, & Top of the League. The rollercoaster ride that is an Evertonian.

Full Time 2-0

QUOTES

Steve McClaren

Full credit to Everton for the way they played because those two are going to be dangerous against anybody. Their front pair and our front pair was the difference today,"

Walter Smith

Duncan Ferguson and Kevin Campbell are forming a powerful partnership and Duncan's return to fitness is going to play a major part in our season

We missed our strikers for the majority of last season and that was a major factor and that has only been evident this season by the way we have started our play.

The most important aspect of this season is keeping them fit and the other players fit because if we start to build up a number of injuries then our squad could struggle.

Kipper

....and now you're gonna believe us.

BlueBellies 2 Skunks 0

Give 'em an Ince and they take a bile
by
Mickey Blue Eyes.

I had the ideal match eve preparation for this one: Courtesy of Gentleman Cactus Jack, nursing several glasses of Stevenot Merlot '98 from the Sierra foothills. Full and fruity, mature, terrific and the source of much fluid conversation. The wine, that is. I hope those kids out in California know what a treasure of a teacher they have there. Knowing a tiny bit about California and the United States (not necessarily the same thing), I doubt they focus much beyond which family car is next in line or what's goin' down in some trashy TV soap opera. It isn't too different here these days, GCSEs or no GCSEs. All of us must learn to say "No" more often. Many cyber spaces streams of thanks to CJ, an English gentleman citizenized (sic) in Krazy Krooning Kalifornia. My pleasurable turn next time, maybe an away match in San Jose. That's how far I will go for a good conversation, lucky me. Henceforth, a good wine will always mean, "All The Pretty Horses." Those out of the loop needn't bother trying to decode it, just get on with your life and try to avoid scurrility and subsequent arrest.

Our city's life is sort of Krazy Krooning In Humidity this Bank Holiday weekend. It is the Mathew Street Festival, our annual memory fest of sixties Mersey Beat, a surreal mix of kids wanting to know what all the fuss is/was about and middle-aged and elderlies re-living a wonderful fantasy. The truth is out there somewhere and well worth finding amidst the helicopter flyovers. Try it next year. Our city badly needs your money, not the petty suburban semi-detached mentality of those weak kneed wankers not admitting to the term "scouser." You can find SDs anywhere on the planet, among the quiet desperation of the lower middle classes reading a universal Daily Mail/Telegraph/Times/International Herald Tribune/Time etc. etc. True individuality and character is much rarer. A little genuine civic pride does no harm when it has a sense of proportion and ignores chauvinism. So get your ass out with the throngs on our city centre streets and get to know human company again instead of staring at a damned computer or TV screen. After you get over the culture shock you will be startled how much better you can feel, always presuming you haven't forgotten how to hold a civilized conversation without yelling against a mad, loud "music" system.

Pre-match, the cognoscenti gathered for a roister doister - don't ask - of aperitifs in the Black Horse. The Bus was there in determined solidarity and high good humour. Jaysus, times like this make it all worthwhile. You enjoy the highs and suffer the lows together, mostly the latter for the last five seasons of course. But it simply doesn't matter, you get on with it and never forget how to laugh. The Squire and Squire Junior (clones, honest ter god) showed up eventually while we wondered where Cockney Toffee and his lady got to. Moby calls were bladdered by interference and made no difference.

A huge pity the Horse is looking even tackier than usual. Still gets reasonably full on match days though. Brewery owners, social deserters if nothing else, have started to withdraw from the area on the basis our near-certain move to Kings Dock will deprive them of rip-off profits. Pubs along County Road are now transferring managed houses to tenant houses and thus transferring trading problems to the new tenants, all of which are the ex-managers who have been scammed big-time. Consequently, most of the pubs are in a parlous state. Nice one, corporate Britain, "courageous" and "risk-taking entrepreneurs" to the last, oh aye yeh, just as they are with the Cammel Lairds/Royal Bank of Scotland scam across the river. Unsurprisingly our vested-interests shite media and their lickspittles continue to push their grubby lying party line. So do local politicians, "Labour" and Liberal alike. But anyway.

Back in the Horse, many footy things were discussed with zest, litres of beer stretched many bladders all the way to the loo, and much insanely optimistic hilarity lit up the place. Everyone sought happy escape from daily slog, thus equally happily confirming the spontaneous roots of professional footy in the Victorian era. Not many wanted to talk about crucial contributions from public schools in the early days of the game, not with a still-raw vivid memory of referee Elleray's Monday display against Bungerless Spurs. Gawd, it was so bad it was evil. Ask The Gravedigger, now nursing thirty stitches in an awful leg wound, a trauma which went unpunished thanks to Elleray's wandering attention. Funny, everyone else in the stadium saw it from every angle. The irony was, Gravesen was having one of his best games for us.

It comes as no surprise to the more worldly that Harrow house masters are as incapable as the next mediocre ref. In the current climate any attempt by him to "teach" at your local school would end abruptly with him being handed a brush and pan and stern instructions not to miss the Twix wrappers. Savagely, I can't help thinking how much of an improvement this would be over confiscating silver cocaine or heroin wraps from subsidised, untaxed charity trust, fees-paying Harrow pupils. Buck up, David, or you will find yourself in Brixton facing the prospect of having to REALLY teach for a living. One guess as to how he would concentrate then.

Write to him with suggestions, not me, but keep it clean. Likely our David is a mite touchy these days. Maybe it is the male menopause or the interesting if facile notion that he and Tarrico should pay half each of The Gravedigger's medical expenses and ensuing sick pay. Why should our insurance premiums suffer? See how easily all this right-wing greed bollocks corrupts everything it touches?

In the meantime we reprised Dom's amazing claim at the Charlton Liberal Club, the one which said he never goes the match without his lucky scarf, the one he wore all last season and the four seasons before that. He still can't understand why we all fell to the floor and chewed hysterically at the threadbare carpet. Loyalty, thy name is Dom……all the way from the midlands for every game we play. Superb and vastly admirable.

With Boro as visitors we also considered the question: Wasn't all that stuff about Paul Ince joining us just a coil of mangy dog-turds? Er, no. Actually I first heard it from a very reliable inside source, weeks before your average peon gasped at the possibility. At the time I did some gasping myself. Oh yes, it was a bemusing real prospect. Still might be for all I know. I have avoided raising the subject since on the grounds of taste. I leave that sort of thing to half-arsed, acne ravaged adolescent gossips and their paymasters in the media. Can't avoid the subject with the culprit on your doorstep, though.

If Ince does arrive I can only assume Smiffy isn't averse to the prospect of a pair of concrete wellies to help him walk across the Mersey, daft bastard. By and large you can't fool the average fan, and our fans are indeed proving most unfooled on the issue. Quite rightly the vast majority would not touch Ince with, well, with a mangy dog-turd, actually. Or is it the other way round? We might be broke but that is no reason to borrow from organised crime loan sharks or employ their equivalent.

Ince is not wanted or liked by our fans, mostly for all the best reasons. Which is precisely the way most fans around the country feel about him, especially at clubs he played for. When it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, do not think you are buying an eagle, though it might resemble a turkey of fabulous proportions. A brisk search of electoral records shows turkeys do not vote for Christmas. We all hope the Ince idea has been quietly forgotten. It would be a transfer too far.

(The origin of the whole thing is a mystery on a par with an awful rise in the numbers of Brit wobbly-bottomed fat young people a la KFC Amerika Inc. Just as we wonder why Ince can't or won't fuck off quietly so we wonder why these fatists, unfortunate metabolism aside, can't get determinedly healthy as their feet gradually disappear below a ballooning girth. Why are we suddenly surrounded by mobile eggs? Sitting next to one on an airplane, as I did recently, is a nightmare penned by Edgar Allan Poe. It is too ghastly for more exasperated words. Intermediate rant over.)

Nevertheless, I am beginning to have the same sort of feelings for Smiffy I came to have for Ingmar Bergman and his morose movies. After a while I tired of the fatuous intellectuality of chasing melancholic shadows in the name of art. Ingmar and I parted company after intense but fractious cultural cohabitation. It was probably a bad idea because it justified our celluloid Viking in making yet another film on the same topic: Unyielding angst. You get a similar pain every time you see someone lamp the zillionth high ball up to The Big Yin or SuperKev. You ache inside, longing for it to end happily. It hardly ever does. Perhaps Smiffy has watched too many Bergman films before formulating his match strategy. That's it! The Ingmar Bergman Theory Of Match Play! Eureka!

Eventually even a born optimist like me runs out of patience and walks out on the relationship. I understand the current cruel scouse colloquialism is "bin-bagged." Beware, Smiffy, the fans are mightily pissed off. For them, financial/injuries worries or not, last season really was the final straw. Anymore nonsense (and the arrival of Ince would be nonsense) and they will be gone in droves. En masse and suitably outraged, the fans can be as obdurate and as organised as any individual……as Hamperfuckwit discovered literally to his cost. And they will have the last word too. There is a perfectly justified gathering storm out there in fandom.

So we talked, downed our ale, and set off for GP through the ruined streets of Walton. Litter everywhere, chewing gum splodged on pavements

and an unforgettable sign reading "Closed for passport photographs." It didn't make much difference. For eons we have been walking through these streets, loving the narrow, five-metre-centres five percent philanthropy terrace houses which nuzzle up against Mother Goodison. All our great footy grounds are the same. Our identity is solid. Fuck you, English Establishment, you won't win.

Inside, I talked with Peter and Peter Junior on my left. Turned out some bastard had bombed them out of their seats for this match because they were late paying for their season tickets. They had to move. So who shows up grinning like a fucking Cheshire Cat only Cockney Toffee and his lady, booked into the very same seats. I'll never live this down. Our quarter of me beloved Lower Street End is convinced I set it up. Honest guv, I didn't. But no bastard will ever believe me. A row behind, Peter and Peter Junior sniffed, "We get a better fuckn class in this row anyway." The jeers will haunt me till I die.

By this time the air had cleared and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Is it the Swedes who say the English don't have climate, they have weather? Whatever, it was perfect footy weather again. Despite the Boro half-full away section you wanted the loudest voice in the world, the loudest support. Then, Z-cars……and they were out to a tremendous roar. Full of it, you're on your feet like the next divvy.

Nice to see Boro are playing in genuine all-colour instead of those shirt shite side panels. But better still is the story where some Geordies turned up for a north-east derby wearing gas masks and rubber gloves. Boro aren't called The Skunks for nothing. Their ground is surely in the worst effluent location anywhere in the country, haha. The less venomous name is The Smoggies. Anyone who has suffered the experience will endorse the full horror of a match there. It is like an away match in Blade Runner, Director's Cut.

Anyway, we were at full strength. Radzinski was still nursing his hamstring and so has something to prove. But from first to last it was our game. Boro had individual technique but no team shape at all; they looked like us twelve months ago. So we were at them from the off, all over the place. It all stemmed from midfield where Gemmo-Pembo couldn't be shaken. I tell you, people, we are talking journeyman pros who are quite pissed off about last season and won't be happy until they prove a point. Up front, the Terrible Two, SuperKev and the Big Yin were like panzers on heat. Boro couldn't cope. It was only a matter of time.

No surprise, then, when we got one just over the quarter hour. Corner on the right, Park End. Pembo swung it in and Super got on the end of it where it hurts and butted it in while arms and bodies swirled around him. Typical Kev. Me, I LUV 'im. But it was bad news for the tiny group of racists who call him "lazy" and haven't got the guts to admit they are shithouse backroom boys for the BNP. Gerrin der KEV! Werk it up dem la!

The match wasn't a particularly pretty picture. So what's noo? Bodies everywhere, plenty of endeavour. No shirking on our part. Surprisingly, we weren't giving the ball away either. The ball got threaded left and right patiently, even if we couldn't make a real killer pass in the box.

I said, "That lad playing right centre midfield for Boro looks 'andy. Long legs, pacey. 'Oo is 'e?" There was a short silence. A kind soul said gently, "Er, I think it's Ince." I looked at me shoes and waited for the ground to open up. At times like this it never does. Our quarter, pissed off with the seats saga, did exactly the right thing and let me die of acute, silent embarrassment. Bastards.

Out on the right, Nic was doing them severe damage every time he got one-on-one with their left back, whoever he was. The pressure was relentless.

In the middle, let it be said, Uriah Rennie had a superb referee's game. He got amongst the dickhead action early on and stopped it getting out of hand. Elleray could have watched him with profit. It was not much different to the Spurs match in the middle of the park all hustle and bustle, not much class, difficult to control if you had an empty head like Elleray's.

Weir-Stubbsy continued to look the bees knees but they weren't really challenged with Boksic out of it. Boro had no real challenge up front.

Half time arrived with us well in control. Boro couldn't mount anything while they had to contend with the Yin and SuperKev. The Law of Diminishing Returns. Nice, for a change.

Half time interval. So, how much do you love women? Me, I can't get enough, largely because I am overwhelmed by the times. I tell you, I've never loved it more than Satdee, for out of the Park End came a hip-swinging Brazilian Samba Band, part of the Mathew Street festival, trailed by three groin-gyrating sumptuous Brazilian girls who could stop your heart at a range of a hundred metres. All of them wore tight shorts you wanted to remove as soon as they'd let you. But hey! they knew how to get you going before fucking off and leaving you to the care of Walton Ozzy Thrombo Department. They break your heart……and you WANT them to. Germaine Greer, eat your heart out.

Second half, goal in the Street End just after the restart. A corner on our left got partially cleared to right of the penalty arc. Scott Gemmill timed the drop perfectly and bulleted it in on the volley beyond their keeper's right hand. The Street End exploded, a long awaited goal of this type. It was all over bar the occasional scare.

Idan was long on, wide left. But their right back played him immaculately and gave no room at all until he eventually went right and had no impact there either. Pity.

Boro's coach, Steve McLaren, had interesting body language out at the dotted line. No gestures, no anger, no instructions. He just sort of stood there like Leslie Phillips and said a coquettish, "Hellooooo." Nobody paid attention anyway. Professional sport's a cruel occupation.

Altogether we won this like we should have won against Spurs. It was a tight, tigerish and determined display which Boro didn't have the slightest idea of countering. Nobody should go overboard about it. But if we can keep it up for the next three matches we should be, erm, alright. However, Boro aren't the same opposition as our next three opponents. Still, I cling to straws. The Terrible Two of SuperKev and The Big Yin, injury free, can dent any defence in the country. Given our start, all the other owl arses will be looking at our owl arses and wondering just how they can keep them out. It's nice to have the opposition on the back foot for once. Keep your fingers crossed. We're going to need it. The boys done well.

So after the match we repaired to the Horse to relish top place for however long it may or may not be. What's seldom's wonderful. And whatever else happens there's still the consolation of those Brazilian girls bumping and grinding better than their national team has done for many years. You had to see them to believe them. The girls done well too.

Dunc Watch

Game v Boro.

The stats above are just a bit of fun for you anoraks out there. One thing that can be noticed is the Big man can win a ball in the air. The bad thing is that other players are not getting on the end of them. This is not having a go at Campbell, but on the other players not supporting the front two. One thing to notice is that out of 5 long throws from Steve Watson, Dunc won all 5, but everyone was cleared. We think Walter should get more men in the box, & expect the big man to win the ball, which he does.