Man Utd. 4 v 1 Everton                            Sat. 8th Aug 2001

Att: 67,534

Report from last season's game

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

Subs: Moore for Weir (65m), Tal for Stubbs (75m), Xavier for Alexandersson (65m). Chadwick, Simonsen.

Scorer: Campbell

Bookings: Weir

No Gazza as we thought. He wasn't even on the bench, but looking at the United bench with Beckham, Giggs, & Van Nistelrooy on it we thought if we are positive we might have a chance here. The wind was howling around the ground making the ball hard to control, but the fans warmed the Everton players up with great vocal support. -' Rhino, Rhino.' - 'Alan Stubbs is an Evertonian' 'Duncan, Duncan Ferguson'. 'Super Kevin Campbell'.

The game started well for Everton, with Steve Watson crossing from the right for Alexandersson to flick on to Campbell, who allowed the ball to run away from him, & Utd cleared. Again, Everton did well again with Ferguson heading for Campbell to shoot, but it was blocked, & went away for a corner. From Pembridge's corner the ball went right through everyone & scrapped the post. The ball was moved with great speed by Keane to Yorke, who shot, & Gerrard palmed the ball over. A typical Utd break. Everton had no answer to it.

The game was certainly end to end, & Ferguson had a goalward shot blocked by Brown. Veron was beginning to show his skill, & with Keane, Utd were starting to boss the game. Gemmill, who was fighting for the ball was on his own, with Pembridge, who is out of his depth, & looked totally outclassed. Firstly Fortune hit the post, & then Gerrard saved a Veron volley. The signs looked ominous for Everton, as Utd took complete control.

Everton players just had no answer to Veron & Keane, who exchanged passes, with Veron scoring. Everton were struggling to stay with Utd. & Weir was booked for blocking Cole. This was a correct decision, but what pisses people off is when a tackle from behind by Blanc on Ferguson goes unpunished.

Everton broke out of the stranglehold, to put about 10 passes together. It ended with Ferguson heading wide. Then Campbell had a great chance to score, but instead of shooting instantly, he wanted a few touches & the ball got stuck under his plates of meat, & was cleared.

Unsworth & Pistone, who by the way is a liability, showed how not to defend. From a throw in, Unsworth, who was out of position, allowed a ball to go over his head. Chadwick, brushed past Stubbs, crossed for Cole to score, as Pistone stood like a statue.

Half - Time: United 2 Everton 0

The second half started with the game over after 20 seconds. The ball was crossed towards Cole. How can he beat Davie Weir in the air, but he did & Fortune scored . 3-0. Game over. Utd then just took the piss & knocked the ball around without breaking into a sweat. Cole could have scored, but his volley went over. The only attack we had in the first 20 minutes of the second half was when Alexandersson, crossed to the far post, Bartez flapped at it, but Dunc & Kev were nowhere to be seen.

Alexandersson & Weir went off to be replaced by Xavier & Moore. I only hope they are not injured, and are just tired after their exploits in the World Cup during the week. They looked shagged when they left the pitch.

Captain Campbell scored a consolation goal after, Gemmill beat the offside trap, drew Bartez, & passed to Super to score off the post. Everton then produced 4 great chances to score, but didn't take any of them. Ferguson went wide, Joe Max's shot was blocked, Campbell again tried to side foot an effort home, but it was blocked. If he would have given it a good dig it would have beaten the defender. Then Big Dunc left Bartez scrambling, but his effort hit the post.

In the last minute , Beckham came off the bench to score from 25yards. Gerrard, who had kept the score down, & saved some goalbound shots, should have done better. Everton were totally outclassed today.. Stubbs & Gemmill, my Star Man, were the only two players to come out of the game with any credit. Pistone & Pembridge should never play for Everton again, but I will be cheering them on next Saturday when we beat the shite. Don't forget to join in 'Going down' at the end of the match. COME ON YOU BLUES!

Fan's at Old Trafford

Walter Says: "I don't think we deserved much better than that. Manchester United were the better team right from the start of the game. I'm disappointed with the way we lost the goals and we gave them away rather easily from our point of view. Before the game from the critics in the media there was a wee question mark against Manchester United, but they will still be the team who they all have to beat as far as I'm concerned."

So that's the summer gone, then. All that wonderful sunshine replaced with your standard north European early autumn. Time to hibernate, people, and don't start whining about the accompanying low temperatures and merciless drizzle. It goes with the territory. It is way beyond my simple understanding why the English are the only people in the entire world who are surprised that autumn and winter bring cold and rain. It is amazing to see them walk around in short sleeves even in autumn weather. But for all that.

Wasn't THAT an exciting couple of weeks "away" from The Beautiful Game!? As if. It permeates every last haven. Still, we have not yet reached the point of dulled irises and ringing in the ears. No that comes later, usually around November-December, when the hype reaches a peak of manic absurdity. By then the media have got into full hysterical swing in the mad scramble of Overpaid Jobs For The Untalented Boys and Girls. Worse, they'll be into "analysing" each other's performance and asking really useful questions like, "Why doesn't Gabby Yorath have a number done on her beak?" all the time SHOUTING AT THE CAMERA or thinking up the kind of headlines your ten years old nipper could conjure in six seconds flat.

Is it a whole two weeks since the match against Boro sent us top of the league? It might not have been a memorable match but we all recall the half time Brazilian girls doing their thang, or thong if you prefer. One dazzling girly turned and faced the Park End, legs akimbo, and bent backwards until her head touched the Holy Ground. It was enough to capsize the entire front twenty rows. Everywhere radiated hetero heat. Anyone of the gay persuasion must have been incinerated. By the time the hips sashayed and samba'd down to the Street End the eye goggling was replaced by the sort of verbals which could remove polish from your grandma's credenza in Woolton. And those glorious mulatto girls, tawny skin to die for, loved every single second of it. As their hour-glass shapes faded sinuously into Bullens Road an old man stared after them fondly. "That," he said with quiet satisfaction, "did me fuckn 'ead in." So did the dizzy experience of topping the league.

At the opposite end of the scale was the first successful Quiz Night at the Legends Bar at GP, won gloriously by the Wakefield Blues, bastards. It was also memorable for one of the great fans' match stories recounted by Stevie. This happened in the Park End too. It seems Beloved Lard Arse came on as a substitute in some match or other and as usual he was greeted by the kind of noises you associate with Knowsley Safari Park. He divides opinion as sharply as a civil war. Those in favour were heavily engaged in shouts of, "C'mon Rhino la!" while the others sounded like they had a concrete mixer in their throat. A young lad asked timorously, "Why is he called Rhino, dad?" Well, dad wasn't going to pass up this opportunity for revenge on fate was he. "That," he said savagely, "is because he's gorranarse like yer ma's." My imagination conjured scenes of conjugal bliss. I bet he loves her really.

Nice that England crushed the Krauts while we are at or near the top of the league, and then do in the Albinos too, Blue Bellies scoring most of the goals as usual. My, but didn't Ingerland do ever so well after all the jeremiahs had their usual pre-match whimper and then ended up with inglorious egg all over their faces yet again. Hilarious. You know you could get to love this game if you didn't already love it.

But that 5-1 against the Jerries was quite special. Funny, you found yourself on your feet cheering wildly while all the time thinking, "'Ere! 'Ang on! This makes our next three games look decidedly bleak!" So what? Much more of this and people might actually start to enjoy the game for the wonderful spectacle it can be. Especially when you win. Of course therein lies our problem for the last five years. See, this analysis business is a piece of cake.

Then there was the Danny Cadamarteri case, the one in which he was found guilty of belting a young woman in Hardman Street. Unfortunate juxtaposition of words there. It can't have helped with the judgement. Pity he can't strike so accurately when he is playing for us. She was a Generation Xer named Joeline Joel. Obviously mummy and daddy were fervent Dolly Parton fans. How else to explain the phonetics? Actually, said Joeline resembled a disreputable female Louisiana riverboat gambler in Dollywood. I choose my words carefully. Danny would have been well advised to think before he moved. But every Blue Belly knows that is out of the question.

Having viewed too many Xers at close quarters throughout the country all I can say is that most of them, honourable exceptions apart, ought to be jovially shoveled into the Mersey every Saturday night during a rip tide so they can cling to each other for dear life. Might put some civility, reasonable conversation and good humour into them. I have been unable to identify any of these qualities in their mass inebriation. This is especially true when you overhear one saying, "Look, you've gotta enjoy yourself while you're young!" before depositing multi-coloured innards all over adjoining surfaces, then weaving dangerously into a cubicle to administer the latest fuck-yourself-up dose of poison powder.

Might even help them with what passes for their dress sense. we've all seen it, the shirt-outside-the-pants look which resembles cheap walk-on extras in trashy thuggish muck like "The Sopranos." Still, what to expect when they have been so disgracefully abandoned and dumbed down by a lousy government and a corrupt system? The real casualty is of course the pure breath of idealism. The replacement, TV soaps and quiz shows, somehow lacks credibility at the philosophical level. If only the exceptional ones could make themselves heard over the mind-numbing cacophony spewing out of every sound system everywhere. No wonder Cada belted that judy. - anything which helps relieve the bore of noisy bedlam. The wonder was she wasn't politically correct and belt him right back. Most Blue Bellies often feel like belting Danny good and hard. One more impression of a pantomime dame and he's got it coming.

In the past some of our most outstanding writers sometimes got the idealism right, somebody like the late Kingsley Amis when he said wickedly, "If you can't annoy somebody with what you write, I think there's little point in writing." Even with elision this was perhaps more urbane than Humphrey Bogart when he defined The Art of Needling as, "the ability to get somebody to the point where they want to punch you. But to be sitting down when you do it." Both brilliant in a long gone age, but not now when too many kids equate themselves with Gordon Gecko or some other pin-striped moron.

Bogey in particular had a realistic balance. So what do you expect from a man who secured his future with a FY Fund, had a middle name of DeForest and named his ex-wife Sluggy on account of her reaction to his disgraceful affairs with younger women? (You wonder briefly if Joeline was any relation). Quite rightly, no misogyny or the humiliation of whores for Bogey. He loved life and women too much and did not give up either too readily. Must have been a Blue Belly through and through. No coincidence either he was one of the few Hollywood greats to tell that ol' nazi Joe McCarthy what a shithead he was. What a centre midfield Amis-Bogart would have made, Lucky Jim meets Rick's Café.

Which narcissistic but enjoyable ramble brings us, neatly or otherwise, to Jaap Stam and Manchester United.

The Mancs arrived at this fixture in what was for them a state of turmoil, players in, players gone, dropped, injured or "rested." We should be so lucky. In particular the giant cheesehead Stam had done a book number on Alex Ferguson and co. and told the truth in his recent tome. And that is, as we all know, that all managers directly or indirectly tap up potential transfer targets before going through the motions of signing them, Fergy included. 'Twas ever thus. Given the amount of money flying around these days they almost certainly all take their own cut too. So Stam lasted as long as a match flame in a force 8 gale. Phhhht. And scarcely a wisp of smoke.

Of course the media never really get into this because it would puncture the very illusion they help create so often. They have no concern other than how to make their next fast buck off the back of our game, which is to say us. When somebody like the ingenue cheesehead comes along and undercuts all their mealy mouthed tripe he gets unpersoned with little or no consideration of the main issue. Which, in case you have missed the point, is the growing amount of corruption in footy.

Our "journalists" only do their real job every now and every then when they are told to do it on a personality or two, e.g. Bunger or Cloughy. This is called "controversy" and is forgotten as quickly as it takes to do the same thing to the next target, somebody "really" important in, say, some famous-for-fifteen-minutes over-amplified yowling mediocre rock band or "East Enders/Brookside/Coronation Street" or some other incongruously easy mark. Media shithouses are ready to throw the odd pebble into the pond but scarcely ever have the courage to drain it and clear it of detritus. Too much like hard work requiring a set of morals and a certain amount of courage.

This is why they have bought-and-paid-for slobs inside most big clubs: A few corrupt thousand here, a few corrupt thousand there, and they have their next pebble. Watch out for any major club likely to have a raucous players' Crimbo party this year. Guaranteed some pimply little shitehound will sell the photographs to The Sun or the News of The World. It is a safe bet he wears his shirt outside his pants too. All of this has a neat if disgusting symmetry.

Good and bad journalism is much like the difference between a gifted comic raconteur and a rouge nosed one-liner in your local social club or at miserymoan.com. No contest. One-liners are instantly forgettable small change jeers, enema for the flotsam and jetsam of TV soaps or sitcoms or pubtalk, usually delivered by simians to bored mass audiences in temporary absentia from their best instincts. My kids and yours can (and do) do better in observing the absurdities of life. They are young enough to know the truth. So there are light years between brilliant natural observers like Billy Connally or Richard Prior and brainless half-wits like, for instance, establishment arse kissers Davidson, Tarbuck or Barrymore.

But I digress yet again.

So what does Ferguson do on the Stam thing? Well, what would YOU do, given the organisational nature of the modern game? The only thing a contemporary manager CAN do: He gets shut as soon as possible, virtually whatever the consequences. And then lies about it, straightfaced. Give the media nothing except He Was Eating Ze Grass, oh aye yeh. There is no time for niceties or subtlety. Stam found himself in Rome almost before he could say arriverderci; the motto being, you are entitled to your free speech as much as I am but I have been here longer than you and my responsibility is measurably greater and you threaten it. I would not be in the least surprised either to hear Stam has a Golden Gag which will not get paid if he opens his mouth and spills yet more beans. So the cheesehead was offski, pronto.

There can be only one manager at any club. Pull out the offending plant root and branch before the fungus spreads. Nobody likes doing it of course, not even the manager, very messy and unpleasant, but anyone who has experienced the necessary loneliness of command will recognise the requirement. There is no time for a vote when bullets are going crack! around your head. By their very nature ego-driven pro sportsmen and women are more vulnerable to caprice. It is very much worse now that money really has become the be-all and end-all. Nevertheless, the management principle remains the same in all sports. Like the wheel, it only changes when worn out.

(Smiffy of course did much the same thing with our infamous quartet of off-field self obsessed arseholes. In his case though he was in a much weaker position because we are stoney-broke, arse hanging out of our kecks, and will be until we move into our new stadium at Kings Dock. He had to "negotiate." Had we been John Moores rich he probably would not even have given it a second thought. My way or the highway. No regrets, keep your eyes on the horizon and pay someone to watch your back. Guess who was on the road as soon as their fares got paid. And guess which one has gone on the road again from Sunderland after barely a year there, after some of our own "fans" were attacking Smiffy for not giving in to the original nonsense? And guess which other one might be on his way TO the Stadium of Light, also barely a year after leaving GP? My, but that Reidy and Fergy must be completely unreasonable, or have something personal against their players, or be thoroughly unprofessional, or have a board of directors who don't know what they are doing. Makes sense doesn't it? Well, doesn't it? Answers on a postcard to Richard Head, c/o Planet Zog.)

Remember the players as they were, then write them off. It is a logical conclusion to the present state of affairs. This unfortunate modern truism has yet to breach the sentimental romanticism of most footy fans. A good thing in one way, but sad it is the powerless fans who are the last depository of the better aspects. If only they knew how much power they could wield to help get the balance right.

So The Bus got to The Old Pump House, Salford Quays, and weighed our match prospects. As usual opinions varied as much as the personalities therein, some way out on the edge and grinning, some deathly pessimistic, most of us fluctuating wildly between the two. But the point is they were there and paying for it in more ways than one. To use an old militarism, you shouldn't join up if you can't take a joke. The last time I heard that, a squaddy was staring at the remnants of his arm. Some of The Bus felt much the same. We examined our arms fondly in case they were missing at the final whistle. Me too, even though I had a really good feeling about the game, at least a draw, possibly a win. You can never really tell.

Much of it sounded similar to the staff lunch confrontation between Keating and the sardonic Scot in "Dead Poets Society." Wherein said Jock, defeated by a comatose dead end life and a stomach the size of your living room, tries miserably to scatter Keating's exuberant free-thinking with a whine of, "Show me a heart unfettered by foolish dreams and I'll show you a happy man." To which a victorious smiling Keating instantly counters, "But 'tis only in dreams that man is truly free……'twas always thus, and always thus will be." Nice one, Keating la, stick it to him good style. There's only one way to treat misery: Trample all over it.

Few defects are worse than one man's bilious envy of another's freedom or talent. So-called pragmatists, unimaginative and destructive to the end, like septic-brained puritans and other unhappy disparates, have long suspected correctly that somebody, somewhere, is enjoying themselves with independent thoughts of what could be. And, given reasonable opportunity, WILL be. Frank Lloyd Wright called this "…the deadly sin of having ideas." Voltaire's smile of reason is in there somewhere too. Me, I am on Keating's, Wright's and Voltaire's side. In the end, so was the Jock. So are most of our fans, judging by our incredibly sustained season ticket sales and away following. Mostly good company, mostly good people, if sorely tried by the times. O captain, my captain.

We considered match tactics. Won't be much change there, then. When you are up to your arse in crocodiles it is difficult to remember your original objective was to drain the swamp. So said my Korean taekwondo master a long time ago as he demonstrated the finer points of the art of self defence and left aching bodies on all sides of the dojang, mine included. Ah so, grasshopper, nobody fools around in taekwondo. Relax and be invincibly confident, relaxed, strong and quick in all things. He was sharp and slim as a sketch pencil and deadly as a grenade in a concrete bunker. If only we had him too in the minefield of midfield. But we haven't. So, as usual, it was bound to be long balls lobbed up to The Big Yin and SuperKev.

The pub reverberated to the sound of two thirds capacity Bellies. The final third was in red shirts all the way from Essex and district. You can safely assume the Bellies songs won by some considerable distance, including some new ones calculated to bruise a few opposition egos. It was raucous and marvellous once you threw yourself into it.

Initially we sat out in the sunshine on the terrace, the canal bridge overlooking us. Rob spotted Kyle about to cross the bridge and shouted, "Ey! Be careful fat arse….there's a weight limit on the bridge!" Is there any more wonderful sound than a few thousand laughing humans?

So we got to the ground in high good spirits and full of mad optimism and songs.

Once in I assessed the place again, though little has changed therein. There is no question there is an odd feel about a match at Old Trafford these days. It isn't so much a matter of so-called atmosphere, more that it hardly feels like a sports occasion, more like a working production line for tractors. After all, chauvinist sillies apart, their fans are no better or worse than anyone elses. Anyone who knew this ground before it was redeveloped will remember it fondly as a great place to go. It isn't like that now - and I am not referring to our recent abysmal playing record there. The place lacks spontaneity and human warmth. Everything is scripted to an almost depressing level. Even a dramatic low level flyover by the Red Arrows felt, well, predictable. Pity, a great pity. We all lose out when corporate machinery is allowed into our lives. Whatever is wrong, you can't quite put your fist on it hard enough.

We looked at the teams: Ours as expected, theirs with Beckham, Van Nistelrooy and Giggs on the bench and including new signings defender Blanc and midfielder Veron. Well, it's eleven against eleven and anything can happen can't it? The Big Yin and SuperKev are gonna give it to that big Frog aren't they, just as Slaven did in the World Cup? Er, that's it. That's the game plan. Smart huh?

Wrong.

We got battered and were never in it at any stage.

You get the feeling that Smiffy will never beat his old friend Fergy, not even when the latter does him yet another good turn and leaves some of his best players on the bench. Well, he's only going to get one more chance after this. Wake up, Smiffy. Life is passing you by. You can still be daring instead of stoic.

Two down at half time, a third came seconds after half time and their fourth almost at the final whistle. Our goal came half way between their third and fourth. Strangely, all of the goals had an unsatisfactory quality about them. But the fact is we were outclassed all over the field. We could not string more than three passes together except for a brief spell after we scored and might have got another. It wasn't altogether unexpected but we were disappointed nevertheless.

As usual it all stemmed from midfield where Gemmo-Pembo were easily roasted by Keane-Veron.

Just as nobody with an ounce of creativity in them would mistake a computer programmer for anything other than an information processing clerk with a keyboard, anymore than you would mistake animals in a zoo or a locked shed for free living creatures, none of us could possibly mistake our midfield for anything other than willing journeymen. But they gave their best. Nobody could ask for more. They just weren't in the same league despite engaging the fight. No point moaning about it. We have not had class players in midfield for many years and there's no sign we're going to acquire them any time soon. Attacking the incumbents is therefore a waste of time.

With the midfield lost there was no service at all to The Terrible Two and our defence was under incessant pressure. No secret to this formula is there? As I said, we can moan about the goals but there was an inevitability about them all. Veron might well have handled the first, the Cole's second was scrambled, Stubbsy-Weir went to sleep for Fortune's third and Gemmo gave the ball directly to Beckham for the fourth. So what? Probably all it means is that Beckham and Van Nistelroy would have been off the bench earlier.

As it was, Paul had to be in his best shot-stopping form or the score might have been enough to embarrass. One diving save from a Veron volley was absolutely magnificent.

Our goal came when Gemmo sprung their offside trap down the left and crossed for SuperKev to prod it in off the post. A few minutes later we hit the same post but it came out. On such things do matches turn. A goal then might have made it REALLY interesting. But we wouldn't have deserved it even though we had ten minutes of real pressure on their goal.

No point having a go at The Yin and SuperKev either. You can't do anything if the ball isn't played to you. Both were mostly anonymous, so the Yin-Blanc contest didn't happen. Amazing, though, how some dickheads react to this kind of pasting. One of them behind me did the inevitable when Kev did what all seasoned pros do, that is never go for a ball you know you can't get, and let a ball go when it was at least five metres ahead of him. The dickhead shouted that he was "lazy," today's code-word for "nigger." Which brought me out of my seat in a flash to round on him furiously and demand how he was supposed to get a ball THAT far in front of him. The culprit stayed quiet. All racists are cowards deep down.

In their midfield, Roy Keane reminds me of those sour, recently divorced men you find everywhere these days, full of teary alcohol, all too ready to tell you how bad women are because they ripped off alimony in a court settlement. Not unusually these guys hate themselves as well as everyone else, but particularly any girl who has the temerity to look and feel good about herself. They will turn on anybody or anything near them to protect their own selfishness. Roy does that a lot, turn on people. Kicks them too. You wonder if he is the same off the field before booing loud and long. Not that Keane could give a hoot about being booed, if you see what I mean. Alternatively he got this way because at birth the doc dangled him by the ankles, smacked him right in the mouth and STILL figured he had the right end. You get the picture. He is still a great midfield player. Dirty of course, but still great.

Veron? Hmmmmm. This is one footy fan who is not yet convinced. Let's see how he lasts the winter or when he comes up against somebody more potent than Gemmo-Pembo. Things will be a lot easier for him with Keane alongside, one of the reasons they appear to have so much time on the ball. Mutual support is what finally moulds all great teams. And currently United are indeed a great team. Only a fool would deny it.

So where does this leave us? About the same actually. We all know our playing limitations and the reasons for them. Freedom from last season's awful injury list should mean we end up at midtable. Anything higher will be a minor miracle and much welcomed, but hardly seems likely. An air of reality is required and I am pleased to say most of our fans are realists, hate-filled miserymongers and loonies excluded.

Interestingly, Stubbsy-Weir got substituted within ten minutes of each other midway through the second half. You might be forgiven for thinking this was an act of playing suicide. Not a bit of it. Abel and Idan came on and didn't do too badly at all, relatively speaking, also allowing for the fact that the game was over as a contest by then. This fan will always welcome Abel's passing ability, preferably wide right midfield. In the right circumstances Idan's buggeration factor is a bonus too, though it has to be said the sight of him up against Keane and co was a bit like a rabid moth butting a gorilla.

We filed back onto The Bus disappointed but not at all downbeat. After all we are veterans now. I turned round and asked Mogsy, "Well, what did you think?" He paused for a minute and then said, "Shit happens," and grinned. The Bus still went home singing. It always does.

I thought of next week and smiled too. It helps enormously. Especially when you are on "Candid Camera." Arse. Crocodiles. Swamp.