Everton 5 v 0 Hammers                                             Sat. 29th Sep 2001

Report from last season's game

Everton : Gerrard, Watson, Weir, Xavier, Pistone, Alexandersson, Graveson, Gascoigne, Naysmith, Radzinski, Campbell,

Subs: Hibbert for Pembridge (83m), Moore for Radzinski (83m), Pembridge for Gascoigne (7m) Simonsen, Stubbs.

Scorers: : Campbell 45, Hutchison 52 (og), Gravesen 56, Watson 75, Radzinski 79.

Att: 32,049

After a few beers at the'Springy', we walked up Spellow Lane with the sun beating down on our backs, thinking 'I've got a good feeling about today'. This is no different from any week, as we are always optimistic. Call us Evertonians.

What a shock when we heard the team news. No Dunc, No Stubbsey, No Unsey. No they weren't the shocks. He's playing 4-4-2. You are joking. Walter Smith playing 4-4-2. A system the fans want. A system the players are comfortable with. This truly is the start of a remarkable day we thought. Oh how right we were.

From the kick-off, Everton were very positive, with Alexandersson, & Watson, working well down the right. Gazza was straight into the action with a reckless tackle on that mercenary Hutchinson. Seconds later he did the same to another Hammer. He was clearly wound up. Next minute he was brought off injured. When he completely missed the man & ball, kicking fresh air. On came Pembo, obviously not match fit, but he played really well. Along with Tommy Graveson they won the midfield battle. Consequently we were able to have most of the play, & more chances. It's a simple game when we play 4-4-2.

Alexandersson, played a lovely pass to Campbell, who layed it off to Pembridge. He hit it first time, & Shaka was grateful to push it over for a corner. From it was Pembridge again who blasted another shot in. Again Hislop saved. From this West Ham had their best chance of the match.When a cross shot from Di Canio just went wide. It only needed a touch & it would have been in.

Thomasz Radzinski was getting involved more, & he layed a ball to Pembo, who's shot went just wide. Again the Rad showed his footballing brain was working well, when he hit a crisp first time pass into the incoming Naysmith, who's shot was blocked. Everton were well on top now, & forced 3 corners in succession. Pembo took them 'al Hinchcliffe'. Hislop palming two of them away. A fourth corner was taken by Tommy Grave, who gave his familiar clenched fists to the crowd. Radzinski was sent through by Campbell & tried to head the ball over Shaka, but the goalie read it well & saved.

It was all Everton now. Alexandersson, who was having his best game in an Everton shirt, played a one two with Graveson, who put Super through only for him to be crowded out by a bunch of Hammers.The Rad had a chance to score, but scuffed his shot. Everton finally got the break they needed, when Campbell scored a cracker. The Rad, Tommy, & Niclas all played there part in a fast flowing move. The ball was sent out to Alexandersson who crossed for Super to head home.

Half-Time 1-0

Everton started well straight from the off. Route one stuff saw Gerrard's long boot headed on by Campbell to the Rad, who took it in his stride, but hit it wide, when he should have scored. Everton went 2-0 up when the pace of Pembo's free kick caught Shaka, & Hutchison in two minds, & the Don slotted. Thanks a lot. While we were still celebrating, West Ham's 2 best players combined when Di Canio shaped to shoot, but fooled the Everton defence, & crossed for Kanoute to head against the bar.

We went 3-0 up when Tommy Grav took the ball from his own half & made a 'b line' towards the goal, helped by some good running off the ball by Radzinski & Campbell, he continued on his jinking run, & hit a right footed drive which nestled nicely in the net via a post. Game over. The Gwaladys St celebrated in time honoured fashion with chants of 'Going, Down' Graveson wanted another goal, & nearly got it when the ball rebounded off Campbell, Tommy chested the ball down & volleyed it, but again Hislop pushed it over the bar. It was all Everton, & even the Judder Man, got in on the act when he nearly scored with a header from a corner. The fourth goal came after Alexandersson exchanged passes with Kev, who waited for Stevie Watson to come on the overlap. He cut in along the dead ball line, & had his cross pushed away by the goalie, but manage to score with a little help from Gary Naysmith, who was always getting forward to help the strikers out.

The 5th goal was scored by Radzinski, who was put through & took the ball wide of the outcoming Hislop, but managed to twist & score from a very tight angle. The crowd were made up for the Rad, who looks top drawer. He is very intelligent with his runs, is like shit off a shovel, & can score. Nobody had a bad game. The defence with Pistone, & Xavier looking good, which is something I don't think I would ever say. Naysmith, & Alexandersson,played well on the flanks, but the Star Man was Tommy Graveson, who showed today, he has more to his game than just punching the air like a Viking on the rampage. Well done, Walter. Same again next week. Please.

Quotes

Walter Smith:"This was an important game for us, one we had to win and we did it well. To achieve a result like that, so emphatically, will give us plenty of confidence now. It was a game I thought could be a difficult one because of their skillful front players but to win as well as that was very pleasing.

"We thoroughly deserved it, nobody can argue about our right to the points after a display like that. Last week against Blackburn we played just as well but the chances just didn't go in. This time we took our chances and I'm delighted with the effort everyone put in."

WS on Gazza:"We have a couple of weeks now to get him right, it's touch and go but I feel he could be back in three weeks."

Kipper: Up the 'ammers, right up the 'ammers.I wished we played them every week.

'Arry's Gorn…HENCE, LOATHÈD MELANCHOLY…
by
Mickey Blue Eyes.

Midweek, the players' strike loomed larger. The mutual greed on display was palpable and sickeningly hypocritical, similar to watching a disagreement between the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Echo and the Daily Telegraph. You want to brush them all into a field and let them gnaw the living innards out of each other, rats squabbling over a decaying corpse.

Elsewhere and very far away a military strike also loomed, undeterred by a humanitarian catastrophe of holocaust proportions and no public evidence to enforce habeus corpus. One mass murder horror possibly is about to be subsumed by an even worse one, thus reinforcing Gandhi's answer to a question of his thoughts on Western Civilisation: "I think it would be a good idea." It was Gandhi too who pointed out with flawless logic that an eye for an eye means eventually and inexorably everyone goes blind. But you can't see that bothering our Fourth Estate in their propaganda, not for a minute. One can glimpse the ghostly death's head grin of Josef Goebbels and hear the creak of the door opening into Room 101. The aggregate affect is that all of us might be in harm's way, quite apart from the brave young men and women who enlisted to protect us all. Those who believe in prayer, say it now. The rest of us have to make do with trying to apply some sort of human reasoning and value to life and the best elements of our civilisation.

(Anybody looking for a motive for the insane mass murder of innocents in the USA won't have far to look. Tinily symptomatic, midweek also saw the arrival of ranting rightie P. J. O'Rourke from Nutsville, USA. I won't argue if you decide the J stands for Jerkoff. O'Rourke, probably recruited long ago on campus, appears every now and then when it looks like Brit righties need a jeer leader to stiffen their orchestrated knee jerks. Well, here he is smack on cue with all loony water pistols blazing. Naturally he leaves the truly lethal weaponry to others. You can get the gist of his type and his hype from his book published in the wake of the "successful" Gulf War, "Give War A Chance" (Picador, 1992). After quoting the bible to excuse a massacre of war crime proportions on the Basra Road in Kuwait he describes a flight back to Saudi Arabia in a very large C-130. This is part of his conclusion:

"……the whole might of science, of industry, of civilization's mastery of the world - our civilization's mastery of this world. 'HOOOOOO-AH!!!' as the Gulf troops say.

We popped over the top of a little ridge, and there was a Bedouin camp on the other side. I watched a boy about nine or ten years old come running out from one of the goat-haired tents. We were so close I could see his expression - thrill and fear and awe and wonder combined. His whole life he'll remember the moment that sky blackening, air-mauling, thunder-engined steel firmanent of war crossed his face. And I hope all his bellicose, fanatical, senseless, quarrel-mongering neighbors - from Tel Aviv to Khartoum, from Tripoli to Tehran - remember it too."

It is hard to think of a better example of what Umberto Eco calls ur-fascism, the sort also mouthed by the felon Berlusconi in an unmanipulated moment, the sort all western establishments are shot through with.

Unconcerned by twinges of conscience contemporary reviewers claimed the author was "exuberantly malevolent"…"A hard hearted bastard but a good reporter"…"his best work to date"…"not just a jokester"…"wickedly good"…"a proficient stand-up"…"for the jokes alone…worth a read" [this pearl from Jeremy Paxman of the BBC]…"an unapologetic hedonist"…"funnier than a billion politically correct comedies"…and so on and tragically so forth. It must be comfortable for him and his paymasters out there beyond the orbit of Uranus. The same can't be said in New York and Washington where, like the little Bedu, innocent victims were forced first hand to suffer or witness still another version of sky blackening, air mauling, thunder-engined steel firmanents of war……this time in mufti.)

At times like this we revert to trivia as a tiny part of self defence against our culture's maddest impulses. And you can't get much more trivial than ITV's treatment of The Beautiful Game since they outbribed everyone else for TV rights. About the only good thing they came up with is the so-called Fans' Parliament. Actually, it is deeply embarrassing for the so-called professional broadcasters and presenters because invariably the fans are much more articulate, funny and sensible than anything produced by the standard talking heads. My, but that Gabby Yorath is sheer transparent TV shite stacked vertical, while poor old Ally McCoist looks and sounds like a Jock barrow boy selling last weeks fish heads. It isn't Gabby's fault she has a nose to hang a coat on and a mouth like a rip in a welly, but she might at least make a token effort to evade the looks of a Friday Night Loonball slurping from an unwashed bottle in his/her hand. Ally even wears the standard male Loser's Uniform of shirt-outside-pants. By comparison, the fans look and sound like a model of reason and humour in ludicrous footy shirts.

Meanwhile, following Stam's Manc revelations, the pinkies became the first club in the current regime to be accused of illegal approaches to a player, Ziege. They probably did the same with unmissed (and likely on his way again) Barmby. I know for sure they tried with (not pulling up any trees in Scotland) Bally, who turned them down for tribal reasons. Also, West Ham almost certainly tapped up (gone again after just a year at Sunderland) The Don. So now people like fat cats Carter and Parry are reaping the whirlwind they helped sew with their part in creation of the present rotten-to-the-core set up. Not that they'll get anything more than a slap on the wrist. There's too much to lose, too many "business plans" to scan, too many "management consultants" to partake in the rip-off. And anyway in the present corrupt climate their worst sin was getting found out. Again I show you the times.

The times include our fourth straight loss. Predictably this brought some hysterics out of the woodwork and into the arms of the Melledrew Tendency, mob-handed and ugly with it. Makes you wonder what the thick bastards did pre-season when they read the fixture list. Difficult to believe they thought we would get much anyway out of the Mancs/pinkies/Sheepshagger games. Nor did we of course, even though Wool Rovers replaced the latter. Amused, you can't help thinking what the Tendency will be like in old age. They'll probably drink port, get gout, have bad tempered florid noses, reek of caffeine-halitosis and shout at anyone who has the temerity to enjoy life, even small children. Maybe they thought we were going to stay top of the league once we got there. There is one in every pub and bar. But sometimes there is no way of knowing since they always lapse into a low background moan when the team manages to string a few results together. Ah, grow up the lot of you, grow up before you get adolescent varicose veins in your face as well as your arse. Reality is required, not some jeering media induced hysterical muck produced to encourage your spluttering paranoia out there in the quiet desperation of suburbia. Smile, really SMILE, before you forget how. Whatever.

Still, undeniably, Walter Smith crossed the Rubicon at Blackburn. There's irony somewhere in there, what with a Rubik 'n' all. We should have won at Rovers with something to spare, didn't, and then he went and made one of the most baffling subs even he has made: Tony Hibbert came off. It left me shaking my head. Later, he said the boy was tired but I saw no obvious signs thereof. I said pre-season that much more of last season's awfulness would see a major fans' reaction. At Blackburn the Smiffy dam finally broke and won't be repaired any time soon if at all. Events will now take their inevitable course, as they were always bound to.

So the 'Ammers arrived sans 'Arry. Seems wrong somehow. 'Arry was always one of my favourite characters despite persistent scuttlebutt he was up to his armpits in the PLC till. I end up holding my sides together every time I get to talking about his Rio scam on that phony Suit, Ridsdale of Leeds. Nobody fucks with 'Arry and leaves with an undamaged wallet. I swear, I would help him load the barrow just for the experience. But now he has done one and the 'Ammers are managed by someone named Roeder or Roederer or something, someone I have never heard of, all earnest, badged, track-suited and straight out of the Laahndan Skewl of PR Diatribe. Well, someone has to keep those ineffable arsehole journos in a job and their hands in our pocket.

Mind you, I might be more than slightly biased since 'Arry's boys are one of the few outfits we bladder with near monotonous regularity since our current crass juggernaut first picked up pace some five years ago. Thanks for the memories, 'Arry. Please just don't try to sell me a used car. I hope you are happy down there in the Bournemouth branch of the genteel Arfur Daley Spivs Retirement Home. You have earned it, sort of.

Related memories of the 'Ammers: Drenching rain and a walk down to the Holy Ground from the Black Horse. Sheepshagger Phil got splashed by a passing car, Wool Mogsy howled with laughter……and then a follow-up car deluged him in a skip full of the same stuff. I have never seen anything funnier, not even by the immortal Buster Keaton or Eric Morecambe. At the time I laughed so uproariously I only narrowly averted the same fate.

Other memories: Last season, Di Canio pulled a much-overrated juggling act when he might have scored with Paul injured and out of it on the ground and a looming draw. My spies tell me we had to replaster the away dressing room walls after 'Arry got through with him in the post match debriefing. Nobody fucks with 'Arry's win bonus. Then we battered them yet again at Upton Park. All this plus previous 6-0 and 4-0 home and away wallopings. Bliss, sheer bliss, miniscule straws to clutch at.

During the week the first slight chills of Autumn arrived. Then, if only to confirm that our damp little islands have weather not climate, Friday and Saturday both dawned sunny, bright and clear and nicely warm in a gently English sort of way, isolated wispy clouds on high. England is the only place to be in Autumn.

A smaller than usual group gathered in the Black Horse. An interior designer with the taste of Sid Vicious has had the place recarpeted but left the seats upholstery as it was, like Bernard Manning's mouth, hard, shredded and cruel. And Lynn the assistant manager has left for a job among the Mancs, which is just as well because she might one day have accepted my joking invitation to a clandestine tryst. Lynn is exceptionally large and not my type, but a terrific personality for all that. One of our party suggested she was possibly the author for signs advertising "Big Jugs" now adorning wall space all over the pub. Cheap shot, cheap shot.

We retired to the beer garden so Phil 3 could jeer at my perfunctory attempts to build a radiator screen at chez nous and do the same to Smiffy's attempts to build a team while enduring straitened circumstances. Like virtually everybody else he was merciless in his criticisms of the Rubik. This incensed Texyla no end because he feels that once a player dons a royal blue shirt he should be immune to anything except encouragement. I see his point but we're talking human beings here. Not only that, the times encourage many to feel it is time to get some return for the exorbitant money they are charged. See how coldly rotten the present money-grubbing is? What does it have to do with the real reasons we still persevere with The Beautiful Game?

After an hour or so we went on to Crofts on City Road, recently reclaimed as a major venue for Blue Bellies, wherein we met Fred and the Midlands boys to make arrangements for collecting them en route to Ipswich. Ian was there too, ruminating over our present fix and why his hair has turned grey in his mid-twenties, oh aye yeh.

So to the ground and consideration of the latest spin of the Rubik: No Yin, Hibbert or Stubbsy, but Radzinski and Stevie were back. I muttered vile oaths at the exclusion of the boy Hibbert in favour of Stevie but welcomed The Rad. I was beginning to wonder if he was real or a figment of Smiffy's none too fertile imagination. The Don was back for the Pearly Queens.

We attacked the Park End and SuperKev almost got one straight away but it got scrambled away. Henceforth, the verb "to scramble" might have been invented for this match. This was reinforced after five minutes when Gazza lashed out in a goal area scrum and had to go off in agony. It looked bad enough for me to opine, "I think that's the last we'll see of Gazza." The slings and arrows of Gazza's outrageous fortunes are not done with him yet. Pembo came on for him and did well throughout in his usual unspectacular but effective fashion.

It was an untidy mess of a first half. The 'Ammers were frankly useless while we puttered around unconvincingly though we had most of the territory, a bit like last week. Ominously, the best chance fell to Kanoute in the Street End, goal area right side. All he had to do was side foot it firmly and it was in. Instead, he scuffed it with a powder puff and it trickled wide of the left hand post. I can't recall them having a similar chance at any other time.

At centre back, Davey-Abel settled down well after the peroxide one had a couple of initial scares though it has to be said they were never really pressured by a woeful 'Ammers. Paolo's spaniel temperament got the upper hand and we never saw him do anything except wave his arms around. Kanoute's exceptional control was AWOL.

Up front, SuperKev-Rad are a completely different proposition to SuperKev-Yin. The ball gets played on the ground out of sheer pragmatism, which is nice. Not surprising really since The Rad stands as high as my shoulder and doesn't head it very often. Moves like shit off a shovel though and never gives up. He is much stronger than The Ears too. If he can keep this up through one of our winters we could be in for some fireworks. Which also means that when it gets played up in the air it has the element of surprise instead of monotonous regularity. Which is how we got our first goal.

Right on half time, a move down our right was petering out when their defence let a loose ball seemingly roll out of play. Except The Rad caught up with it between the box and the corner flag, turned and slipped it back to Nic level with the edge of the penalty area. Whence it was despatched post haste in a looping cross to right side midway between the goal area and the penalty spot, where it got bisected perfectly by SuperKev who dived in front of two 'Ammers and bulleted a brilliant downward header into the left corner. I ended up swinging from the rafters, looking for one of the tiny minority of racists who have made him a scapegoat……but guess what? None to be seen or heard anywhere.

I was pleased too for Nic who has had a poor start to the season. In this game he showed some flashes of returning confidence. On his game, his close control and crosses can be devastating.

Almost ten minutes into the second half we got our second thanks to a miserable lack of concentration between Shaka and, erm, The Don. Pembo drifted wide right and swerved a left footed long ball into their right side goal area. Both of said 'Ammers fell over each other in their rush to do their worst in front of a chortling Street End. Gleefully, the Street welcomed the ball into the back of the net. It looked awful and indeed it was.

From then on the Laahndaners were swept aside with a full help handing from their own inadequacies and lack of fight. It was only a matter of time. Three minutes later a cricket score loomed. The Gravedigger won a tackle on the half way line, slightly left, and set off on an angled run toward the right side penalty arc. He just kept going, and going, and going, 'Ammers watching like frozen rabbits. By the time they closed up in front of him, after a fashion, he hit a medium strength shot which bounced a couple of times and went home just inside the right hand post. It looked awful and indeed it was.

The surprise was it took us twenty minutes to get a fourth. When it came, it summed up much of the game, when everyone except the stewards joined in a right wing attack. Stevie somehow found himself virtually on the goal line between the goal area and penalty box. He hit what looked like a hard ground cross which Shaka got a diving hand to low right. The rabbits all froze again so Stevie casually walked up and prodded it under Shaka. It looked awful and indeed it was.

Four minutes later, the fifth, this time a good goal but still aided by the pantomime 'Ammers defence. SuperKev flicked on a left side through ball to The Rad and he won the bounce off their very large and very useless centre back. In the process he was forced acute right only just inside the box, from which position he hit a hard shot beyond poor Shaka's right hand. By this time the very large centre back had got back to cover and should really have headed it clear. Instead he just butted fresh air and the ball zoomed in half way up inside the right hand post. It was the goal of a first class striker……the first of many, we hope.

Hibbert and Joe Max were brought on with ten minutes left, just in time to sign the death certificate. Poor 'Ammers……they couldn't wait to get off. Yet one more walloping off us and no sign it is going to change any time soon. Tough luck, lads, but really we couldn't give a shit, not after the last four results.

Back in the Horse, Texyla was in bullish mood. You couldn't blame him. He pointed out quite rightly that we played the same against Rovers but lost. Not much to quarrel about there, except in the detail. So now……whither The Yin?