SALTED PEANUTS versus PRETZELS.
The peanuts won.
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

“You’re dead, son. Get yourself buried.”
‘J.J.Hunsecker’ to ‘Sidney Falco’ – “Sweet Smell of Success”
(Alexander Mackendrick film, 1957).

First things first, footy-wise. Arsenal won the championship deservedly and gloriously, easily the best team in the league and arguably in Europe too. Well done to their players and manager Arsene Wenger. I never thought I would see the day when an Arsenal team played the kind of magnificent football with which they have graced the game. It has more than submerged the appalling unacceptable behaviour of Thierry Henry in our first game of the season, as have his own displays. Assuming there isn’t a catastrophic loss of form next season they should rampage through Europe, chance nothwithstanding. Good luck to them. Sports greatness beckons.

At the other end of the scale came the Melledrew Tendency whingeing away as usual after the expected announcement of increased season ticket prices at Goodison Park. There really is no legislating for these sour and twisted individuals. In the local press one of them whined away about the increase and then screamed Why Wasn’t It Introduced Earlier? You wanted to grab the thick dopes by the scruff of their collective stupid neck and belabour their forehead against the nearest solid vertical surface. Not that they’d feel anything whatsoever. Predictably all of it came on the backs of an apparently dreadful game and loss at home to Blackburn. You could have written the script, just as you can when some unknown scores a once-in-a-lifetime spectacular goal and said bubble brains demand Why Aren’t We Signing HIM?

Now – as regulars will know – I am the first to denounce the game’s money madness. But the hard cold fact is that is the way the game is organised, owned and run right now whether people like me like it or not. In general every club is in roughly the same state. Only minor variations apply. Change the SYSTEM and screw the Suits and their hangers-on or tolerate it, just don’t sit there squealing like a stuck pig about someone’s personality. Worst of all are those who are nothing but cheap spivs who would be even worse in a position of responsibility, or even cheaper gossipers or barrow boys who pose as altruists. Seedy, to say the least. Attacking the club you support in these circumstances is like standing in front of a mirror and cutting your own throat and trying to video it. Even if Everton Football Club actually came into ownership by anyone else (or even their fans) they would have to comply with the system or go under. There can be no halfway house in the capitalist system. Like virginity, it either is or it isn’t.

As usual Michael Dunford was his own worst PR enemy thus allowing the Tendency to beat up easily on him in the manner of a gang of street thugs kicking a helpless prone street casualty. There are few uglier sights. Of course he could not have used a worse phrase than “………I make no excuses for it………” When he speaks like that you can’t help staring at the ceiling while feeling he’s a Derby County accident waiting to happen. I don’t have much time or sympathy for the CEO but I have even less for the hysterics who engage in nothing but self-indulgent, self-pitying fishwife muck similar to the pink variety across the park. Meanwhile, Aston Villa in reverse, the same people who revelled in last season have now turned on everyone, David Moyes included. The same people who attacked Bill Kenwright for a gushing public persona now attack him because he says virtually nothing. It is obvious the members of the Melledrew Tendency won’t know any human contentment until on their deathbed. Doubtless they will whimper to themselves with their last narcissistic breath, “I TOLD you so, I TOLD you you’d die…………” before drifting away to the Great Curmudgeon in the sky. For them, not a gram of goodwill in them, twisted scapegoats or unfathomable revenge seekers all, the swish of the Reaper’s blade can’t come soon enough to end their petty paranoid masochism. Eh bien.

By contrast, pre-match The Bus set down at a Mine Host welcoming pub in a pretty Wolverhampton suburb and we ended up in the beer garden on a temperate and partly sunny afternoon. Bus kids played footy and sent the ball whizzing everywhere except the right place as wary quaffers shielded their beer against ricochet. Relaxed footy chat dominated. It was sheer delight, a million kilometres away from the Tendency and their whining (bored with them, I have decided unilaterally to rename them “Corries.” They are after all a bunch of misery-making soap-opera wannabees). And at such times you can encounter unexpected invigorating surprises. One such was Terry – not Texyla – normally a quiet individual in his early forties who usually keeps himself to himself. He overheard me talking to Dicky Mint about Chris Bonnington the climber and quickly joined us. It turned out he is a climber of long standing stoicism, so, now wildly alert and full of it, he set about informing us non-climbers of the reasons for this seemingly mad activity. Like all good chats it quickly expanded into related thoughts such as How Many Adrenaline Rushes Are Enough? and, What’s The Point Of Climbing Everest When It’s Virtually An Extreme Tourist Trip These Days? Then came a description of “free climbing” (that is, climbing without ropes) that would have turned your hair grey. Then his terribly poignant account of how a young lady lost her life during a caving venture he was on, which led to him not caving again. For a time it certainly stilled the dull accounts of how much beer was used to uselessly distend someone’s bladder the previous evening. We were there for a very pleasant couple of hours before setting off for the ground.

The Bus was directed to Faulkland Street car park by the police. On arrival almost all the enjoyment evaporated.

There’s no question something horrible has happened to the Midlands police these days. Further inquiry might elicit a reason but I can’t be arsed finding out for the moment, though I can make rough guesses. All I know is suddenly they’ve mostly become every bit as bad as the north-east police. Incredibly we were told to wait for an escort. When it arrived it consisted of increasingly familiar tooled-up bizzies and, I kid you not, barking Alsatians on loosely held leads. It reminded me ironically of racist Bull Connor’s US Birmingham police thugs used to intimidate black Civil Rights marchers in the 60s. Any sense of relaxed enjoyment was instantly replaced with a sense of near despair at the direction the game is once again headed in.

Near the gates for the away section two policemen and a police woman videoed the crowd as it went through the gates. Irritated beyond measure I asked mildly, “Is there any good reason for that?” and back came the short answer in a pungent Black Country accent, “Lowds.” I was wasting my time of course. Just as I was at the gate when a steward named Keith Baxter searched me and asked belligerently, “What’s that?” of a key ring and tiny case in my pocket. Finally goaded I made it clear without equal belligerence what I thought of him, the searching and the whole wretched apparatus. Whereupon – once again you could have written the script but by then I was past giving a shit whether I saw the game or not – I was directed to a nearby policeman to register my complaint. Which of course was a complete waste of time. For a microsecond I had bureaucratic visions of being bounced back and forth between steward and police in accordance with some form-filling procedure. Eventually I went in past the dead opaque eyes of policemen and the steward.

Molineux has been rebuilt as the kind of stadium we will probably end up in eventually, albeit possibly with a larger capacity of between 40 and 50,000. It’s no big deal. It has cantilevered roofs to four separate stands with open corners, the inevitable design scar of saving money. You can tell the mark of a good architect-client relationship if the client has been persuaded to complete a building properly. In this case, not. Two two-tiered stands with intervening loathed, glass fronted exec boxes, the type we are constantly told are an absolute must in the game run the length of the site. The other behind-the-goal stands are single tier at a comparatively acute rake. Still, once again it is an improvement and a far cry from the previous antiquated structure and at least it has some kind of weak design unity. But it is nothing more than utility and like most similar buildings will never win an important design award. (Talking of new grounds, if you are interested you can see a small and unsatisfactory model of the proposed pinkies stadium in Millenium House, Victoria Street. Go through the main entrance and make an immediate right into the reception area. At the time of writing the model is on your right. If it has been moved, ask one of the reception girls where it is. For the sake of the city the scheme must go ahead whether it ends up shared or not, whether we get left behind or not.)

The place buzzed with the kind of anticipation I recall from our famous (or infamous, depends on your inclinations) relegation-staving match with Coventry six years ago. For us, Davey Weir, Alex Nyarko, Jamie McFadden, Tony Hibbert and Leon Osman in as replacements for gawd knows almost everybody.

Inside two minutes Jamie Mac kidded three of their defenders down our right, streaked to the bye line and pulled over a hard short cross which Osman butted in at the near post, the oldest ploy in the business. When it’s done like that it makes a monkey out of all this tactics and formation twaddle.

As the half came and went, so did the chances. We were almost queuing up to take a pot. And miss. We were no great shakes but Wolves were truly awful, every bit as bad as they were at Goodison. The Rad’s pace and Jamie Mac’s ball control made it one sided enough to be embarrassing. But we kept missing. I said, “We’ll regret this.” Before half time The Rad missed two one-on-ones, while The Duke and Jamie Mac also did a Father Christmas act. No kidding, we should have been at least three or four up by the interval. Noticeably though, Wolves kept going in the manner of a drowning man with the shore still in sight. They were woefully short of individual ability and team shape but they chased everything they could.

While all this was going on, Leon Osman had a good if unspectacular game clearly more confident after his successful spell at Derby. It would be nice to think he could keep it up, but I doubt it. Nyarko too did nothing wrong in the first half. What a pleasant change to see nobody giving the ball away as per usual. We might have known it was a season-typical first half flash of form.

The second half was an embarrassing total collapse of will and teamwork against one of the worst teams I have ever seen in the top flight. To get pulverised – and it’s the only applicable description – by such a side tells you all you need to know. Ten minutes into the half a cross from the left reached their man near the right side edge of the penalty area and he swung his boot at it, made solid contact and it zoomed in past a helpless Nigel’s left hand. After that, Nigel made save after save as our midfield completely evaporated in the face of nothing more than a charge of enraged sheep. Corner after corner leaked away. It was only a matter of time.

Five minutes from time Wolves got the winner they overwhelmingly deserved when another cross from the left got headed home from near the penalty spot. You argued the toss at the expense of your common sense.

Despite all of this we STILL managed to create a few more chances. The Rad missed two more one-on-ones and so did Rooney. Then the latter should have been sent off for a bad challenge on their ‘keeper. He can thank himself lucky he got only a booking, made after the ineffable Mike Riley consulted a linesman. He should have travelled.

For me there were only three relatively bright spots in the match. The first was man-of-the-match Nigel Martyn’s terrific display, the second the first half display by Joey Yobo. And the other – despite the ‘keeper incident – was the further indication of advancement in Rooney’s play. He played a lot deeper in this game and held and passed the ball unselfishly much more than he usually does, perhaps yet another indication that his long term future lies in midfield and not upfront. He won’t be satisfied with his overall impact but that can be taken as the positive approach of a young man still feeling his way.

Everybody else played reasonably well in the first half and then went off the radar screen completely in the second. Tony Hibbert in particular continues to baffle, though of course he can’t be singled out as more culpable than any of the others. I only mention him because he has shown such immense promise in the past and now seems intent on pissing it up the wall. Pity. Davey Weir has surely reached the end of the road now, emergency sub role notwithstanding. He’s a wonderfully classic Scottish player who I wish we had had during our better days.

Match finished, outside I saw the first trouble I have seen at a match in many years. With there being a scarcity of police two fat fools, one from each team, wrestled over some obscure chauvinist point or other until a bizzy fell on them. There were no police because they were all gathered up the road surrounding the car park, dogs yapping and snapping away. Once in the car park it became obvious The Bus wasn’t there. It was on the other side, a little way down the road. But we couldn’t go further because a line of stiff-faced bizzies prevented us without explanation. A helicopter hovered overhead, pure 1984, when suddenly a bunch of CRS lookalikes appeared complete with Perspex shields, ugly faces and the kind of single minded looniness you associate with the apparel. Quite innocent people were barged aside and threatened with incarceration for absolutely no reason other than they were unable to reach their coach. The leader of this bunch of uniformed thugs bore the number A 3671 and three chevrons on his riot helmet, plus an unkempt sagebrush moustache and a mouth full of mobile chewing gum and the bullyboy personality to go with it. If ever I saw a uniformed policeman without the vocation it was this indisciplined madman. All of this was presumably to deal with a small bunch of loony fans of ours who were exchanging nonsense and racism with passing Wolves fans. Except the bizzies mostly left them alone and concentrated on baffled and innocent fans increasingly bad tempered because of the treatment they were getting. Anything could have happened. That it didn’t was owed to the few sensible police officers who explained some locals were causing trouble up ahead and managed to cool feelings. The absence of senior officers was as notable as the lack of sensible and disciplined policing.

All this for a lousy game of football, one which we lost, and one which nevertheless saw the victors relegated.

Yeuk.

POSTSCRIPT.

If this piece seems almost unremittingly bleak then let me attempt to restore an optimistic balance of human nature.

Last season most of my match reports included what I called a “Reality Check.” It was a fairly straightforward attempt to get some commonsensical perspective of football by commentary on events outside the game. As usual each were written from my own subjective judgement. Each was in deliberate contrast to the knockabout jokey style used for the actual match report. When the season finished I felt I had made my point and discontinued the method. Just this once I revert to it to again make my point that football is essentially trivial and should be treated as nothing more than healthy escapism and hobbyist. Any attempt to turn it into something more should be treated with due contempt and mistrust.

Some months ago I bought a three DVD set titled “The American Civil War.” It was originally broadcast as an 11-hour TV series in the United States in September 1990. I had not heard of it before and made the purchase instinctively on the grounds that while I knew the subject in broad outline there were far too many gaps in my understanding of it. Nor had I heard of its maker, Ken Burns. In fact it is a masterpiece of American art I greatly admire and one that adds to the knowledge of anyone willing to watch and listen. Like all great works of art it can’t avoid making comment (consciously and unconsciously) on the human condition. As usual these comments are mostly made by inclusion of apparently mundane observations. Actually they go right to the heart of the matter.

In this example “heart” is the most suitable word.

Disc One includes a chapter 13 entitled “Honourable Manhood.” It consists entirely of a letter from Union major Sullivan Ballou of the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers to his wife Sarah in Smithfield, Virginia. He wrote it one week before the first battle of Bull Run. I have transcripted it from the disc so it may not be the entire letter or contain the grammar, syntax and spelling of the major. Here it is.

“July 14th, 1861. Washington DC.

Dear Sarah,

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days, perhaps tomorrow, and lest I should not be able to write you again I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I am no more.

I have no misgivings about or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how American civilisation now leans upon the triumph of the government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution, and I am willing, perfectly willing, to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government and to pay that debt.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless and seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but omnipotence could break. And yet my love of country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly with all those chains to the battlefield. The memory of all the blissfull moments I have enjoyed with you come crowding over me, and I feel most deeply grateful to god, and you, that I have enjoyed them for so long. And how hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes and future years when, god willing, we might still have lived and loved together and see our boys grown up to honourable manhood around us.

If I do not return, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I loved you, nor that when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless, how foolish I have sometimes been. But oh Sarah! If the dead can come back to this Earth and flit unseen around those they love I shall always be with you in the brightest day and the darkest night. Always, always. And when the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath with the cool air at your throbbing temple. It shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah, do not mourn me dead. Think I am gone and wait for me, for we shall meet again.”

Sullivan Ballou was killed during the ensuing battle.

The “cause” in question, though initially muddled – some historians still say it was over which end of the egg should be cut – and often challenged at the time, eventually came to be the total honour of emancipation of the slaves and abolition of slavery. Instinctively, the major appears to have known he fought on the right side. La Conditione Humaine. How different all this is to the illegal and murderous American and British invasion of Iraq and its subsequent highly predictable horrors.

If the above letter’s simple and beautiful prose cannot place football and its spivs into a proper place in your mind then nothing can. Maybe you deserve the general direction the game has taken and will continue to take.

Think on it.

Team News  

With a point or so still needed to tie it all up mathematically for us, Moyesy could do without his end of term injury list. Definite non starters are Tommy Grav, Zinedine Kilbane, and Nace is also running out of time to get his ankle right. Maybe filling one of them voids will be Leon Osman, and I reckon Moyesy will relish starting the youngster who has been in fine form whilst out on loan to Derby. Alex Nyarko will probably deputise for The Grav, with Jimmy Mac reverting to his wide left role in place of Zinedine. Big Dunc is available, but don't be surprised to see him on the bench, as lack of match fitness seems to be his big problem. Stubbsy is back in contention, and with Unsey struggling expect to see him start next to Joey Yobo. It would have to be my turn to predict the teams this week, with half of them laid up, a nightmare, but here goes.

Moyesy says: "Tommy Gravesen and Kevin Kilbane won’t be available and neither will Gary Naysmith. Those three players picked up injuries during last weekend and there’s a good chance that those three players will miss the remainder of the season. We’re going there with a few injuries, so one or two players will be given a chance. Perhaps those who haven’t been playing regularly will feature at Wolves, but when those players get the opportunity, it’s up to them to impress." (30/04/04)

Everton from: Wright, Martyn, Watson, Pistone, Stubbs, Weir, Unsworth, Radzinski, Campbell, Ferguson, Jeffers, Simonsen, Rooney, Yobo, Nyarko, Linderoth, McFadden, Carsley, Clarke, Hibbert, Osman.

Jogger's eleven to start: Martyn, Pistone, Yobo, Stubbs, Watson, Nyarko, Linderoth, McFadden, Osman, Rooney, Radzinski.