Apologies, once again for the lateness of this report, but I had a very important weekend with numerous pints of Stella. Now my head is clear, I shall try and recall some of the moments from Saturday's disappointing defeat.

A near full house welcomed new boy Tim Cahill. It was their first opportunity to thank him for six points on the road, with his two goals at Shitteh, and Pompey. Bad news though as I took my seat, and seen the ominous figure of Graham Poll as the man in the middle. This twat goes out of his way to give The Blues a hard time, with one of his most infamous cock up's at Goodison, when he denied Don Hutchinson, a last second winner against the shite a few seasons ago. For our older readers he is on par with a certain Clive Thomas, and the pair of them must share the same DNA, half human, half turd.

Everton looked classy in the first half, as they set about a Spurs side, who have defended soundly this season. It was hard to see how they had only let three goals in all season, as their fledgling defence looked all over the place at times. As early as the five minute mark, Benty was denied a blatant penalty, that even Stevie Wonder would have found hard not to see, but our mate Graham had other ideas. Everton pressed on with home debutante Cahill growing in stature with every touch. Killa out on the left was having a field day, as the boys looked like a team growing in confidence as the half went on. Cahill nearly added to his two Prem goals, when with Robinson beaten hands down, his powerful header came crashing off the Street End post. Killa and Ossie both had efforts that should have given Everton the lead. Ossie's especially brought a fine point blank stop from England's new No.1, as Benty struggled to keep the rebound on target. The teams left the pitch at the break goal less. Nige in the Everton sticks, needn't have bothered turning up for the first half, as he was a virtual spectator. A few half time scoops, and a promise of goals for the second half, that was was needed.

Half Time: Everton 0, Spurs 0

Everton came out for the second half, as we were emptying the last of our Chang away. The second half started in a quieter vein, with the crowd strangely muted. It was a matter of time till we scored, or so I thought as Spurs grabbed a shock lead thanks to a full back who sounds a bit like Parmesan Cheese. Martyn's first job of the second period was to pick the ball out of the Glwadys Street net, totally against the run of play. Everton through Ossie hit back straight away, and were unlucky not to find the equaliser as his shot hit the right hand post, and Killa was just not quick enough to put the subsequent rebound in the back of the onion bag.

Moyesy acted quickly to pull the game back when he replaced the hard working Carsley for the Big Man. The tactics changed straight away, as the high ball, route one stuff kicked in. Kipper turned to me and said 'this is so last season', as our optimism turned to pessimism. The talking point of the game was now upon us, as ex red shite Redknapp assaulted the king pin in our midfield Tim Cahill. The game certainly changed as Tim was helped off the pitch, after the knee high attack from the big gobshite. What was worrying for me was, in football you will unfortunately get tackles like this from time to time ( Gerrard on Nace). Referee Poll was a few feet away, and disturbingly for everyone in the ground he only produced a yellow, finding the attack on par with celebrating a goal shirt less. Into the fray came Stevey Watto, hard working, but not really having the touch of Cahill. Spurs had done their job, took Everton's best player out of the game, and we were clueless from this point onwards. Defoe went in two footed on Davey Weir over by the dug outs, to start an outbreak of hand bags again, but the game fizzled out into the proverbial smash and grab, that Spurs came to achieve.

My bluekipper Starman was heading Tim's way, but his early retirement forced a change of heart. This week Alan Stubbs gets the nod, for the way he is marshalling the back four. One conceded admittedly, but it is three goals in the last seven Prem matches. Third we sit, on merit, look on it as a slight blip.

Full Time: Everton 0, Spurs 1

Tim Cahill Lies In Agony after redshite spice girl went over the ball with the most cowardly tackle seen at Goodison Park in many a year

Moyesy can't believe the refs decision, as Clueso flags a taxi.

Lard Reports from Goodison Park

Blue Kipper Star Man

Stubbsy

 

Hit Post

 

Hit Post

 

Hit Defoe

Coulda. Shoulda. Mighta
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

Well, you could have written the script, couldn’t you. Just as you knew The Ears would score against us for Arsenal, so you knew Wayne Rooney would have a stormer in his first game for the Mancs. So midweek he goes and gets a hat-trick and could have had two more in a G14 Chumpions League group game against Fenerbahçe. All this after being out for a couple of months with a broken bone in his foot. True, the Turks were so wretched in the first half they could have been us last season. But to be fair the opposition didn’t matter so much. He still had to perform after a long spell on the sidelines. Nor will he get it so easy in most other games. Nevertheless, he delivered brilliantly. And it’s that which most inadequate mentalities can’t cope with.

It would help somewhat if people could come to terms with the true nature of Rooney’s timeless, instinctive playing genius. Like all genius or outstanding talent in anything, it belongs to no individual except himself, and certainly to no single club and that includes Everton and Manchester United. Sooner or later the latter will find that out too. In football this has been the case since the introduction of professionalism at the turn of the last century. Current financial circumstances in the game merely emphasise the fact and accelerate events. Genius always wants to express itself in the clearest way open to it. It is as selfish and single-minded as Rooney when he turns for goal. Which is why when he is on the playing field nothing bothers him, no set of circumstances, no hype, no opponent. He knows what he wants to do and how good he is. You can’t coach that in to anybody, you either have it or you don’t. Which is also why Alex Ferguson’s PR warbling tripe about the young man’s “potential” is so ludicrous it had this fan at least roaring with laughter. The Mancs will add nothing to his game he hasn’t already got. All they have to offer him currently is a bigger stage that, quite rightly, he wants to play on, and which will intensify his experience. And every club’s, EVERY CLUB’S, fortunes ebb and flow, as Wayne himself will find out.

Me, I wish him the best of luck, while also wishing he could have got on with David Moyes better and perhaps shown a little more self-determination in the face of his disgusting agent Paul Stretford and all the other manipulators (self-styled, media and otherwise) behind the scenes. Problem is, Streftord isn’t the only leech. The game is full of them now, and an awful lot of fans have fallen for the line that they too can be plebian power-brokers and hustlers. Which they will never be as long as they have a vacuum in their head and the game is organised and owned in its present form. As I have said before, Wayne Rooney’s life comes a poor second to all these hysterical nutcases. In the circumstances the only loyalty he owes is to himself and his abilities.

You could too have predicted the ensuing media circus. If it wasn’t the Manc TV commentator, Clive Tyldesley and assorted media “pundit” divvies making complete arseholes of themselves, it was our very own branch of the Melledrew Tendency. The Progression of Logical Conclusions means of course that the latter inevitably end up hating the fans and Everton Football Club because they have nowhere else to take their persecution complex. You couldn’t make up some of their paranoid neuroses or mob hysteria.

Of course it was a wretched experience seeing Rooney play for the Mancs as well as having to tolerate the unadulterated Manc-biased shite gushing unabated from the media. Example, on Radio Five the next morning one bubblebrained infoclerk said, “He bleeds red-and-white”……….. honestly. At other times – if you were stupid enough to believe the Manc PR machine – you would have thought the young man had only just been “discovered” by, erm, Manchester United. But if you want to indulge this kind of absurd tribal chauvinism all you have to say to the nearest florid-faced Manc is, “Never forget, your whole immediate future depends on the abilities of an 18 years old Scouser from Croxteth. And as long as you have a hole in your arse to talk through, he’ll never be a Manc. And sooner or later he’ll move on.” It works every time.

However, none of it was made any easier by the added reaction of some of our own fans. Inevitably, the tiny number of loons who expressed mad hatred for the young man himself was equalled by a similar number of dicksplats having a go at Bill Kenwright for selling him “cheaply.” Both sets of neurotics are well beyond the orbit of Planet Zog. The fact that the Mancs have just announced a dip in profits and also freely acknowledged they’ve just blown their transfer budget for the next year on a single player, that the agreed figure is a world record for an eighteen years old, apparently counts for nothing with these idiots, anymore than the fact that nobody else made a bid except Newcastle – and as we all know that was nothing other than a ludicrously obvious corrupt ProActive stalking horse. Even up-to-their-bollocks-in-debt Real Madrid couldn’t or wouldn’t make a bid. Also, a written transfer request plus before-and-after statements that he wanted to leave might have impinged somewhere in empty skulls. That is the REALITY of the so-called “free” market. You can only deal from the REALITY of your position, not wishful thinking or paranoid delusion. But hey! that’s life. Not everybody is blessed with basic common sense, let alone reasonable intelligence.

I recommend a smug grin. It drives the mad bastards up the wall, frothing. Make the most of it. Bate a whinger a day and enjoy it. If they can’t whine about the Rooney saga, they’ll whine about something else even if the team are playing well. Every club has a small coterie of these inadequate balloon-heads. For some of them their only raison d’etre is to make as many people as possible contract the same inadequacy with life. I suggest you tell ‘em to get fucked and say it at least four times a day to them until they get the message.

Rooney’s gone. It’s sad, maybe even a bit sports-tragic, but get on with it. Life and Everton Football Club go on. It isn’t the end of the world. If circumstances were different doubtless he would have stayed. But too many things were all wrong all at the same time. That’s the way it goes. It is obvious odds-on to even the most tyro fan that Wayne Rooney will become one of the greatest players ever. Enjoy the sight while you can. He is a once-in-a-lifetime player who could even become the greatest player the world has yet seen. And if he does I hope it will sweep away with contempt the small people with tiny minds who tried to latch onto his naïve genius. Once again – good luck, Wayne, in everything you do. Except when you play against us.

Meantime, two good wins at Bristol City in the League Cup and at Portsmouth in the League had us all happy enough for a couple of weeks. But that slightly bemused look on everyone’s face was due to an unexpected third place in the table. Well, you can dream. There’s no law against feeling good yet, though the aforesaid loons would surely have one if they could. You can imagine them glaring at themselves in the shaving mirror, snarling, daring a smile to appear, and dying, just DYING, for the good run to end so they can go back to eating unpeeled lemons and quaffing vinegar for breakfast to make their halitosis last longer.

The fact that Moyesy and the players have restored their collective pride is nothing less than a source of pleasure for the rest of us. Praise where it’s due too. They have both acknowledged their mistakes and tried to set them right. It is of course probably asking too much for this form to be maintained since the size and capability of the squad depends upon the kind of freedom from injury and suspension we all know inevitable. But if we can get to the January transfer window and still be in the top half then we stand a reasonable chance of feeling good at season’s end too. Much depends upon financial news that should break by about the end of October, or earlier if technical financial matters accelerate.

Time marches on. Half a century ago Portsmouth was notorious amongst Evertonians for the “Pompey Bogey.” Which meant they gave us a good seeing-to every time we played them, home or away. They also won successive championships in the late forties. Just go check the sombre records for the years 1946 – 1959. And you thought Leeds were the only team we used to have trouble with. But of course it couldn’t last forever because nothing ever does. Now it is as much part of distant history as Huddersfield’s hat-trick of championships. Great teams come and go, fortunes rise and fall. Example, nobody in their wildest dreams – including Arsenal fans – ever thought you would see a Gooners team playing the kind of wonderful fantasy-land footy they presently turn on almost at will. It’s as well to have a sense of perspective.

Match day against Tottenham was bright, with fleeting clouds and the first slight chill of the season. Ideal weather for the game. The team line up, our best side with the present squad and form. Which meant still no place for Joey. At the present rate the only way he’s going to get in is through injury to someone. For them, I looked forward to seeing Robbie Keane, Jermain Defoe and Ledley King. It turned out the first two were virtually anonymous while Ledley King was completely dominant at centre back. Defoe looked much smaller in the flesh than I had imagined.

Our play in the first half was a continuation of almost all the opening games – lots of sharp passing, strength in the tackle, sensible running and determination throughout the team. Centre-mid, Lee Carsley mostly wins it and gives it to The Gravedigger and he passes it around accurately, and this plus Tim Cahill’s eye-catching Mr. Everywhere performance is the core of the attacking threat. It leads directly to sustained pressure on the opposition defence. Everybody else had a good game too. They really do operate as a unit when they’re on top. What could be more welcome or different from last season? When they play like this there is full compensation for obvious lacks in individual technique. I am pleased too to record that Sandro made no howlers in this game, and that Hibbo had another stormer.

Thing is, though, as the half wore on and we kept threatening, hitting a post, denied a blatant penalty by who-else-but-fucking-Graham-Poll, narrow misses every now and then, I had the distinct feeling that if we didn’t get one while this dominant then we might leak one when eventually they had an inevitable attacking spell. But there’s no question the first half display was really good and if we could keep it up it was only a matter of time. It all came to a head when Paul Robinson kept a header out by “making a star” and the ball hit his left hand and stayed out. A goal then and we might well have gone on to win comfortably. Then again, the same thing happened to us in reverse at Crystal Palace. Things really do tend to even themselves out over a season.

Not that that is the way we thought after an absolutely atrocious over-the-ball “tackle” by the ex-pinky Redknapp on Tim Cahill which brought a mere yellow card and Tim being carted off to the treatment room. Or when Spurs got a headed goal well against the run of play. Or when Lee Carsley got substituted – at first I thought it was because he was injured but local denizens assure me it was a straightforward sub by Moyesy. If so, it was a bad mistake. Once Carsley AND Cahill were gone it completely changed the game, as it was bound to. There was no motor in midfield and no support for Leon and Marcus. The Big Yin came on, continued heading the ball to the opposition as he invariably does, and Steve Watson came on to demonstrate why he’s nearer to the end of his first class career than the beginning. The impetus was gone even though we kept coming forward in mostly loose fashion. From then on we were never really convincing, especially in the vicinity of Ledley King, who was superb. We became even less so when Tottenham suddenly started kicking everybody in sight for some reason which completely escaped this fan, but, really, that was peripheral. The lack of depth in the squad was apparent.

In the end it was a frustrating one to lose because we could and should have won it by half time. We could have gone second too. Coulda. Shoulda. Mighta. The world of sport is full of conditional tenses. In the end the only thing which matters, cruel or not, is what actually happens.

So let’s see how the team and the fans bounce back from this one.

In the meantime, go take the piss out of The Melledrew Tendency. God knows they’ve got it coming.