Moyesy says: "It was really tough. We did everything to defend. It was a good afternoon to get three points. With the penalty incident, the ref pointed to the spot and from where I was standing, (Leon Cort) was two yards inside the box. If I'm wrong, I'll apologise. I expect (Alan Wiley) to do the same if I'm right." (14/09/08)

See anything unusual or funny at the match today? e-mail info@bluekipper.com

* Just who was Chris Woods talking to at great length on the phone from the dug out. Seemed to coincide with Howard struggling with the long throw ins, is it possible the Everton number 1 was fitted with an ear piece!? Pete Healy

* When Stoke scored the equaliser they started singing "Two nil and you fucked it up." but at full time a batch of Everton fans started singing "Two nil and we fucked it up". Quality. Love the site guys keep it up. COYB. Cater Bake

* Moysey shaking hands with the Stoke supporters behind him at the final whistle - priceless. Keith Harrison

IF ANY EVERTON FAN WANTS TO WRITE A REPORT OF ANY OF THIS SEASON'S GAMES, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO DO SO. JUST E-MAIL IT TO info@bluekipper.com AND WE WILL PUT IT HERE.

Wiley waives the rules at the Britannia
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

A lousy start to the season meant a welcome from all Blues for a few weeks break to accommodate the World Cup qualifiers. For us, it was also a matter of completing a few more incomings before the transfer-window closed to enable a handful of hysterical knobheads amongst our fans to get off to the local mental ward for treatment while everyone else tried to figure out why our defence has suddenly turned into a footy version of the Titanic. Meanwhile we had another EGM that was a complete waste of time……so much so, the club’s articles of association had to be changed – if I was the owner I would have done it years ago – to prevent frivolous birdbrains from creating more whinefests for no reason other than, honourable exceptions apart, the sound of their own useless, twittering claptrap. Then more good news when England won both their World Cup games easily against Andorra and Croatia. All in all, the early break was worth it.

This was especially true of the Blue Kipper Icon evening for Alex Young. I stopped going to these functions long ago because they were all getting pretty much the same, but this one was in a different class. In keeping with the great man himself it was dignified, respectful and entirely in keeping with a true hero. Perhaps Alex is the last of his kind. Fans of all ages turned up to pay tribute and they were nothing less than brilliant, the very best of supporters. It was footy heaven.

Meanwhile, government minister Andy Burnham, great Evertonian, also said club ownership has to be “looked at” because of the number of foreign owners now in the English game. To which you felt like saying, “No shit, Late Sherlock. Your party has been in power eleven years and you say this NOW? Most of us have been saying it since the so-called Premier League came into existence and ‘New’ Labour did bugger all then or since to abort it. Take a look at European employment and corporate legislation. Then get back to us with some suggestions.“ Needless to say, we won’t hold our breath, Andy. While we’re on about politicians, the LibDems, soft bastards, want to see a return to standing terraces, thus demonstrating there’s almost no end to opportunist footy stupidity at the Westminster Burlesque Show. Naturally, the Tories have said nothing because they started off the wholesale final institutional corruption of the game in the early nineties along with Rupert Murdoch and Silvio Berlusconi. Since then ‘New’ Labour and mainstream media have done their dirty work for them by doing nothing at all. In the unlikely event any of them REALLY want to reform they could make all sports into trusts, and each sports club into a fans-governed trust, and share out gate money equally (the way it was in the old Football League), all trusts to have a legally binding and democratic constitution. No club can do it alone - the results of a lone action are obvious to anyone with a brain in their head. But to do that will require a commercial precedent which the New World Order (“globalisation,” “free markets,” “entrepreneurs,” “creators of wealth,” the usual bullshit) almost certainly wouldn’t tolerate unless forced to. After all, if you can do it in something as trivial as sports you can also……………Antonio Gramsci! Where are you when we need you?!

During the break Alan Curbishley and (oo there’s a surprise) Kevin Keegan did one from West Ham and Newcastle disrespectively, both saying it was because they weren’t given enough money to buy who they wanted. At geographic midpoint, Man. Sitteh got bought out by faloos-waving Gulf Arabs who now promise to buy everything and everyone in sight with windfall oil rip-off profits that, er, threaten to make paupers of ordinary footy fans. Not that the Arabs are on their own. The Yanks and Europeans are just as bad. Meantime, the very same footy fans plead for their club to be taken over by someone, anyone, similar. This is laughingly called “investment.” The loonies are in control of the asylum. And to prove it Skunks and pinkies fans went into the streets dressed in Summer Twat outfits and practically begged to sell their ass to anyone with the “right” amount of faloos. It was like watching the Crack Syrian Suicide Squad in ”Life of Brian.” It never occurs to these knobheads that the so-called “credit crunch” is exactly the same thing in action in footy. Sooner or later it will end the same way too. So by the time the Stoke fixture rolled around it was a relief to watch an actual match.

Prior to the game there was an awful lot of media pundits hot-air nonsense about the Stoke team and their fans. Sorry, but I just can’t take any team seriously with a name like Higginbotham in it. Those with reasonable memories will recall the old Victoria Ground, a slum of a place, and the peculiar behaviour of a minority of their crowd while the rest of them sat on their hands and whistled Pottery. Well, their relatively new Britannia ground is much better but the minority of nutters has grown a little bit. Naturally, too, they were full of themselves after gaining promotion for the first time in two hundred years, or something. Still, after the reality of this encounter we might get less of the hyped up balderdash peddled by the likes of Match of the Day and its “experts” full of hindsight.

Moyesy pulled a fast one on all of us by picking Tim Cahill, Merouane Fellaini and Segundo Castillo all at the same time. It was uneven in application but right in terms of result……………see, ANYONE can do this hindsight shit.

Stoke opened strongly and attacked quickly for the first ten minutes, got three fouls in a minute, had one ground cross-shot after a breakaway on our left – well saved by Tim Howard – and then were carefully and deliberately strangled out of the game until they scarcely got a constructive kick for the remainder of the half. That said, it took us half an hour to have our first shot anywhere near the target. But as the minutes ticked by the new look midfield got better and more confident. Occasionally they even indulged in intricate little bouts of triangular passing, always a good sign. Mikky played well all game and got involved mostly wide left while Castillo (my man of the match) played the great Claude Makele role and even picked things up and passed like him from time to time. Early on, Fellaini drifted centre left and seemed a bit lost and irritated with himself, possibly because he couldn’t make much direct impact, but he kept plugging away and eventually got into the action, though in obvious need of adjustment to the pace of the English game. He certainly looks a classy player. Every now and then he gave away a foul through mistiming. As we improved gradually Stoke had little to offer except up-and-unders, huff-and-puff and a couple of long throws. One such throw landed on the top of Tim’s net, a warning the defence might have heeded had they been stretched more. Apart from that Stoke had nobody to construct anything worthwhile.

So when we scored five minutes before half time there wasn’t much surprise. It had been coming despite our lack of direct efforts on goal. Fellaini and Cahill were involved in the centre of their box as the ball got shoved around without their defence getting near it. Eventually it ended up at The Yak’s feet by the spot and he shifted it slowly to his left foot and casually prodded it past their keeper from twelve metres.

During half time we reflected on the new midfield of Anichebe-Castillo-Cahill-Fellaini-Arteta and saw a lot of early promise. The problem of course is that Lee Carsley’s departure has meant the complete balance of the team has been upset. Nor is it any coincidence our centre backs occasionally seem like a couple of turkeys looking for Christmas. Hence our leak of seven goals in three matches prior to this one. It’s maddening but it is what happens in team games when everyone has to learn anew. It was good to see Jags moved reared to centre back, which is his best position. By now we know we’re in for a torrid time if Moyesy has him in midfield.

Five minutes after half time we got a second when Mikky delivered one of his specials from a wide right free kick at the angle of the box and Victor caught their defence asleep with a backward glancing header that travelled across the face of their goal unmolested until it went in. At which I turned to Mark and said, “Right. What we mustn’t do now is let one in in the next few minutes.” So of course a few minutes later we let a soft one in after failing with three attempts to clear a long throw, and it got volleyed in by an unmarked player who hung back sensibly on the edge of our box. A couple of minutes later they had one disallowed after an up-and-under and a forward charge left Joey tugged and pushed to the ground. Then a couple of minutes thereafter we let another stupid one in from another long throw, all of thirty metres, this time from their right………Tim hesitated to come out to the edge of the goal area, Jags got his head on it instead and it bulleted in with Tim looking like a muppet. At 2-2 and our defence again leaking like an old canoe you could be forgiven for thinking we were about to make an unlikely loss from a sound winning position.

Instead, Stoke had run out of long-throw luck and puff. The team responded well with determination and spread the ball well left and right and stretched Stoke’s tiring legs beyond their safe load. In short, they were goosed. When the ball got pumped into our left side of their penalty area their defender chased toward the angle with The Yak in close pursuit. Think about that for a moment………you’re shattered………you’re chasing back on a goal threat………breathing right down your neck is a big man mean goal machine………I mean what would YOU do? You’d probably panic. Which is exactly what their defender did and handled the ball at least a metre inside the area. Rightly, Wiley the referee gave a penalty. Then he went and consulted the linesman, changed his mind and gave a free kick outside the area. Nobody knows why. I suspect the knobhead himself doesn’t know. If he’d done such a thing in civvy street he would have been charged with criminal negligence, the fucking nincompoop.

In the end it didn’t matter because we deservedly got the winner with a quarter of an hour left. Mikky took another of his special corners on our left and Tim Cahill ran straight across their goal area, making a troupe of monkeys out of their defence and bulleted a header in at the right post, a classic sucker goal. Stoke went down like a deflating airship. Still, commendably, they raised themselves for one last effort and got a second wind when the nut job running the game awarded five extra minutes. But the defence weren’t going to let this one slip despite a couple of narrow misses.

In the end it was a rousing game played at a quite frantic pace. As usual, our beloved Blues made us suffer right to the end. Yet here and there were glimpses of something that could be better than good in a completely new team formation. If the promise holds good we might just be in for the kind of next step we all hoped for during the Summer. If so, it puts all the transfer window hysterical muck in an even worse light – and it couldn’t happen to a better bunch of paranoid knobheads.

Finally, the refereeing. There used to be a time when we could rightly say with pride that Brit referees were – odd Clive Thomas excepted – the best in the world. Well, those days are long gone. Now we produce utterly useless officials like Wiley, and we produce them not as aberrations but almost as the norm. It isn’t too much to say the average standard is an absolute disgrace, even allowing for the difficulties of the task. It is nearly impossible to endorse the so-called “Respect” agenda when we get this sort of hapless display of ineptitude. But we HAVE to endorse it because there isn’t much alternative, otherwise we’ll have total anarchy. In the meantime the FA better start getting things right before the refereeing standard reaches the level of a Whitehall farce or a self promoting squad of idiots a la Graham Poll.

Ask Moyesy.

What Do You Think The Score Will Be? e-mail info@bluekipper.com

*

The Toffee's visit Stoke in the League albeit now in a different Ground, since relegating The Potters back in our title winning season of 1985. Goals from Sharpy and Sheeds helped the Blues on the road to the Title, and in doing so they put the final nail in Stoke's disastrous last outing in the top flight. Oh how times have changed in the last twenty three years. Players earn more money in a week then the average working man does in five years, foreign owners sully our game and Manchester United are now good.

Anyhow onto today. Moyesy had the midweek news that one of his new captures who was a certain starter today, Lars Jacobsen had dislocated his shoulder playing for Denmark. The full back curse has struck again, so it looks like Phil Neville will drop back into the right back position, and in doing so maybe hand the other new boy Marouane Fellaini a start in the now renamed Harry Hill role. After our disastrous defending of late, me hopes that Roger will move to the left back position where he served us so well last season, leaving the Jag and Joey at the heart of the defence. The midfield along with Screech, will have Mikky and Ossie in, but the problem lies in does the Manager go with five in the middle or two up front. The Yak is one of those front men and me thinks Moyesy will go with James Vaughan alongside him.

The bench thankfully will look a lot stronger today, with the likes of Castillo, Big Vic, Nuno and Jack Rodwell on it. With the likes of Hibbo, Tiny, Peanuts and Louis Saha waiting for their fitness to improve in the next few weeks, the future at least does look a little bit brighter for the Blues.

Lavo's XI To Start: Howard, Lescott, Jagielka, Yobo, Neville, Fellaini, Osman, Arteta, Baines, Vaughan, Yakubu

Everton from: Howard, Nash, Neville, Yobo, Lescott, Jagielka, Baines, Valente, Arteta, Osman, Castillo, Fellaini, Rodwell, Vaughan, Anichebe, Yakubu, Jutkiewicz, Baxter, Gosling, Irving, Kissock.

IF ANY EVERTON FAN WANTS TO WRITE A REPORT OF ANY OF THIS SEASON'S GAMES, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO DO SO. JUST E-MAIL IT TO info@bluekipper.com AND WE WILL PUT IT ON THE SITE.

New keeper Thomas Sorensen is crocked after his midweek International exertions, so Everton old boy Steve Simmo will deputise. Stoke are also without suspended midfielder Amdy Faye, while keeper Thomas Sorensen (back) faces a late fitness test. New signings Ibrahima Sonko, Danny Higginbotham and Michael Tonge are set to make debuts for the Potters.

Moyesy on Tony Pullis and Stoke: "Tony and myself have looked horns many times when he was manager of Gillingham and I was manager of Preston. Before that I think he might have just still been a player at Bristol Rovers when I was a player at Bristol City. So we've come up against each other a lot. His teams are always hard, well-organised and disciplined - and he's certainly earned his right and his stripes through the leagues. And now he's done really well to get Stoke into the Premier League.

I think a lot of people probably thought it [promotion to the Premier League] would be a bit too much for Stoke. But they've done really well. They'll be hard to beat, I know that. They're a very big, strong team and because of that you've got obstacles to overcome. You're going to have lots of balls into your box which you'll have to deal with and, if you can't deal with them, they will beat you. So, you have to be able to handle that first of all and then go up the other end and play yourself. They're passionate people at Stoke," he added. "They'll really enjoying Everton going there because we're quite close - and I'm sure we'll take a big support too." (13/09/08)

Stoke From: Sorensen, Griffin, Abdoulaye Faye, Sonko, Higginbotham, Lawrence, Delap, Olofinjana, Tonge, Soares, Kitson, Sidibe, Fuller, Cresswell, Wilkinson, Dickinson, Whelan, Diao, Shawcross, Cort, Simonsen