Everton 2 v 2 Leicester                                                Sat 13th April 2002

Kick-Off: 3.00pm.                                                                 Att: 35,580

Everton: Gerrard, Watson, Weir, Stubbs, Pistone, Alexandersson, Gemmill, Gravesen, Unsworth, Radzinski, Ferguson,

Bench: Simonsen, Blomqvist, Linderoth, Chadwick, Campbell.

Subs:

Monday, Kirch Media, Kraut "creators of wealth," World Cup broadcast bidders, went belly up owing zillions of DM. Guess who? fascist Italian and G14 owner and mouthpiece Berlusconi tried to step in with a "rescue package." Oh aye yeh. Don't say you weren't warned about that gobshite. If you want to see the future have a look at half empty Serie A stadia, corrupt drugs tests, lousy footy, racist crowds and all the rest of the garbage that goes with pasta footy. If the sour-faced meffs at the Melledrew Tendency had a duce it would be Berlusconi. But will the media carry out a prolonged campaign against him to expose his or Murdoch's media monopolies? Again, oh aye yeh.

Same day, the Scottish Scab League was prevented from forming its own TV channel by guess who? Rangers and Celtic. Not content with trying to fuck up the Jock game by baling out, now they're fucking it up by STAYING. Later in the week the Huns chairman was to say, "We should have accepted Sky's bid," a perfect illustration of why the game is half way to hell. Wouldn't it be nice if the rest of the Jock league went off and left them as a two-team league watched only by the Tendency out in the Shetlands. It's an impractical but very gratifying image. Of course the Old Firm are an utter disgrace in this matter and should be made into the pariahs of Europe, like the G14 Group and its members. Sadly, this won't happen. Instead, they'll continue whining out there on the periphery with the Tendency. Here's one fan who won't spend a halfpenny to watch them if they ever get into an English competition. They are fast becoming the counterfeits of the British game. Suits/Tendency? They'd sell their own mother and send her C.O.D. to the Sun or the Daily Telegraph.

But it's been a baaad time of late for the local branch of the Tendency as they leech on our club. One by one their dummies have been removed to the sound of loud squealing from their pram, toys cartwheeling to the ground. Refinancing……new manager……Kings Dock nearer with each passing day……relegation almost certainly avoided. Any day now they'll have to abandon their anabolic steroids to turn to the most predictable line of all in their tiny minds: How much they hate our city and its people, and why, for instance, Manchester is a "better" city. Typically, it's almost all they've got left. Either that or you can expect some indirect smears a la the Sun. But if it gets dirty there's a few other accounts we can illuminate for public assessment……………………Meanwhile, dunno what's funnier, watching them stew in their own bile, or hearing them go, "Nyarrghh! Urg! Splargggg!" at better prospects for our club and our city.

Snooker on Tuesday night, and I arrived to see a row of stone-face pinkies watching an unimportant televised match in the reception lounge. Seems the pinks, G14 members, were losing. So I went up to the bar and loudly ordered a bottle of champagne before going to the snooker table for a sound thrashing of my hapless opponent. Later, news filtered through that the pinkies lost to the Sausage-Eaters. I pressed the intercom button and loudly ordered a vat of champagne. The pinky barmaid barked, "Do you want servin' or wha'?" but I couldn't answer because I was doubled up laughing. Someone on table 5 said mildly, "They're always the same. Anyone who takes the piss out of them is 'bitter.' When they do it, it's 'just a bit of fun.' Fuckin' cretinous knob'eads." You couldn't argue with the conclusion, especially if you were gasping for breath between belly laughs. Odd people, pinkies, very odd. Well worth taking the piss out of, though. Far too many of them believe their own phony hype. But of course they aren't wound up tighter than a cat's arse over the People's Club nonsense, oh no sir, oh aye yeh.

The next night brought an important European Cup victory for the Mancs and got them into the semi to play the same Sauerkrauts who brushed aside the pinkies. Which must have been like rubbing sand paper on a first degree burn. Oh well. Send for a doctor if you can stop laughing. Or rubbing sand paper on a pinky.

Incredibly, the media had a collective aneurysm when Becks broke a small bone in his foot and possibly ruled himself out of the World Cup. It was made the lead item on all news broadcasts, even replacing the Palestine mayhem. It will of course be a very bad blow to our English hopes………… but THIS important? I think not. Footy is a game, nothing more. Make it more than that and you end up like…………………well, like too many pinkies fans, actually, full of self inflated shite.

Silly chauvinism aside, it is a genuine pity it isn't a Mancs-pinkies semi because it could only have benefited our English game. On the other hand I can't say any of us will miss the mad hysteria and evil that fixture generates. "Footy" of that kind isn't worth a carrot.

Come Thursday and Lincoln (erstwhile club partners) were in deep shit. Check out:

http://www.redimps.co.uk/today/view/breaking_news_detail/0,,10440~205463,00.html

ITV Digital/Suits/Tendency strike again. By this time ITV Digital had upped their initial offer of compensation from £10 million to £60 million for welching on the TV deal. Needless to say the crooked Suit bastards owe at least £180 million, while the Football League threaten to drag them into court for £500 million. I say fuck them over and don't stop until the whining twats squeal like stuck pigs. They owe our game Big Style. Never give a Suit or the Tendency the benefit of the doubt. Virtually all of them look and sound like that loony Oz Pauline Hanson at the wrong time of month.

[REALITY CHECK: Monday, the Appointed Pretzel Prez snarled, "I want Israel to withdraw and I want the Arab nations to condemn terrorist actions. AND I MEAN IT." So of course he was ignored for the nincompoop he is. People who are invaded (like, say, the Vietnamese or the Cubans or the Irish) are like that. They tend to defend themselves even when it looks hopeless. But you can't expect Baby Bush to understand, not with a brain the size of a garden pea. The Yank establishment does of course. They know exactly what is required…………which is why they will do the opposite, next to nothing. Or invade Iraq for non-existent possession of, yawn, "weapons of mass destruction." Meantime the price of oil goes up and the Texicans and their ilk rub their hands while Ariel Sharon and the suicide bombers do their respective worst. And the Chief Messenger boy was shipped in to deliver three syllable words plainly beyond the vocabulary of Baby Bush. No wonder the Yanks and Brits are despised by most Arabs.

On Wednesday we finally got a glimpse of the true intentions of the tories toward the NHS. Their shadow health minister DOCTOR Liam Fox was secretly taped addressing tory DOCTORS that they should lie to ensure break up of the NHS and its replacement by a privatised health system like the Yanks, thus demonstrating the Hippocratic Oath is worthless when it comes from a right wing rip-off mouth. Well, you can't say you weren't told. Now you know from their own mouths. Now you know why Nye Bevan, creator of the NHS, said he could not "…eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the tory party." So under the tories you can look forward to the edifying spectacle of a prone street casualty being searched for credit cards by an ambulance crew, or families forced to sell their homes to pay for hospital treatment. So much for the tories becoming a "socially aware party." Yeuk. They've always been economic thugs and they'll never change. Nye was absolutely right, and then some.]

Match day dawned gloriously bright and sunny again. For a moment you wondered if you were in the right country. It gets that way when you use airplanes too much. Later on it became overcast. If only we'd known the schizophrenic weather matched the spectacle we were about to see……………………

And so to Crofts Upstairs to meet the Kipper bhoys and some regular visitors to their estimable website. As usual I got plied with beer by Kipper himself, on a mission and in no mood to take prisoners. It helped anaesthesize me against the aesthetic horrors of Crofts. Keith arrived looking like he'd done some gym work with Lennox Lewis and an unlikely explanation that his bathroom floor had collapsed under an unstaunched deluge. Then The Editor showed up in a wonderfully impressive fancy dress not unadjacent to an A & E casualty. The place quickly filled up and bounced to the usual prematch noise, predictions and mad, vehement opinions. At times like this nobody ever listens to or believes anything anybody else has to say. The smokey hubbub is full of carefully thought-through variable volume arguments like:

"My arse!"

"KISS my fuckin' arse!"

"My nipper knows more about footy than you, yer arsewipe!"

"Gemmill couldn't get it on if he was fulla Viagra and Sandra Bullock lay there legs akimbo!"

More specifically, nobody gave Leicester a chance. My view that, "Er, I'd be careful about this one. I reckon a draw," was dismissed as loony pessimism. I had no real basis for the opinion, just a feeling in me water. It looked too easy. And a universal visceral dislike of Robbie Savage doesn't constitute a common sense appraisal. Then again, after a few beers nobody gave a flying shit about common sense. Nor did I, frankly.

Inside the ground we had to do some seat shuffling because Peter had his two daughters with him and, "They won the booby prize in school." You wouldn't think he was the kind of lad who verbally slaughtered pinkies at every available opportunity. Which means he can be forgiven everything. The girls looked bemused throughout, as well they might. Meantime it was hilarious watching Peter trying to control his language and physical reactions. Here's a guy who's normally up and down, out of his seat at the least excuse, hurling terrible oaths and expletives in all directions…………………………and he's sitting there more or less quietly, murmuring serious explanations of events to his two girls. Everyone else was well behaved too, which was even funnier. Nobody laughed during the first half though.

Team, Paul in for Simo as Moyesy hinted he might be, Beloved Lard Arse left midfield in place of Jesper. Two of Moyesy's early preferences made clear. Methinks Summer will bring MAJOR changes.

The first half was dreadful for us and gratifying for them. We wondered if New Manager Syndrome had worn off. There was no excuse. The display was every bit as bad as anything under Smiffy. We had two chances, one of which The Yin buried into their 'keeper's stomach, and the other a missed volley by The Rad when he had plenty of time. We all watched it glumly, same old crap by the same old players. Occasionally out at the dotted line Moyesy seemed to be staring in disbelief at the mess masquerading as a team effort.

It was all there, lousy, nay ABSENT, midfield play, giving the ball away, passing it to one of theirs, loose defence, unhappy goalkeeping, no threat whatever. You name the negative and we had it. We even started lamping high balls up to The Rad. As usual he ran his legs off without getting the kind of service we all know he needs. The Yin was invisible. At the back, Stevie was at his moribund worst, while Davey-Stubbsy kept leaving alarming holes all over the place. Only Sandro's ball control briefly illuminated the shadows. Leicester had hardly anything to beat and quite rightly took full advantage. They got two goals courtesy of our horror show and missed two other easy chances. Instead of being merely very embarrassing it could have been quite shameful. If Moyesy didn't get the message from it then gawd knows where we go from here.

Their first came after twenty minutes when Stubbsy gave the ball away in the centre circle and it got played untidily through their inside right channel and then to left side just outside the penalty area. Where loped a completely unmarked (Stevie? Who he?) Deane and all he had to do was loop it into unprotected Paul's top left corner. It reminded me a lot of SuperKev's goal against Leeds in the famous 4-4 draw.

After making one of their misses they deservedly got another ten minutes later. An innocuous knock-about on our right ended with the ball bouncing back to goal pursued by Stubbsy, Deane behind him, and Paul coming out, edge of the box. All Stubbsy had to do was boot it over the stands, which is what every sensible pro does in this kind of tight situation. You don't fuck about, you just cart it high wide and unhandsome out of harm's way. That's what even Roberto Carlos would do and he's brilliant. Instead, Paul did a carbon copy of his clown act when he knocked out the Smurf against Toon. He came rushing out and he and Stubbsy collided with each other and Deane knocked it in from an acute close-in angle. Which surely means Paul has REALLY blown it this time, even though it wasn't entirely his fault.

We got to half time more by accident than design. We could easily have leaked another one. The half time whistle went with scattered booing everywhere. The fans were right. Peter detached himself from the girls long enough to whisper, "If I had them bastards in there right now I'd be kicking their arses all the way to breakfast time and I'd be throwing cups at their fuckin' heads, never mind the walls." You couldn't disagree.

Surprisingly, no changes at half time. Maybe Moyesy was waiting to see how they reacted to what he had to say, or shout, to them. It was also his first true test of re-motivation. Fail this one and we might well be back at square one. But he didn't fail, for which we may be truly thankful.

The second half was a complete turnaround. It was as different as, say, a wonderful raconteur like Billy Connolly/David Niven is to an untalented one-liner complete arse-hole like Tarbuck. And all that happened was we looked like we WANTED to get it back. Leicester weren't in it from the re-start. The extra effort made all the difference. Leicester just aren't that good. A better team than us would have walloped them.

Moyesy persevered for a quarter of an hour before substituting Nick Chadwick for The Rad. Me, I'd have replaced The Yin for all the good he was doing. Before that, we managed to keep possession and thereby at last overrun the midfield areas. The pattern of play had changed decisively.

Within a minute the substitution paid off when a move down our left pulled their useless defence all over the place and left The Gravedigger clear. For once he kept his head and his concentration long enough to cross a superb ball to just outside the centre goal area and Nick got on the end of it to head down and in for the best goal of the game. It's going to be interesting to see what this means for Nick: In from the start, as I figure it should be, or a "super-sub"? At any rate it was game on and Leicester reeling.

Then Nick had two other chances. A close-in header was saved superbly by their 'keeper and a hard shot unluckily rebounded wide from the inside of the 'keeper's leg. It was all going on. We got corners left and right. Twenty minutes afterwards and SuperKev came on for Stevie. Now we had THREE men up front.

And three minutes later Moyesy's substitution did it again when we got level. Unsy took a free kick at about inside left, five metres in from the touchline, just beyond the centre circle. Incredibly it sailed right through the centre of their defence to the right edge of the goal area while they were watching SuperKev. On the end of it was The Yin and he jabbed a gentle left foot at it and it went in. Leicester's defending was as comical as ours had been in the first half, except this time we could afford to laugh.

So what happened to turn it around? Well, you tell me. The general playing standard wasn't THAT much better. I don't know whether it was coincidence or not that we scored immediately after our two substitutions. All you can ever say in footy is that it works or it doesn't. Everything else is hypothetical. Leicester weren't hard done by, any more than we were in the first half. With a bit of luck Nick could have had a hat trick. That's the way it goes.

Interesting too that we seem to be slightly fitter but that might be an illusion.

One thing of which you can be certain: Moyesy's arrival has resulted in goals all over the place. But what we need to ask ourselves is how it might play against, say, Arsenal with a championship within ninety minutes grasp. When we lost 1-0 to them at GP I wasn't at all impressed and said they wouldn't win the title if they continued to play the same way, reserves or not. Since then they've stepped up several gears. I foresee an Alamo, and roughly the same result.

But next week it's a long weekend in Sarfampton and a much needed win so's The Squire can grin distantly at his boss. Me, I figure another draw. Might as well say it now before I get pissed next week.

Team News

Everton from : Simonsen, Watson, Weir, Stubbs, Pistone, Alexandersson, Gemmill, Unsworth, Blomqvist, Radzinski, Ferguson, Gravesen, Gerrard, Linderoth, Ginola, Chadwick, Cleland, Clarke, Pembridge, Moore, Campbell.

David Moyes is thinking of giving Daveed Ginola a runout. He will be checking his fitness and could be on the bench. David said:“David has had a rest for a few days and we hope that will help solve the problem.We will assess him in training and we will probably know more about his fitness in the next 24 hours.”

Moyesey also suggested that Rhino will be back after missing last weeks game with a neck problem. He said:: “He has felt more positive about it as the week has gone on and it looks as though he will be able to train today and he should put himself back into consideration.”

But Pembo is won't be considered. Moysey said:“Mark wants to make sure he is right. He doesn’t want come back and break down again and with a b it of luck we may get a chance to see him come the end of the season.” (12/04/02)

There is plenty of stuff to get your teeth into for this weeks game against Leicester. The most intriguing, will Mr.Magoo be back? David Moyes gave Simmo a bit of stick after the Chelsea game, so everyone starts thinking he will drop Simmo? We don't think so.

Super Kev is a defo non starter. David had this to say:"Kevin had a slight setback. He had been doing fine but he's had a little bit of aggravation in his hamstring.
"He's desperate to get back to full training and is showing a great attitude to getting fit again.
"We're hoping he will make it before the end of the season but we won't be taking any risks."

Jesper has got an Achilles' problem and could be missing, while Saint Nic is expected to recover from swollen glands.

Last but least Pembo. After his wonder strike for the reserves, he may be expecting to play some part in Saturdays game. Yer never know.(10/04/02)