Isn't it fuckin' great to have that swagger back in your step? Long may it continue!
It's a while since we've had that feeling as well, you know the one, where you can't wait for the next match. We new it was going to be difficult against Boro but we had a sneaky little feeling that the three points were ours and so it proved to be.
This report is late because not only was Kipper bladdered but Sausage went on a late wanton attack and was bladdered too, so apologies all round. We were entertained in the Blue Kipper lounge before the game by Brian Harris & Kenny Ray and we also had John Bailey & Tony Grant drop in too, so we were well up for it on a nice sunny day as we strolled down County Road fully juiced up and ready for action.
The crowd today were magnificent. There may have been a few gaps here and there but we more than made up for the few missing, it was though we had 12 men. An example was the Boateng incident, once he was booked he didn't go near the ball because he knew that the crowd would have had him off! Well done to every last Toffee in the house!

It was no surprise that Moyesy stuck with the same line up from City, the only changes being Tommy in for Skippy whose ban stayed despite the protests (Mr Bennett will be royally received on his next appearance at Goodison) and Joey was on the bench.
The first half was pretty scrappy with few chances, the best falling to Marcus Bent but on both occasions Schwarzer saved, Marcus ran his socks off for the cause and got his just reward early in the second half and he got a rousing send off when he was replaced late on by Big Dunc and rightly so. We looked tight at the back and limited them to a few free kicks but neither Jimmy Floyd of Viduka ha had their shooting boots on and we held firm. Sandro apart, the defence looks tight, Davey Weir & Stubbsy are back to their best, Big Nige looks unbeatable and kept his third clean sheet in a row and Tony (thou shalt not get past) Hibbert must be in for a cap soon if he keeps performances like this up, he was tremendous.

The ref today was not too bad, apart from one incident in the first half when he booked Kevin Kilbane, I think he must have been looking through Jogger's glasses because Killa looked innocent, a melee ensued and Harry Hill got stuck in unnoticed as Boateng got booked and then virtually ruled himself out of the rest of the game. Boro were restricted to just the one half chance which Nige saved comfortably and we went in all square at the break but feeling confident.

HALF TIME Everton 0, Boro 0.

It was 6 Buds and a Chang on the window ledge half way down the stairs at half time and the mood was upbeat, we'd kept them quiet and created a couple of chances, the talk was of 3rd place, possibly second if Chelsea got twatted - now come on boys that Chang must be strong stuff!

We were only just settled in our seats when we went one up. Marcus Bent chased a long through ball, showed Southgate his arse and managed to sneak it under Schwarzer, it was a scrappy effort which might have gone in off Cheating Franck but we didn't give a toss and the place went mental, 3rd place was now a reality.
From this point on we up for it and never looked in any danger of losing, don't get me wrong, Boro piled on the pressure but they never had a clear cut chance. The defence were solid and all the midfielders played their part, Tommy was everywhere, Harry Hill continued his good form and Stevie Watson and Killa caused Boro problems on the flanks.
Marcus Bent went off to a rapturous reception with 15 mins to go, replaced by Big Dunc who just defended the cause. Stevie Watson was replaced by Jimmy Mac after his legs had gone and Jimmy should have put the result beyond doubt. In the last minute he raced through on his own from the half way line with just the goalie to beat, unfortunately Schwarzer took it off his toes.

We were forced to endure 3 mins off added time during which Nige did us proud with a save from Jimmy Floyd. The whistle went cue - delirium, Toffee's up to 3rd place and well deserved too. Somebody pinch me!
It was a great team performance today as it has been for the season so far, my Blue Kipper Star Man today was Tony Hibbert, not too long before he will be pulling on a England jersey if he keeps this up.
Well done lads. Isn't it great to be an Evertonian? The Toffeemen never let you down!! Come on you Blues!!!

Full Time: Everton 1, Boro 0.

Sausage Reports from Goodison Park

Blue Kipper Star Man

Autumn leaves common sense
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

It’s Autumn.

Slightly colder, sometimes bright sunshine, burgeoning beautiful golds. Leaves with brown finger prints tugging at their edge, that sort of thing. In fact not too different from late Summer, odd burst of warmth excepted. But the change of seasons seems to do something to the human condition. People start acting oddly.

For instance, down in our unloved, cold metropolis a group of demonstrators gathered to demand democratically they keep the right to don fancy dress, mount their horses, collect a pack of dogs, then hunt a fox to exhaustion so the dogs could disembowel it and rip it to bloody shreds as a spectacle and a “sport.” See here http://homepage.ntlworld.com/john.oakland/index.html. Since our society long ago decided that public executions were a scene of ugly mob-handedness, that birch and stocks were similar, that any civilization is best identified by a progressive body of laws, it became merely a matter of time before the wilful ignorance and obvious narcissistic cruelty of such activity became subject to non-party, free-vote democracy. So finally and quite rightly it got banned. The only faintly reasonable argument to present against it was that of unemployment.

(Those seriously inclined souls who wish to pursue the general, not specific, argument techniques in this kind of thing are referred to a wonderful essay by Arthur Koestler titled “Reflections on Hanging” in a compilation titled “Bricks to Babel” [Hutchinson, 1980].)

Predictably, our extreme right wing media – that is, as always, almost all of it – went satisfyingly ballistic. The very same people who, for another instance, stood by and allowed football to become a byword for institutionalised corruption talked ludicrously of “civil war.” One wonders what their behaviour would be if football fans organized themselves properly and began a series of efficiently managed civil disobedience acts in protest at the way the game is owned and run. Instead, all the ranting righties succeeded in doing was to illustrate the full irreconcilable depth of their reactionary instincts and how isolated living can lead to an illusionary moronic mindset. The vast majority of civilized, free-thinking people in this country long ago made their democratic wishes clear: Get rid, the sooner the better.

“Rural unemployment” is no different from “urban unemployment” and is therefore unlikely to get much shrift from Joe Public for the same reason farm subsidies or foot-and-mouth compensation were roundly barracked. During the 80s and 90s there was little but opposition and/or frigid disinterest from the countryside as previous industrial areas were devastated and mass unemployment deliberately created. So when this crunch came you could hardly expect miners’ and dockers’ families and others who had their lives wrecked, their bodies assaulted by police brutality and their freedom curtailed by our secret police to have the slightest affinity for the yoiks tally-ho mob or their jeer leaders in the media. Nor are they likely to listen to self serving whingeing nonsense that city folk do not understand rural folk. I think I can safely say most reasonably informed human beings know the difference between a combined harvester and the sight of a gang of horsey hooray henries trying to kill a small vermin for pleasure. Forgive the bad pun, but the fox came home to roost. They had it coming.

Yes, the ugly sight of police battening peaceful demonstrators in seemingly unprovoked and random fashion was unacceptable and the culprits ought to be brought to book. It was at least as unacceptable as fox hunting by dressed-up gangs of self-indulgent thugs on horseback. The worst of them are every bit as bad as the worst of football thugs. But none of it should obscure the straightforward fact that the banning of fox hunting is as legitimate as the banning of the cock-pit or bear-pit or bare-knuckle brawls, and for the same reason. Our civilization rightly decrees cruelty should not be a contrived, manipulated spectacle, not even when it may be necessary to eliminate animal pests. Good riddance to both fox-hunting and hare-coursing at Waterloo. If it ever rises from the dustbin of history you can be sure it will herald the reintroduction of extreme right wing government.

And talking of contrived spectacles, midweek brought the first skirmishes of the G14 Chumpions League. There they were in all their inglorious, tiresome, fear-ridden, cash-cow inclinations. It was never better illustrated than the 33,000 attendance at analfield, a once unthinkable figure, or the vistas of empty seats at Middlesbrough. The irony being of course that too many fans, ours included, desperately want to be part of it. Me, I couldn’t really give a shit. I would welcome unlikely qualification as a sign we have started to regenerate, throw in a bit of long forgotten footy travel, and that’s about it. But until the European Cup is returned to its original format of champions only and two-leg knock-out then it will always have a hollow ring. Money-grubbing G14 group matches with non-champions? Get rid, along with fox-hunting, Rupert Murdoch, Silvio Berlusconi, Sepp Blatter, the football PLC, and Sky TV.

Midweek also brought a tide of emails wanting to know if I was the “Gordon Bennett” author of the Blue Kipper piece on the extraordinary general meeting. Alas, no, though I wish I had been. No, your correspondent can’t be in two places at once. I thought the piece an immeasurably funny and satiric observation. Its subject, a bunch of big-mouthed clowns who couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery (as fulsomely illustrated by the “election” during the annual general meeting of the minority Sharesellers Association), the same incapable dickheads who say the current owners can’t manage. Jaysus, it doesn’t get more side splittingly ironic than that. I suspect they couldn’t understand the origins of the author’s chosen pen-name either.

The EGM was a call that could have benefited everybody, current owners included. Instead, it apparently managed to look and sound like a bunch of Joe McCarthys after a glue sniffing session in Salem. Would you ask these people to guard a dog kennel containing a Chihuahua, which, as everyone knows, is a cross between a rat and a moth? And you can’t invoke that kind of description unless you were sat there crossing and uncrossing your legs and trying to hold your sides together. So well done, “Gordon.” We don’t have enough of your laughter in our ranks. Said clowns are so far up themselves they are scratching their ear, or dusting off their own weird “image.” Now that’s an allowable and welcome public spectacle even with touches of fatuous, self inflicted cruelty.

Match eve, to the Valparaiso restaurant in Hardman Street on the occasion of Chilé’s National Day. Very nice too, and even nicer to see a portrait of Salvador Allende on the walls. (For those who don’t know, Allende in 1973 was a democratically elected Socialist murdered at the behest of the American CIA and an engineered fascist military coup. Subsequently the chief beneficiary was mass murderer and torturer general Augusto Pinochet. See here http://www.trentu.ca/~mneumann/pinochet.html. Yes, THAT one, the one a courageous Spanish judge tried to have arrested and extradited when he visited Britain. The one New Labour’s leaders almost let escape temporarily from justice). Also much footy chat of Everton, Chilé, and the visit thereto in April organised by the Ruleteros Society. Should be a great occasion if there hasn’t been another CIA inspired nazi coup by then.

Match day was a beautiful, bright sunshiney day. On such occasions you want to have the loudest voice and the most enthusiasm. Except everybody else seems to feel it even more than you. The usual fans said they’d settle for a draw if we couldn’t get a win. After all, Boro were a place ahead of us thanks to the management of a constantly smug-grinning manager. Quite rightly most of us distrust someone with exactly the same perennial facial expression for the same reason we distrust someone with perennial self-righteousness. But Boro have spent heavily courtesy of personal guarantees from their chairman and that has ensured a plethora of good individual players who could turn anybody over on a good day. We had our work cut out.

We were minus only Tim Cahill due to his momentary sartorial negativity. Well, if the referee Bennett can get stiff-arsed, so can I if the mood takes me. Around me, the ground was abuzz in a way it hasn’t been since our seventh place season. I know I keep mentioning that but hey! footy’s all about feeling good while you can. Fuck the misery-arses, hate-mongers and self-styled “insiders.” Let them get into pole position and you might as well disappear up your own melancholy-lined anal canal.

From the beginning our team displayed the kind of determinism of previous games. Believe me, it has taken me as much by surprise as it has you. I fully expected us to be struggling from the very first game, which is why I decided I would go to as many home and away games as I could. If we were going to be relegated I wanted to be there. Instead, the team have shown the sort of commitment and self-pride we thought they had abandoned completely last season. To their credit they have completely confounded fans like myself. They haven’t stopped chasing and harrying and this game was yet more confirmation. We are short of class but still manage a lot of really good, neat football. If this start can be maintained – a really big task – then we will only be turned over by better passing sides.

At this stage I have only one concern and that is Sandro Pistone. Which is paradoxical because he is without doubt the classiest player we have. His tackling and heading are first class. At present his passing is total shite, made all the more baffling because he is patently such a talented player. I can’t figure it. I hope it’s merely an early season phase that he’ll beat by single-minded professional application. If he doesn’t, he’ll be left out. Moyesy tends to be single-minded about this sort of thing.

Astonishingly, everyone else has got “stuck in” in classic English fashion. Whether Joey’s injured or not is almost immaterial. You couldn’t drop either Davey or Stubbsy on their current form, and who would have thought that? The fact is, they’ve all well earned their places in the line up.

Midfield has probably surprised us more than most areas of the team, though this is possibly due to five across the park. Nevertheless you still have to win the ball or regain it if you lose it first time around. And that’s what they’re doing. Sometimes it is difficult to credit the evidence of your own eyes. Right-to-left, if they lose it, generally (at the moment) they’ll get it back. And nobody deserves more credit than Tommy Gravesen and Lee Carsley. The both of them have applied themselves the way senior pros should, the way they did a couple of seasons ago. Leon (ESPECIALLY Leon), Steve Watson and Kevin Kilbane all feed off this. The result is constant pressure on the opposition and less of the same on our defence.

Tony Hibbert seems to have realised too how good he can be. In this match he snuffed his immediate opponent and still had time to help everyone else out when it got sticky. When he plays like this you can see the kind of potential that makes his poor form seem a distant memory.

Once again all of this has made Marcus Bent’s solo performance worthwhile. That’s a lonely patrol up there and it can only seem worth it if he gets reasonable service and close support. Which, at present, he does. In this match he was up against Southgate and he gave him too a harrowing time.

The first half was almost all ours and we should have gone in two or three up, shades of last week versus Sitteh. Marcus missed a dead cert close range header in the Street End, while their ‘keeper made a few excellent saves and we were millimetres away from converting others in a very lively display. Doubtless Boro’s European match had drained something from them but that’s their problem, not ours. You shouldn’t join up if you can’t take a joke. In fact we battered them, while they had to be satisfied with a few breakaways and some decent free kick opportunities which they wasted. As someone said, unlucky, but who said the same to us last season?
In the second half I was just about say to next-door Stevie, “I don’t like the way this is shaping,” when we got a breakaway down our left and Marcus chased Southgate ragged into the box and it looped out of a meleé into their net to give us a richly deserved lead.

After that play was even until Boro got a second wind with about half an hour left and gave us a torrid time. Nige made two or three tremendous saves until sub Jamie Mac got a breakaway and a one on one in which he got roundly duped by their ‘keeper and gave the chance away with a whimper reminiscent of The Rad at his worst.

Boro kept hammering away but our defence malleted them to a standstill. It was yet another well earned win that took us up to third. Of course that won’t last. But who gives a shit for the time being. Evertonians all, relish it. Tell the misery-mongers to get fucked. We all know caution is required because we’ve all been through too much.

Afterwards in the pub that was exactly what happened. Team and celebrating fans both earned it. So did Davey Moyes and his staff. And – whisper it – so did the people who appointed him and backed him.