Quotes

Jogger: I'm writing to Dumbford, why are the shite on the Echo page in the programme?
Lavo: How do you know Dumbford reads the Echo?
Sausage: How do you know Dumford can read?
Lard: Jogger, can you write?
Jogger: Fuck Off the lorra yiz!

Off The Ball

* Why were we playing with a red and white ball?

Scott of the Antarctic
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

Match eve, news came of a season loss of £49.5 millions and an overall debt of £78 millions for Leeds United. This, after selling some of their best players and releasing others to ease the wages bill. It could have been any club in the Prem. In fact it damn nearly WAS us until Johnson made a hasty exit encouraged by our fans. In a related interview on TV BBC 2’s “Working Lunch” professor Tom Cannon, fanatical Evertonian, member of the Shareholders Association, business academic, said he was available for hire as chairman of a football club. It was impossible to tell if he was speaking tongue in cheek, even with a slight smile playing around the corners of his mouth. If you were thinking of EFC, Tom, you’ll first have to walk all over Philip Carter’s dead body. So far the rumours of his departure from the chair have been just that. Any attempt to force the issue will likely require a wooden mallet, pointed stake and festoons of garlic.

I have no intention of jeering at Leeds, though I have done so in the past. In some respects we should even be grateful to them for illustrating how not to run a football club. Long term footy fans will recall how too many of our own fans held them up as a paragon of How To Do It during the unlamented days of Peter Ridsdale. Well, it wasn’t then, it isn’t now, and it won’t be in the future. We have enough of our own problems without turning our club into a stock exchange gambling casino. Leeds bet everything on black and it came up red. Tough. Now live with it.

It also puts into perspective the local hack, Len Capeling, yet another media dope the strap line claims “You Can’t Ignore.” Oh yes you can, and most of us do. This is the same arsehead who named Peter Johnson “Magic Johnson,” who goes on about the state of the game when he’s precisely one of those whose behaviour helped create the kind of twisted values the game is wrapped in. It almost goes without saying this is also the same crackpot who told Bill Kenwright to go out and borrow millions more to buy players and put us into the same kind of Leeds-type debt. At the time Leeds were having mild playing success. I don’t know if Kenwright told him to fuck off or not but he should have done.

The next stage of the deflating footy bubble is the equivalent of “negative equity” in player “values.” Clubs who bought unwisely at the height of the madness – like Leeds – will now have to face the prospect of selling at much lower values because of a plummeting “market.” But they still have to pay off the higher debt. To that you can add the cost of inflated wages. Our current balance sheet shows how we are mired in this manic valuation cycle. It’s worth remembering that “value” in footy transfers is notional, not actual, and is anything anybody is willing to pay. There’s nothing scientific about it. Your assessment is as good as the next man’s and just as likely to be castigated as anybody else’s. In short, anarchy.

Pre-match we assembled for some reason in The Spellow after journeying through the dark, rain and cold from all points of the compass. I don’t much like any of the pubs in Walton but in weather like this they manage to look like a warm haven radiating hospitality. They never are of course but it’s a pleasant enough illusion to indulge for a short while. Lavo, fresh from a Lake District hangover, sought further alcohol to obliterate dehydration and re-acquaintance with unreality. Midweek League Cup matches are like that. Sort of not one thing or the other. Understandably it was all a bit subdued.

Me, I couldn’t wait to see Scott Parker again since I admire his abilities beyond extravagance. And when Ray showed up and said Nyarko was back in it gave the game the kind of interest it needed to lift it out of the usual. Not that this is a comment on the miracle of Curbishley’s Charlton. They are a neat and enthusiastic team capable of giving anybody a good game and playing it openly into the bargain. No, it’s more of a comment on the way we’ve been playing, as if you needed telling. Relatively the most uplifting comment came from Kipper – “We mightn’t have scored for ages but we haven’t let one through either.” Straws, clinging to. We all do it.

The rain swirled, black clouds gathered, the temperature plummeted, and Nyarko WAS in the team. And he got a good reception into the bargain too. I’ll bet that pissed off the BNP. I was ambivalent about his inclusion and didn’t really think it would work after all this time. Too much water under the bridge, that sort of thing. The Big Yin was back too. For them, Parker plus ten others.

It was a lively and interesting game in the conditions. The top of the pitch must have been like that new floor surface in the circulation areas below the Street End. Should you be injured by the latter I urge you to sue the club immediately. We’ve all been injured by the former this season so it’s too late to do anything there I’m afraid. For all that, they were the kind of conditions which demonstrate how good professional players are. There were surprisingly few slips. Even Joey managed to keep his immaculate timing throughout.

Charlton were a much better combination than ours but we managed to carve out most of the opportunities: Close-in header from The Yin, tremendously hard shot from Nace and a cheeky chip from The Duke. Their keeper saved well from all of them. But for all their neat play Charlton didn’t create as much as they should have. When they did, they blew it in surprisingly half-hearted fashion. Nige stood firm when he had to, too.

From start to finish the best player on the pitch by several country kilometres was Scott Parker. He covered every puddle on the park and hardly put a foot wrong. He was sheer class, everywhere, and a little nark into the bargain too – when he had to be. It seemed every time we were about to develop a move anywhere, there he was winning the ball or simply getting in the way long enough to delay matters until the heavies arrived. You wanted to strangle the little upright bastard. He’s completely at home, left, right, middle, up front, or back helping out. And his passing accuracy is simply astonishing. Most of all he has the kind of hunger for the game we associated with Alan Ball and Colin Harvey. Charlton wouldn’t be half the team they are without him.

Their right back Kishishev (dunno about the spelling) also had an outstanding night. He disposed of Faddy without too much trouble and then managed to keep Rooney relatively quiet when he switched to the left wing during the last quarter hour. Despite that, typically, Rooney still managed a couple of runs and a thud against the post from a sharp angle late on.

Meanwhile, our defence played well and there was even occasional good forward combination play. Davey Weir was tremendous at centre back, with Joey steadier on his feet. Hibbo’s defensive play was excellent but his crossing from promising positions was complete shite. Nace had a busy night and looks to be gaining in confidence a little.

Midfield was much better but still staccato. Alex Nyarko managed a good steady game, didn’t look nervous and notably didn’t give the ball away as much as previous midfield combos have. Toby was Toby, which is to say, as the cliché does, he was a “Stolid, unsmiling Swede.” We can’t do without him at the moment. Wide left Jamie McFadden made hardly a dent but that was due at least as much to his immediate opponent as his own efforts. You have to hand it to the Jock – he keeps trying his dribbles even when it is obvious his energy levels aren’t quite up to English league standards yet. He’ll get better though. The Gravedigger continued on his baffling, erratic way, mostly wide right. Late in the game he tried a couple of fans-pleasing foot waggling feints on the Bullens Road side of the Street End. But at least he only gave the ball away one third of the time instead of the usual two thirds ratio. Overall, we simply don’t have the kind of constructive attack minded midfielder we need. The result is relative starvation or lousy passing to whoever plays up front.

I can’t help feeling extreme sympathy for our strikers these days. It’s pretty much a thankless task. Nevertheless The Yin and The Duke managed to keep Charlton on their toes when they had the opportunity. Sadly, The Yin keeps winning headers and nodding them on to uncannily empty spaces. Since this has been going on for as long as I can remember you would think he would have got the message by now. Rooney badly needs a goal and few more defence-beating slaloms to get back on track. There’s no question it will come. He has frustration written all over him right now but he’s also showing more concentration and self discipline.

The goal came three minutes before half time and summed up our play nicely. A combo move down the right involved Hibbo and The Gravedigger and when Gravesen pulled the ball back from the goal line on the edge of the penalty box it got transferred quickly to Rooney. He hit an instinctive side footed volley which flicked off a defender, hit the bar, came down, hit the post, rebounded to centre goal……………and there was Toby steaming in unmarked to make a deliberate if oddly laboured header into an empty net. By that time we’d earned it.

The second half saw Charlton stream forward for most of the time. They didn’t do much in front of goal though even when it looked as though they would make a breakthrough at any minute. Euell missed their easiest chance in the Park End, right hand post, a simple tap in he completely misdjudged after Parker had orchestrated yet another knife-through-butter series of attacking passes.

The Rad came on with fifteen minutes left and promptly ran Charlton ragged, mostly down our right. This broke up the rhythm of the game nicely, doubtless as Moyesy intended, and enabled us to get back into it and almost get a couple of additional goals.

All told the scoreline was about right and deserved.

But No, we can’t afford Scott Parker so there’s no point asking for him. We haven’t got a pot to piss in. Until then, all we can do is hope. And hope dies last.

Team News       

Kilbane is cup-tied, so Moyesy will make at least one change from the Villa game. That looks like a straight swap for Faddy. Steve Wato (groin), Harry Hill (knee), Scot Gemmill (thigh), Saint Nic (foot) and Leon Osman (ankle) are all out injured. The big plus is the return of The Rad, who should be fit. This will give the manager of the people's club a full choice of strikers, except for Chadders. Alex Nyarko is in the squad for the first time since his return in the summer.   

Moyesy says: “Tomasz Radzinski will hopefully be okay. We will see how he is after a day or two’s training. We want people to put their names on the shirt and do enough to stay in there. At the moment there are one or two positions that could be changed around as we look to try and find a winning formula. It's performances I'm looking for. It's been disappointing we have not scored more goals. We perhaps need to get the ball in the opponents' box more."

Everton from: Martyn, Hibbert, Stubbs, Yobo, Weir, Naysmith, Unsworth, Li Tie, Gravesen, Linderoth, McFadden, Ferguson, Radzinski, Rooney, Jeffers, Campbell, Clarke, Wright, Simonsen, Nyarko.

Lard's eleven to start: Martyn, Hibbert, Weir, Yobo, Naysmith, Radzinski, Linderoth, Gravesen, McFadden, Rooney, Ferguson.