What a difference a week makes. Last week undoubtedly we faced the best team in the top flight, yesterday probably the worst. Lets take nothing away from Everton's performance, it was uplifting, and after the shite Summer we have had, very much needed.

A pre match boost was afforded to Moyesy, when Joey passed a fitness test, and added some much needed quality at the back, and he stuck with the very immobile Kevin Campbell, but started Marcus Bent alongside him.

Everton started in a confident mood, but after only nine minutes, disaster struck, and our hearts sank, when some awful defending let Hudson in with a free header at the far post. Martyn went ballistic, at his static defence, and rightly so. Palace could and should have doubled their lead, Stubbsey though had other idea's, and a last line clearance spared his team mates blushes. Looking back now on the game, to me this was most definitely the turning point. Two down at that point, would have spelt disaster, but Everton picked themselves up, brushed themselves' down and got on with the job in hand. On the twenty minute mark, they got their just desserts when some Grobbelaaresque goalkeeping from Palace's new keeper Speroni. After pissing around with the ball in his own area, he lost possession, as Super pounced, he whipped the Everton striker up, to hand Everton a penalty. Tommy Grav stepped up, and superbly found the corner of the net to pull Everton level.

Chances were few at either end, but give Palace their due, they edged the first half on possession. Nace picked up a needless booking scathing down one of the Palace midfielders, and that was that, in an entertaining first half.

Half Time: Palace 1, Everton 1.

If Palace ended the first half strongly, Everton started the second like a steam train. Marcus Bent looked energetic, and full of tricks up front, and was unlucky not to open his Everton account, when a volley on the turn was pushed away well by the Palace keeper. Everton were rampant, and the back four were probably happy of the rest after last weekends exertions. A goal, had to come soon, and when the ball popped up at Grav's feet on the hour mark, a shot off pure class was unleashed. Grav curled his right footer in the top corner of Speroni's net, to send us all into raptures. For a man who supposedly wants to leave the club, he certainly enjoyed his goal with the adoring travelling Evertonians.

Bent could have scored again, when some neat control in the six yard box, deserved a better result, with once again Speroni coming to his team mates rescue. It could have all come crashing in for the Blues, when once again Naysmith, picked up a second yellow, followed by the obligatory red, for an absolute child like tackle, right under the ref's nose. Grow up you, and act responsible, you could have cost us. Moyesy instantly shuffled his pack, and brought on Pistone for the unlucky Osman, preparing no doubt for the onslaught in the last fifteen minutes. It never came, and if anything Everton looked more focused as they extended their lead courtesy of Marcus Bent. A beautiful through ball by my bluekipper Starman Tommy Grav, was controlled well by Benty, who took it in his stride, and slid it under Speroni's body. Three one, game over, I turned to Jogger, and said fancy A Chang, he said fuck that, lets get pissed instead.

Much improved performance, and it is nice for the travelling hordes, and what a turn out by the fans to see our first away win in over nine months. Lets keep it going next week against the Baggies. Well done boys a fine job done.

Full Time: Palace 1, Everton 3.

Lavo Reports from Selhurst Park

Blue Kipper Star Man

Tommy Grav

 

Benty Was Superb

 

Goal Line Clearance

Texyla, ticket tout
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

It has been a wonderful week for sports fans with a wild sense of humour. The Olympic Games are with us, and all that means outside the traditional trappings of track-and-field. Pub sports such as Spot The Junkie and Synchronised Free Style Gurning have somehow managed to elbow their way in over the years until even the likes of maddeningly smug BBC TV commentator Barry Davies can justify his narcissistic and arcane orgasamic prose………………”In all my years commentating………Here he comes………watch as he whips it out and slots it in………Yes! Oh yes!………There it is!” And all this before the nine o’clock TV witching hour. It’s enough for you to send the kids to bed whimpering even earlier than usual.

As it is two Greek junkies were collared before they could actually compete. Then next day they “crashed on a motor bike” – together – before they could attend the resulting inquiry, and then they walked out anyway. Then it transpired one or both of them had previously missed, amongst others, a drugs test in Cyprus because they said they were training in Crete. But when the drug testers promptly went to Crete the testees were actually in Qatar. Or it might have been the other way round or even inside out, or at different venues altogether. Plainly, where these two are concerned matters have deteriorated to the level of infamously corrupt Italian football drugs testing of yore. Which means their end of the spectacle isn’t worth the proverbial carrot. Still, it could have been worse. They might have gone shopping with Rio Ferdinand. Or ski-jumping with Eddie The Eagle.

Meanwhile, local lad Steve Parry won an unexpected swimming bronze medal. There he was, young, articulate, intelligent, enthusiastic and full of the whole experience, like the admirable pinky Gerrard and a lot of our local kids – and totally different from the kind of local denizen the media too often appear to go out of their way to interview in the streets, the ones who leave you moaning helplessly into your handkerchief. So it’s a pleasure to say Nice One, Steve la, Nice One. (I better explain the “la” bit is a local colloquialism we sometimes use in gentle, dialectical self-mockery. I only say this because a lot of the time such subtlety goes right over the heads of foreigners. Anything to help.)

Actually, I reckon our approach to participating in the Olympics is just about right. There’s something decidedly unhealthy about the joyless single mindedness of two or three nations running what are essentially doping programmes. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be the best or wanting to compete honestly with the best – after all, what’s the point of playing a competitive sport if you don’t compete – but there are limits. The extremist dangers were never better exampled than the crazy tit-for-tat politicos of the USA and the old Soviet Union during the Cold War. Mind you, like you, I’m more than a bit pissed off with our loony commentators when they say things like, “Yes, Team GB are concentrating on their own efforts,” or “………and it’s Team GB, quite prepared to let America/Australia/Germany set the pace………” when we all know very fucking well the real reason is we can’t get within sniffing distance. And another thing, can we please ditch the Yankified shite of “Team GB”? I don’t know what the answer is to all this. As usual, I merely draw the dichotomies to your attention.

Footy-wise, midweek, England bladdered mighty Ukraine and gave a second half chance to a lot of very promising youngsters. One could only be encouraged even though it was a mere friendly. Most of the kids on show looked as though they might well plug existing talent gaps in the national team if they can maintain their development. Once again the crowd was encouragingly spattered with flags and banners from small town teams’ supporters, a rare opportunity to focus all that regional chauvinism into some harmless unity and support. Also on display, recently-departed Michael Owen, the very one who just a few weeks ago said, “Gerrard leaving would be a catastrophe.” When said pinky DIDN’T depart, Owen promptly left for Real Madrid. And they wonder why the fans have added extreme cynicism to their traditional fickleness. Would you buy a second hand car from a professional footballer, ANY of them?

Kieron Dwyer was booed in the same match for refusing to follow Uncle Bobby Robson’s Toon instructions. He apologised later but it was too late. Bobby himself has already been fired with nine months notice. Then Newcastle sold Woodgate (who has played only 37 games for them) also to the indebted-for-a-quarter-billion-dollars Real Madrid. Thus has professional football become a successful parody of its corrupt self and the various barrow boys, spivs and loonies who are now attached leech-like. Implosion will arrive eventually. The only question is “when?” You’ll get a hint of impending doom when you see blocks of empty seats a la Italian football stadia. At which point there will be next to nothing for the spivs to leech off and most will disappear as quickly as they materialised. Sadly, human nature being what it is, the liars, cheats and hucksters will always be with us. But if you keep your eyes and mind open and do enough digging you’ll always be able to identify them.

And so to the first away match of the season. An early morning rise at six a.m., classic English temperate day, half blue sky, half threatening dark clouds as remnants of the previous days deluge. The Bus was half full as murmured conversation succeeded the usual piss-takes about who was hung over from the previous night’s debauchery, or What Excuse Does So-and-So Have For Not Being Here? Half way down the motorway the blue sky increased, the clouds rose higher and thinner, the traffic got thicker and the sun slanted in acutely left-to-right. Eventually we arrived via Croydon, which has an excellent claim to being the most characterless town on the face of the planet after Al Khobar circa 1987. It’s a chintzy place that looks as though it was conceived and built almost instantaneously in 1959. Nevertheless, the streets were reasonably clean – in dramatic contrast to the appallingly littered motorway landscape around Coventry and Stratford – and its inhabitants equally reasonably cheery.

We eventually settled down in a hostelry named the “Thomas Farley.” Now, I don’t know who he was – doubtless some intrepid e-mailer will tell us – but, given the general feel of the locality, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was an accountant or an estate agent or a freemason. Good pub, though, staff who smiled and served quickly. The smile froze at one point on the adolescent barmaid who served me when I got a round in and said, the way you do, “Take your own, luv.” When I got back to the table everyone else fell about laughing.

“How much did you give her?”

“A tenner.”

“For four pints?”

“Yeh.”

“Soft gett. It’s two-and-a-half-knicker a pint here. She thought you were taking the piss.”

I tried to cover up my shame by leading a jeering attack on Mogsy’s CD choice on The Bus. Initially it had been melancholic but acceptable because it wasn’t so wrist slittingly acute as something by Leonard Cohen. Then he said he was going to Up The Tempo and promptly put on the biggest pile of shite since a herd of cows let go together. It was by something called “Ash.” How fucking appropriate. It sounded like a recording of a drag race in a junkyard. Everyone agreed Mogsy should be banned from future selection of CDs for the journey in much the same way as he’s banned from crackling crisps bags during a snooker evening. Incoming sarcastic suggestions for replacement music included Mantovani, James Last, Bert Kampfaert, Glenn Miller, Des O’Connor, and even Tom O’Connor. When an extremely fit-looking cockney toffee arrived with Keith and his delightful little daughter Kate, the former’s expert opinion was sought. Maddeningly, he confirmed Mogsy’s choice. In a sulky fit of pique I almost didn’t get him a drink in until I remembered I had to atone to the barmaid.

Discussion of match prospects revealed a strange sort of Dunno Syndrome. Nobody except Mogsy was willing to forecast, and he said we’d win 2-1, that he was full of optimism. Most of us, me included, had a sense of It Doesn’t Look Good Does It But I’ll Go Down Saluting With Them If I Have To. A bit strange, I know, but it’s somewhat similar to the old military gag – you shouldn’t join up if you can’t take a joke. Unfortunately for us Evertonians the joke has been on us for the last ten years or so, season before last excepted.

As we left the pub for the short walk up to the ground a body-armoured bizzy appeared from nowhere and asked Texyla to “have a word.” It turned out he had seen him giving a ticket to Sanjay for the match, done a u-turn in the high street and come back to collar a ticket tout. Only, as usual, Texyla had arranged to meet Sanjay and give him the ticket for what it cost, a lesson some rip-off people could learn in other areas of footy activity. During the “conversation” he was surrounded by four bizzies, two of whom looked like they would sell their own mother for an arrest. Of course the whole thing was a complete farce instigated by hyped-up bizzies on a mission to justify deployment of a van full of, well, hyped-up baton-wielding bizzies, actually. Eventually of course he was allowed to go on his way after he politely explained what was happening. The lesson is of course that we don’t want ticket touts anymore than we want hyped-up bizzies breathing down our necks simply because we are on our way to a footy match. Despite this yeuk experience I have to say the rest of the Metropolitan Police contingent were amiable and good humoured enough not to notice their presence.

Inside the ground, excellent away support for the team. Given our circumstances it was terrific to see not a member of the whining curmudgeonly bastards from the Melledrew Tendency in attendance. They were probably at home slashing themselves in front of a mirror repeating the words, “Hate, Hate, Hate.” Anyway, likely they would have been swamped by the approximately three thousand loudly cheering fans who made the journey. The only exceptions were right behind us in Block X, Row 32, seats 170 to 174, Kevin Campbell haters all. Thick, pimply faced adolescents, bodies full of hormones, big mouths and empty heads on a scapegoat mission. There’s nothing to be done with these people any more. They’re so brain dead I have stopped confronting them – as the great and good pastor Bonhoffer once said, “I stooped arguing with the nazis when they became too stupid to argue with” – and resorted to oblique jeers with The Squire, who couldn’t resist saying in a stage voice, “They All Look The Same To Me You Know.” Needless to say the guilty parties have learned nothing from the Ron Atkinson media episode. In fact I doubt if they have learned anything about anything, ever, circumstances likely to be permanent amongst them and their ilk.

After last week’s massacre by The Gooners our team was about what you’d expect. Marcus Bent got his debut and Tony Hibbert was in from the off. Sandro and Jamie Mac on the bench. Looking at their line up my feeling was that if we couldn’t get something out of this then we really are doomed. I didn’t know any of the opposition until Keith – who lives locally – said he’d known about Wayne Routledge for some time and he could really play.

The opening phase was quite ordinary. Bright, warm sunshine meant the play came in short bursts. For us, Kilbane made some threatening moves down our left but really it was just initial sparring as two ordinary teams felt out the opposition.

Then we let one through after ten minutes. Nace got turned inside out on our left by Routledge, who got to the byline and clipped one over. As it was leaving his boot The Squire said, “Goal.” Sure enough, it got across the area dropping at head height and their man came steaming in and butted it firmly down and in past a helpless Nige. It was a good persistent dribble and cross but Nace, who worries me more and more, should have got a tackle in. He had the time and failed. Well, it’s sort the men from the boys time, isn’t it. Would their heads go down or stay up? Fortunately, they stayed up despite a couple of hairy moments including an excellent last ditch goal line clearance by Stubbsy and a hooked volley a whisker over from their man at right side penalty area. Another goal then and who knows? On such things do matches and club fortunes turn.

Still, we kept going against a team who will seemingly struggle at this level unless they have an application of individual and collective abilities they seem to lack. Suddenly I felt a whole lot more optimistic. We weren’t giving the ball away as often as usual and occasionally even played it around in three or four passes before releasing someone – usually Kilbane, wide left – on a quick, threatening run. It was no surprise when we got an equaliser after another ten minutes thanks to a defensive mix up of pantomime proportions. Their ‘keeper played patacake passes with a defender and when Kev chased him down and got tripped it was a clear penalty. Which The Gravedigger promptly despatched into the ‘keeper’s bottom left corner.

The remainder of the half was taken up mostly with staccato, nervous play by both sides, interspersed with some neat passing by us, particularly The Gravedigger, and occasional speedy runs by their best attacker, Johnson. Equals, halftime, about right.

Ten minutes into the second half and Kev got subbed by The Big Yin. Likely this will be the norm until their contracts run out, or one or both move on. Neither can give it the full ninety any more but can still do damage against the middling and lesser teams while they’re on.

After another ten minutes we got a second after a move down our left ended with a neat interchange involving Marcus Bent and Tommy Gravesen on our left angle of their penalty area. The Palace defence was lousy, slow and spatial shite and they suffered the consequences accordingly. The Gravedigger had time to work the ball slightly to his right and promptly bent one out and inside the ‘keeper’s top left corner. Unstoppable. If we get that much time and room for the rest of the season we’ll end up qualifying for Europe. It was still a superb goal though. In fact as one of The Gravedigger’s biggest critics I have to say he ended up as man of the match because he played as a senior pro should, thoughtfully, with lots of skill, and – lawksamercy – he didn’t give the ball away. We actually played a lot of this game through midfield. Yes, I know Palace’s midfield was even worse than our usual display in that department, but, what the hell, you can only do your best.

Black mark against Nace, who rightly got sent off for a stupid offence right in front of a newcomer ref. A quick reshuffle brought on Sandro for Leon. By now most fans have realised Ozzie hasn’t got the lasting power or tackling strength despite the kind of wholeheartedness we all thought almost obsolescent in professional footy players.

The team reformed and stayed strong for the closing stages. Not that Palace had much idea how to break through. Joey was his usual imperious best and Stubbsy wasn’t caught out by pace or space. Up front, The Yin and Marcus still caused trouble and doubled back when they had to, which was a lot. Even with ten men you still felt we had another goal in us. Sure enough, eight minutes from the end, Hibbo cleared a ball to The Gravedigger, plumb centre mid in their half. And he scooped one up and over their defence similar to the way he did Arsenal last week, only this time over a much longer distance. Marcus ran on to it down the middle and one-on-one with the ‘keeper stuck it nonchalantly under his body. It was just desserts for a determined, skilful non-stop performance. Memories of The Rad’s (now gone) notorious inability in similar situations were vanquished.

Of course the fans were ecstatic. And if anyone deserved this, it was them. Their loyalty never ceases to amaze me. Given recent events you couldn’t blame if they decided to go take up speed-macrame for a hobby. But there they were there in their thousands once again. Marvellous. What a wonderful difference to the tiny minority whingeing, moaning, self-pitying, self-styled know-it-all trollops who attach themselves to any club.

Still, it wouldn’t do to get carried away by this win, welcome though it was. Palace were as poor as we were last week and in the end we turned them over rather comfortably. From which you can draw your own conclusions. By the end of September I think the general shape of our season will be cast. Maybe not definitely, but certainly enough for us to see if it’s to be sackcloth and ashes again. There are a few surprises in store, on and off the pitch. Far away, rich men are gathered making decisions.

Back on The Bus, Mogsy settled down with his own CD player and earphones and stoically ignored the jibes. Since the radio didn’t work either, the journey home was sheer bliss filled only with the music of human voices. “Christ,” someone said, “have you seen the table? Fuck me, we’re NINTH.” For a moment it all got rather heady. But only for a moment.

Footy, don’tcha just LUV it?