Everton 1 v 3 Newcastle                                               Sat 27th Oct 2001

K.O. 3.00pm.                                                                   Report from last season's game

Everton: Gerrard, Pistone, Weir, Xavier, Unsworth, Alexandersson, Gemmill, Gravesen, Naysmith, Campbell, Radzinski .

Bench: Simonsen, Hibbert, Gascoigne, Stubbs, Ferguson.

Subs: Stubbs for Xavier (18m), Ferguson for Campbell (68m), Gascoigne for Unsworth (82m)

I thought it would be a shit result today. So it was. It started when I stood in dog shit on the way to the game. Then there was Gary 'shithouse' Speed, & then there was Gerrard, who was unbelievably shit.

Unsworth and Gemmill replaced the injured Watson and Pembridge. Walter stuck to the 4 4 2 formation, moving Pistone over to right back and Unsworth taking the left back position. Everton started brightly enough, with Tommy Gravesen continuing in his recent great form. He also had the first shot of the game with a 20 yard piledriver. This was tipped over the bar by Given, the Newcastle goalkeeper. Tommy took the corner, but only after showing his legendary fist to the Gwladys street.
Two minutes later, the Grav again produced a fingertip save from Given, and resulting in yet again another corner, unfortunately nothing came of this.

It was all Everton in the opening minutes, the only chance Newcastle had was when Gerrard dallied with a back pass, enabling Bellamy to charge down his eventual clearance, but luckily it sailed over the bar. After good work from Super Kev, Gravey broke through the middle of the Newcastle defence and set up Niclas Alexandersson, who should have scored but screwed his shot wide of the post. After 18 minutes Newcastle took the lead, when Gerrard mistaking Xavier for a pint of Guinness, tried to take the head off him. Both players ended up spread eagled on the floor at the edge of the box,whilst Bellamy was left with an open goal. He wrote a letter to his ma, got the reply and then scored.

Alan Stubbs, who is an Evertonian, replaced Abel who was stretchered off. Even after this set back Everton still dominated proceedings. Pistone, who was being booed by the Geordie fans every time he touched the ball started a move that involved Gemmill and Campbell and was finished by Radzinski, who's shot was pushed out for a corner. Move Everton pressure resulted in a freekick, Unsworth's shot was deflected over for yet another corner. Everton should have made it 1 - 1 when Gemmill split open the Newcastle defence and the Rad went through unchallenged, but his shot was cleared by the goalies legs.

Acuna was booked for bringing Tommy down from behind, and the resulting freekick was moved forward another 10 yards for him arguing about it. He was obviously wound up and he should have walked after he fouled Stubbs a minute later, but referee Winter bottled it. Everton continued to pound the Newcastle goal with 3 corners in succession, but couldn't score. Newcastle then had there first real chance, when Gary 'shithouse' Speed headed over the bar.

Half Time 0 - 1

Everton were stunned in the 48 th minute when Shearer crossed for Salano to head home making it 2 - 0 for Newcastle. Minutes later Davy Weir rose like a Salmon to head home Nic's corner to make it 2 - 1. Again Everton pounded away at the Newcastle goal and the pressure brought another 3 consecutive corners. Super Kev and Dabizas clashed and both received treatment, Campbell tried to continue but was replaced in the 68th minute by Big Dunc. He was immediately into the action, played a one two with Radzinski, but his right footed shot was brilliantly tipped over by Given, but Dunc should have scored.

Walter brought on Gazza for Unsy in the 80th minute, but still we couldn't score. And with only minutes to go Acuna made it 3 - 1, to give 3 points to the Toon. It's funny saying this when your team gets beaten 3 -1 but Everton played very well. There was some good performances by the Everton team, notably Alexandersson, Weir, Gavesen and Gemmill, but the star man was Sandro Pistone, who now seems to have settled into the fullback role, and is obviously enjoying the 4 -4 - 2 formation.

Walter says: "When you are searching for a bit of consistency that is the factor that is most annoying," he said. "What is pleasing is that we did play well, but obviously disappointed that we could have been in the top six of the league. We have got to hope it doesn't affect us to badly. I am sure it won't because the players themselves are disappointed and also aware that they did have the best of the game."

Lard: "What the fuck was he trying to do?"

Sting Ray: "When yer come out like that, you take their man & ball, but not our man & no ball."

Inspector Knacker of the north east back yard
by
Mickey Blue Eyes.

Midweek, Radio Five Live came up with yet another beaut. A vet was worried about the rate at which cats are breeding. It seems we are over-run with the nasty creatures. They now litter at six months instead of eight or nine, or whatever. Beats me why some people want to keep free animals locked up anyway but each to his/her own. So this vet was adamant something had to be done before we are submerged in too much pussy. Okay, okay, stop sniggering at the back. The vet surpassed himself with this observation: "We have to be one jump ahead." Honestly I couldn't tell if he was joking. I was too busy gnawing wildly at my knuckles.

But I like what the Beeb are trying to do with Radio Five, a seemingly casual mix of sports chat and news. It keeps sport in perspective and in its place by and large. Couldn't be otherwise when you get an interview with Smiffy one minute and then a despatch from Afghanistan the next. Of course gunboat war propaganda is manipulated to suit the establishment but every now and then the sheer weight of coverage can't avoid a startling slip of truth or two. Fortunately we still have, even now, some people not afraid to speak up against the unspeakable. This will be uncomfortable for gobshites like the government mouthpieces who last week said those who were outraged by the bombing of innocent civilians were "emotional" and that "war was not a matter of conscience." Oh? Why was it important to defeat the nazis then? Or to defeat apartheid? Place this alongside chat of who scored for whom last night and you get encouraged that we aren't at the "Rollerball" stage of society. Yet.

Hilarious media news of the week was the relocation of The Premiership TV programme to the same Saturday night spot as the Beeb had it. I love it when the corporate Suits get rodded by Joe Public. You can't trust anybody who wears dickhead bowties and red braces. Fact is, the fans just didn't watch it at the new time. So much for Des Lynam and his reason for moving to ITV……for, what was it now?……oh yes……"the challenge," like Barmby. Eat crow, Des. You got bought. But we knew that anyway.

Meantime, ITV Digital/Sport look like they might well sell out to, guess who? Yes, the Dirty Digger himself, Rupe the conman. So here you see the clear benefits of all that competition. It is, well swipe me stone cold dead in the market, erm, MONOPOLY OF POWER. Nice one, system, as usual. My flabber is not gasted. All it costs you is an exorbitant monthly rip-off subscription to keep Rupe in Suits and ad revenue, the latter of which I am delighted to note is falling as rapidly as an Antarctic thermometer. You won't find me paying it though. Rupe and his employees can go get stuffed. I prefer the real thing.

See, that's the beauty of the internet. No vested interest in news events or management thereof. You write and say what you want and the mainstream media doesn't matter more than a studio or editorial room full of bullshit. If you don't like it, you say so. And then you don't bother with it again. If I want to know how another club is doing I visit their fans' various websites. Deep down somewhere among the calm and wild voices you get a real feel for the way things are. Mainstream media is more and more irrelevant because increasingly they cannot exist without fans' input. And bit by bit the fans are becoming more articulate in their views. A few more years down the road and it might lead to genuine consciousness of what they can actually do to affect the way the game is run. The sooner the better.

The onset of Autumn and the looming Winter had me fitful all week. I couldn't even catch a cold properly, getting no further than a few sneezes and occasionally blurry eyes. Maybe it was the thought of playing Newcastle, not the most attractive of current opponents. They're an odd job assortment of foreign names you have never heard of.

Whenever we play a north east team few of us can avoid unpleasant memories of their incumbent police force during matches up there way beyond the reach of English civilisation. Every other set of fans you swap opinions with has basically the same opinion of them: An ugly band of black-uniformed brutes with the wrong idea of their position in society. Every time anyone goes to a match there they get the same treatment. Buses and cars are stopped and searched for anything to give them an excuse gleefully to turn the "offenders" back. Leaving aside the fact that hardly any other police force finds it necessary to act, look and sound like the Waffen SchutzStaffelln on heat on match days, their behaviour is an obscenity in a supposedly open society.

Might be interesting to take them to the European Court (increasingly the only place we can get a reasonable hearing since our own courts are run by bewigged and begowned Old School Farts who hate everyone outside their masonic rituals) and array them in the witness box as poor imitations of the occupants of the monkey house in Chester Zoo. Odds on their leadership is a group of No Neck No Mark Buffoons who use the word "civvies" a lot to describe anybody not wearing body armour or not bearing a club or handcuffs. Why the average Skunk/Mackem/Smoggy bobby doesn't stand up to them is a mystery lost at Lindisfarne. Still, it's their loss. Everyone feels the moment you cross into the north east is like entering Bavaria in 1937. By which time it is almost too late for genuine locals to swap untainted views. Sad, very sad. The Venerable Bede must be rolling in his grave.

All of which is a large pity. Like many other fans I have some very warm memories of the north east fans and their footy. It used to be one of my favourite venues. I will be glad to feel the same way as soon as they rid themselves of their hateful neanderthal policing.

The Geordies have produced some great players. Jackie Milburn was one. What a tragedy the Geordies have also produced another Milburn, the one currently involved in selling off your NHS to the Suits for a song. No surprise, then, when a standard ranting righty from a standard ranting righty "think tank" (read: gang of rationalised thieves) says the NHS is, and I kid you not, communist in the old East European meaning of the word. You'd burst out laughing if it wasn't for the fact that your kids are headed for the edifying spectacle of an ambulance crew searching a prone street casualty for credit cards a la the despised US system. It won't be too long delayed now, not when they deliberately starve your NHS of adequate funding and medical staff and lead a propaganda attack on the resulting problems. Mind you, I don't see why you should be surprised……these are the same kind of people who allowed hundreds to be killed on a similar system in the railways and ferries industries and then demanded they get paid for it. Me, I'd pay them alright, in the death certificates they ignored for the sake of profits. The second Milburn meanwhile predictably claimed Nye Bevan got it all wrong when he formed the NHS. Well, he would wouldn't he. Pygmies always criticise giants on the basis of their own diminutive stature. It must be difficult down there at ankle height. Jackie Milburn too must be rolling in his grave.

Match eve I spent in the company of someone usually in a position to know about things like our proposed Kings Dock stadium. I was told the club will make an important statement on Tuesday and it might piss us all off. Oh dear. You heard it here first. Which is a good deal better than hearing it from the miserymoan crew. Doubtless they'll line up anyway to take full whining advantage of whatever it is we might hear. I hope the bearer of these tidings was being less than his usual deadly serious self. There was a lot of alcohol floating around, enough to make me hope maybe it was just routine pisstaking. Fingers and legs crossed.

Match day was glorious from the moment the sun came up. Clear, bright blue skies fringed with clouds north and south. High vapour trails crisscrossed on the busy Atlantic routes, important navigational turns made high over the Mersey, thus emphasising how important our location once was on the globe.

I should have known what lay in store because I changed my match day routine for the first time in many eons. No Black Horse. First, a visit to the new Wetherspoons in County Road to meet The Editor. Second, a visit to Crofts on City Road to meet with a small platoon from The Bus. I can recommend the former, spotless clean, sensible beer prices and reasonable food at equally reasonable prices. Crofts is, er, an acquired taste and much dependant on how your tolerance level is running. Actually what I mean to say is that it is dog-rough and sells Carlsberg. The only thing which kept me there was said platoon. Fred and the Birmingham crew made background noises even amidst the general hubbub and the surging horde of kids playing footy with a plastic bottle on the dance floor. Fred has no volume control, not even at a range of half a metre, just as much Praetorian as stentorian.

The Smiffy debate gathers pace: Was the Blackburn match a turning point? Did he suddenly realise the fans have had enough? Was it all down to injuries all the time? Is Smiffy's Rubik just an urban myth? Have we had the equivalent of Brock's famous, not to say tediously mentioned, back pass? Are we all living in cloud cuckoo land?

Nobody in the platoon could see us losing. Optimism ruled, and quite right too. We were in eighth position and looking good for another step up. I figured a win by maybe two goals.

Teams: This injury business is getting out of order. This time, no Stevie or Pembo. Sandro switched to right back and no Tony Hibbert. Unsy was at left back. You wondered if Tony was still tired from his exertions at Blackburn. The Geordies had Shearer playing and mostly a collection of foreigners I have never heard of; they also had a new playing strip with much broader stripes, which I hated.

Within a few minutes attacking the Street End The Gravedigger smacked in exactly the same kind of right footed volley from exactly the same place he tried against Villa. Given saved it well at full stretch. The playing pattern was set and didn't change right to the end. It was all us and they broke away occasionally, usually down their left, our right, sometimes dangerously so. Maybe they thought Stevie was actually playing in Sandro's D'Artagnan outfit.

We were playing relatively well if not entirely convincingly. SuperKev's poor run of form continues, though it has to be said he was up against the man-of-the-match, their centre back, who had an absolute stormer of a game and won virtually everything in the air……no mean feat against Kev even when he isn't up to scratch. Didn't stop Super releasing Nic though, acute right just inside the box with a brilliant touch on pass. Sadly the shot was badly hit and bobbled a couple of metres wide of the right hand post. It seemed only a matter of time before we got one.

But this is footy and it was Newcastle who broke away and scored a goal so ludicrous you laughing. Almost. I can't even recall the origins of it. Anyway, the ball got played toward our left centre defence and Paul came out for it and closed on it on the edge of the box with Abel. One of their front men chased hopefully. I'm not sure what happened next but it looked as though Paul went mad for no apparent reason and socked Abel on the jaw and laid him out. In the meantime their man ran the ball into the net. You couldn't write the script. Abel got carted off on a stretcher and Stubbsy came on.

At the time it was more an irritant than anything else. Nobody felt it was going to last long. Shortly after The Rad was clean through in a one-on-one, our right centre. Like all our other one-on-ones by almost everybody this season……he failed to bury it as he should have. We are missing chances by the bucket load. In which case we will stay firmly ensconsced in mid table and lose matches like this to patently inferior opposition.

Our general team play wasn't bad at all though, inevitable odd errors and human failings apart. The Gravedigger had yet another good game and picked up many a loose ball or won a fifty-fifty and, mercy me, didn't give the ball away as often as usual. As a result of which we didn't much miss Pembo. The other main midfielder, Gemmo, needs maybe one more match to get back to full match fitness but you can't say it affected the result.

At centre defence my early season optimism for Davey-Stubbsy has proved unfounded. Davey-Abel is much better. No surprise, then, when Abel gets injured by one of our own. As one door opens another one slams in your face. Abels' short passing is much better than Stubbsy's and he's faster too. We'll miss him when he goes.

Up front, SuperKev's poor form continues to attract the kind of thick minority comments you expect at the average NF branch meeting. One stupid bastard behind me was screaming for him to tackle out on the left wing and then when the ball got quickly switched into the middle was also screaming for him to be there to meet the cross. It was the ultimate doppelganger expectation. So if you hear a loud explosion in the Street End at our next home game it will be me finally losing patience with the same kind of deadhead. I really can't stand scapegoatism tinged with racism.

Just after half time we let one through which Davey-Abel would've kept out. Shearer, sadly over the hill and niggly because of it, went out to their right and crossed a ball to the middle of the goal area. Paul stuck on his line as usual, nobody else went for it in a crowd except their man and he stooped to head in the easiest goal he will score all season.

A couple of minutes later we got one back when Davey went up for a corner and bulleted a brilliant header in from left side of the goal area. It screamed in and we all felt, "Right! Game ON!" So The Rad goes and misses two good chances, shots hit bodies all over the place and their keeper made some excellent saves. To my left, Peter muttered, "Aw shit. It's gonna be one of those days." For all that, The Rad had yet another good game and never stops being a nuisance in the penalty area. Nobody sleeps while he's around.

Then SuperKev got injured and was replaced by The Big Yin to little affect. It was good to see him using some good delicate ball control and touches occasionally though. Then Gazza came on with ten minutes left and did a couple of jinking runs, the kind which the crowd love but which almost always go precisely nowhere.

Five minutes left and Gazza gave the ball away disastrously on our left and they got a breakaway which left them three-on-two, a quick run and ground cross and he was left with a tap in. At which the steam finally went out of us and they might even have got another one but Paul made two first class saves at vital moments.

Quite simply, this was the weirdest game I have ever seen. How we lost, let alone by such a margin, is way beyond my ability to understand. We played as solidly and as well as I have seen in recent years and I haven't the slightest intention of having a go at anyone. There's no point. I'll leave the jeering to the idiots in mainstream media.

My only jarring thought is that this is probably the best level of play we can expect from the present team. In other words, they are at their peak. Therefore chance will play too large a part in our results, as it did in this match. We still need at least two gifted players. Conversely, a gifted player will always be able to undo us until our team formation is more settled. It is a sobering thought, footy wise.

Yes, midtable is about right for us. Anything better is a bonus. Anything less is too awful to contemplate.

The gate was about 37,500. It was the first time this season the away section has been at or near capacity. So there was a slight upturn on the basis of recent "success." Which just goes to show what the club is capable of when we turn the corner.

But let's see what Tuesday brings, if anything.