Hit the buffers, shot our bolt, ran out of steam, throw myself round the bedroom, sorry forget the last one. Whatever your choice of cliche is though and I do hate cliche's, we certainly are a different side since the Fiorentina two legged defeat. A great point was made to me last night and it did make me think. It was that if Fiorentina would have scored in the first few minutes of the second leg at Goodison a few weeks ago, we would have accepted our fate early on, but to go all the way to penalties after a tremendous fight back really has hit the players hard. Add in to that, no Mikky, Leon or Tiny and with the visit of Chelsea to Goodison, we were certainly always going to be up against it.

Now I for one, hate everything Chelsea stand for in football. Peter Kenyon, Abramovich, Ashley Cole, all arrogant horrible people in my eyes, but what I can't take away from the West Londoners is that they are a class outfit with class players. Ricardo Carvalhio and John Terry are two players who prove my point, two class defenders who would walk into any side in Europe, and we did not have the tact or guile to break these two down, so in turn we could not break Chelsea down.

We did try though, Manny went close most notably on two occasions from free kicks. One brought an unorthodox save out of Petr Cech, the other in the second period just flashed wide of the post. Chelsea took the lead in the dying minutes of the first period, when Michael Essien lobbed the ball over the ensuing Tim Howard after a fortuitous one two with Wright Phillips. The Blues huffed and puffed, and Cech was the busier of the two keepers, but in saying that Tim Howard pulled off a cracking save when he tipped over a thirty yard drive from Obi One Kanobe in the second half.

It was men against boys, The Yak and AJ just did not click, the service was none existent, and the long ball from the back was food and drink to Mssrs Terry and Carvalhio. But it is a bent system, our team last night cost less then Chelsea's subs bench I bet you. The top three and the shite start every season with £30m big ones in the bank, and they can buy big. The UEFA Cup this season I reckon may have amassed us a few million quid, chicken feed compared to the Champions League riches. Our squad is stretched to the bone, our three players with the creative ideas were sat in the stand, Peanuts left the pitch with a half hour to go, and subsequently the ground on crutches, and all we have to replace them from the bench is a kid out of the rezzies, and an aging well past his sell by date Dane, and that is the stark reality of being a Blue.

The lads tried their best but came up against an impregnable wall of Terry and Carvalhio. I did get pissed off with sections of the crowd having at pop at the players. This time not the usual suspects in Phil Neville, Hibbo and co., but players of the calibre of The Jag and Joey Yobo, well a few blurts by me did anyway. We are fifth and hopefully we will stay there, we got to the Semi Final of one Cup competition, and had one incredible journey in Europe this season. By Everton's standards or standards of fans of my increasing age, that is still not good enough, but in the year 2008 and with all the financial advantages the top three and the shite have on us, it is still a season I will look back fondly on. As my boss in work says, lets look at the bigger picture, and as I said at the beginning of this piece, I fuckin' hate cliche's. Starman The Jag, well played son.

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Former Everton player from the 60's and 70's, Frank Darcy
entertained us with a few fine tales from yesteryear.