After a couple of beers and Aggie's Bacon Sarnies followed by a quick rendition of kop aid in the Blue Kipper Lounge, I was ready for anything. So it was in positive mood we walked to Goodison. This was different though. We now have a team we believe in. Over the last few seasons, Derby day has come around, and I've always thought, yeah we can beat the shite today, but in the back of my mind there has always been that niggling doubt. We had to be playing to the best of our ability and they had to have an off day. Yes today was different. As Harry Hill says: "You've got to have a system." Moyesy uses one that is good for the players he has available. The way we are playing, Yes this was the day.

Moyesy had left Big Dunc on the bench, and brought back the little diamond, Leon. Back to the system. No surprises there. The shite surprised there fans by leaving out their so called classy spaniards and bringing in Diao - spit the dog's mate. This was a compliment from Beneathus to Moyesy.

The game started with misplaced passes and a few fiesty tackles. Notably by Hibbo and Pisto. Everton's first chance came when Gravesen crossed, but Killa looped his header over the bar. Everton started to get into the game. Cahill and Osman were playing some nice one touch togger. When the shite got the ball, Hibbert, Carsley, Pistone and Stubbs were flying in with some great challenges.

Everton should have taken the lead in a typical move. Tommy Gravesen played footsy with the ball before playing it up to Marcus Bent, who was out on the right. He controlled and then crossed the ball to the incoming Cahill, who leaped like a kangaroo, but unfortunately headed like one. The ball went wide, when it was easier to score. You don't get many clear cut chances in a Derby and Everton fans were wondering if that was that. You wouldn't notice though they way all ends of the ground were singing Everton songs.

The shite's only good chance came from a point blank header, but Big Nige saved brilliantly. Diao got booked for chopping Cahill's legs away. It was just a matter of time. Tony Hibbert also got a yellow for a late challenge. Everton went in all square at half time, but nothing I had seen changed my view that we would be crying at the end of the match. Because we're like that.

Half-time: EVERTON 0, the shite 0.

Both sides kept the same sides for the start of the second half. Everton seemed to have their minds still in the dressing rooms, as they were slow getting going for the first 15 mins. Everton's wide men started playing well and the whole team seemed to be lifted from it. Osman was tormenting Riise with his skill. Finally the redshite was booked for a foul on Cahill. On the other flank, Killa was starting to play like the player from last season. He was beating Jose at will. Jose was later booked for his 100th foul on Killa. Ossie nearly broke the deadlock when he cut in beating Riise and then hit a left foot shot that just went the wrong side of the bar.

Everton finally got the goal they deserved, when again Killa waltzed down the left and crossed the ball into the area. It came to Bent who laid it off to Leon. Seeing his path was blocked, he rolled it into the oncoming Lee Carsley who hit first time with a bit of side (al John Parrot) and it flew into the net. Cue MAYHEM. The Everton players all ran towards Carsley. He was caught by Bent, dragged to the ground and then a ten man piley on started. Fantastic sight. That's it I thought, we've won it. There is no way they'll come back from that. They had a bit of pressure near the end, but Stubbsey, Weir and Martyn dealt with it.

We had chances to make it two. From a Gravesen corner a scramble for the ball, saw it come to Cahill yards out, with the goal at his mercy he scuffed hiss shot and it was cleared off the line. Stubbsey hit a free kick which flashed wide.

Big Dunc came on for Marcus Bent and was immediately booked. Hypia who is not the same player he was, clattered into the back of Ferguson. Dunc jumped up and run at Hypia, leaned into him and Hypia went down like the ref Di Canio pushed.

When the final whistle went, the tears flowed, uncontrollable joy. Don't listen to any redshite fan who says Derby games don't matter. Looking at Jamie Carragher for the last 20 mins trying to get his beaten team to fight for the cause, it seemed that the Spaniards were taking a siesta and the other scouser had his mind on shopping in the Kings Road. The away end emptied quicker than ever.

The Everton fans, who normally are pretty quiet at home, but loud away, never stopped chanting and singing all game. They certainly helped their team today. Although we never played the type of football we have done lately, we deserved the 3 points. It is hard when these lower teams come and shut up shop, desperately looking for a draw. It's hard to pick out a man of the match, as it was a true team performance, but I've got to, so I've gone for Leon Osman, who is turning into some player.

Then it was back to the Blue Kipper Lounge. The Christmas party had already started. Getting back to the ale ouse to meet your family and mates to talk about the game is always something to look forward to. Today you didn't have to talk. You just looked and they new. We were entertained by Mark Langley, a great comedian and impressionist, John Bailey, Mick Lyons and Derek Mountfield. Plus a load of happy Evertonians on the Karaoke. Happy days.

Roll on Monday morning in work to talk about being second and 12 points above the shite.

Full-time: EVERTON 1, the shite 0.

Harry Hill Shooooots - Goooooaaal

Killa Leaves Some redshite on his arse

Kipper Reports from Goodison Park

Blue Kipper
Star Man

Leon Osman

For Fred Senior
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

Sunday night after the Bolton game, nothing better to do, ended up watching late night “Match of The Day 2” with Adrian Chiles as Front Talking Head on BBC 2. For quite sound reasons we are all naturally chary of TV and its so-called pundits, mainly because we all feel rightly we could do a better job if given a little media coaching. On this viewing Chiles seems to have the commonsensical approach of a committed fan (West Brom, poor bastard, but he keeps his chin in the air) with the ability to laugh at the game and its pomposities – including his own – without losing focus on the best things it has to offer. Regulars will know this is my own view of matters footy. Therefore I will revisit the programme in the hope the rotund but seemingly happy Mr. Chiles can keep up the good work. One of the aesthetic features is the presence of pundit Mick McCarthy’s odd, lozenge-shaped head and misaligned nose. Put that in the near-square of a TV screen and you get the kind of wild geometry Gaudi spent his life designing and building in Barcelona. Place him next to Jim Smith and you have the kind of juxtaposition that would have Gaugin orgasmic with artistic relish. These days Jim’s advanced years have moulded his face into a blood orange with rosacea supporting a magnificently cratered nose. It’s all irreverent, I’m delighted to say. Footy has far too many pompous arseheads on and off the pitch.

On Monday night, eve of the AGM, Paul Gregg fooled nobody but himself with the kind of press release Eddie Braben would struggle to write better. I don’t know how much he’s paying the PR firm, but whatever it is, he has been bilked. He was only five days “late” with the news, presaged last August, of True Blue Holdings necessary liquidation prior to incoming dosh and change in shareholdings. If he thought the timing gained him anything with the fans, or in fact anyone with any common sense…………well, he couldn’t be more wrong. Move along, Paul. You had your chance, grouped yourself with the comical clerks of the Sharesellers Association – interestingly largely silent, odd voice excepted, on the following night – and you blew it. It’s better for everyone, yourself included, that you cash your diluted chips and do one. The sooner someone finds £7-odd millions to pay off your share the better. While you are at it take the Sharesellers Association (membership: about 370, our average gate over 35,000) with you. You aren’t wanted.

The next morning brought publication of a local city councillors report into the failure of the “Fourth Grace” project on the waterfront, a couple of kilometres from the Kings Dock site. Surprise, surprise, it claimed the scheme failed because of lack of project leadership by everybody involved, including the agencies. Well we could have saved them the trouble. All they had to do was read our Kings Dock report here. Déjà vu all over again, people. Meanwhile the city has lost Will Alsop’s brilliant and radical design, probably to a piece of rectilinear boredom prompted by a lack of talent and imagination, but promoted by a Suit who knows how to add columns of figures together and nothing else.

Tuesday evening brought the annual general meeting and the prospect of huge hilarity from the Melledrew Tendency. Alas, what a disappointment in the Walter Smith sense of the word. The Tendency must have been sulking in a rented cardboard structure somewhere in Purgatory Road, Hades, because mostly all we got at question time was the usual perfunctory, half-arsed, self-promoting twaddle you can get at any ward political gathering. I waited in vain for the sound of motor mouth whining that apparently transformed the EGM from a real opportunity into a high comedy, soap operatic free-for-all. Maybe my location in the spillover room watching it on CCTV took something away from the experience. But I doubt it. Crestfallen, I can only report the AGM was as somnambulant as an average Sunday afternoon with your granny. My youngest daughter asked more penetrating questions during her fourth form year. The top table ran rings around the situation even when one of the participants couldn’t recall who scored the winner in the 1966 Cup Final, hoho. Yes, it was a weak laugh, but that’s all you are going to get. Some people never learn.

Judged purely on how to get through these things with minimal damage, you have to say Bill Kenwright came out of it grinning like Tony Curtis untouched in the famous custard-pie fight sequence in “The Great Race.” Then again, there weren’t many custard pies in evidence at the AGM. Occasionally someone got up and said something in a Very Serious Voice and then usually couldn’t follow it up even when an answer came floating back via the vaguest of routes. Thus demonstrating the very first rule of cross-examination – Don’t Ask A Question If You Don’t Have a Reasonable Idea Of What Is Coming And How To Direct Circumstances To Suit Yourself. If you are going to get involved in this kind of thing asking questions about Cup Final winners is as tactically useful as a dud penny banger in a firefight. An opponent simply wields an assault rifle, empties the magazine into you, and walks away smiling.

Keith Wyness gave a good, determinist performance in his presentation but didn’t really say anything commercially we didn’t know or haven’t seen before, except the possible purchase of the David France Collection and its following fate. The proper question is whether he has the management ability to achieve his self-admitted minimum commercial goals. We will find out in due course. Certainly he was rightly all-round critical of the demoralised set-up he inherited. Meantime, it should be noted that Joe Beardwood months ago had already publicly presented much of what he said. Since then of course the Sharesellers have aligned themselves with Paul Gregg and should be viewed accordingly. The difference is we now have someone sitting in the CEO office that could probably work well with someone as constructive and able as Joe. I hope his obvious talents don’t go adrift.

Then came Christopher Samuelson of financial services group Fortress Sports Fund, beautifully ambushed by Bill Kenwright into facing the fans. It was an opportunity to ask all the right questions at the right time to the right man, albeit a mere financial agent of those with the real dosh. The shareholders blew the chance offered them. If you could get emotional over things like this you would weep. It was Samuelson who couldn’t answer the Cup Final question, which might have satisfied the anodyne comic in the questioner and those who hooted but told us nothing of any real use. I will have more to say on the Fortress issue in due course and at the right time.

Bill did his “I’m just a country boy” routine throughout so successfully even his enemies – and there are enough of those to fill a seedy small pub parlour on County Road – fell into foot shuffling silence. The real beauty of this is that it allows said enemies to be self-satisfied patronising……………and therefore effectively neutered. If they are busy giggling to each other or saluting the mirror or muttering at their unpolished shoes they aren’t exactly in the best intellectual condition. The last time I saw someone do it as well as this was the immortal James Stewart. Meantime Paul looked like he’d rather be anywhere other than Goodison Park on a midweek December night. Which roughly coincides with my opinion of his actions. He had his chance with the Kings Dock, blew it on a lousy “reverse mortgage” proposal – rightly rejected by the board – and then disappeared sulking until last August and his ill advised attack on the club, and then his farcical eve of AGM PR release. Someone call a taxi.

Moyesy gave a hero’s speech for a few minutes and that was it for another year, at least until the necessary shareholders’ formal meeting required if and when Fortress deliver the full mazoomas.

On Wednesday ‘Arry demonstrated he has twenty lives, not nine, when he took the manager’s job at Southampton. Once again the boy done well and rahn rings around every geezer in sight. I have no idea what Portsmouth fans think of him joining their traditional tribal enemies but I can hazard a fair guess. Not that it will bother him one jot as he pushes his barrer into the next street. Tsk, tsk, ‘Arry. You are brilliantly disgraceful. Despite your spivvery and Slavan Bilic you make me smile muchly and I can forgive you almost anything for that. Then came the gossip that maybe Gordon Strachan would take precisely the opposite route and become manager of Portsmouth in ‘Arry’s stead. Friends, the football merry-go-round is almost beyond parody. Monty Python and Spike Milligan live!

By Saturday morning I was looking forward to the derby game for ninety minutes of healthy escapism. All wrapped up, season ticket in my pocket, just about to go out of the door………………the telephone rang. A family matter required resolution. I couldn’t go the match. I had to be elsewhere and quickly.

We won.

Oh well.

Roll on Blackburn, away.