INFIRM OF PURPOSE!
By
Mickey Blue Eyes
Well, there's one thing you could say about the opening match V Queens Park Rangers: we had low expectations that were fully justified. The team performance - and I'm being kind - was awful, quite as bad as anything we saw last season. It was appalling and there can be no excuses for it. No disrespect to QPR but our squad was well capable of beating them, which presumably is the only reason for Moyesy's selection of starters and bench.
The only light in the tunnel was the outstanding debut of Ross Barkley. The boy looked even more confident and strong than Wayne Rooney did at the same age; with a little more luck he could have had just as spectacular a start. I'm not sure what our final shot tally was but I counted five shots from him, probably over half the total. Speaks for itself really.
There's no point "analysing" the game because it was the same story from the first half of last season: good to reasonable defence, good to reasonable midfield defence, lousy attacking midfield, next to no strike force. In the first half Tim Howard had two functions, the first a save, the second to retrieve the ball from the net; in the second half he again had next to nothing to do. But then apart from Ross Barkley's shot that went narrowly past the keeper's left post we had only a free kick from Bainsey that hit the bar and came out.
As for Moyesy's team selection.....words fail. I can't begin to imagine what point he was trying to make, except maybe to irritate a maximum number of Evertonians. In that respect he succeeded one hundred percent.
Meanwhile, there's no point criticising individual players. Most of them were ineffective almost to a vanishing point. Remember the dark days of Walter Smith's worst team displays, when someone like Steve Watson or Unsy would appear afterwards and say, "We know that was inexcusable"? Well, if any of our players come out with that tripe this week I will personally drive up to Finch Farm and strangle the bastard. I suspect I will have to join a very long queue of irate Evertonians.
Finally, I have never booed an Everton team and never will. Ultimately it is a stupid gesture. But gawd knows you couldn't blame anyone for losing it after this pile of horseshit. Everyone responsible should be ashamed of themselves.
