STUBBSY’S OWN GOAL
By
Mickey Blue Eyes.

The link below connects you to the official website and some comments by Alan Stubbs on our last disastrous season, 2003-2004:

http://www.evertonfc.com/news/index.php?page_id=3966

Basically, if he has been quoted accurately, Stubbsy says a newspaper article was unfair in its criticism of the players’ performances, that there was little difference between their standards and the rest of the Prem, and that really it was mostly about losing too many games 1-0.

Well, I have some news for Stubbsy, and it is this:

You’re talking through your arse. Moreover, you’re fooling nobody. Your words are nothing but special pleading. The words are pathetic and unprofessional. Grow up.

Many of us are regular fans who follow the club home and away and have done so for many years. We know our football and we know when we aren’t getting effort and commitment from players. A lot of our fans can’t even afford the price of entry or travel, but they still scrape enough money and time together to make it because they at least are committed. For their own reasons they love footy and Everton Football Club. Almost all of them earn nothing like the money you and the other players are paid by those self same fans. Naturally things get visceral if they feel they are being short-changed. Loonies aside, you couldn’t blame the fans for their reactions. The wonder is it wasn’t much, much more extreme. For once it appears to be those sentiments the newspaper article reflected accurately. If you can’t see the connection then you are even more distant from reality than your displays last season.

The fact is, we KNOW a small group of players told David Moyes BEFORE THE SEASON STARTED that he wasn’t going to get the same effort he got the previous year. That they tried to dictate to him how to run management of playing affairs. All, apparently, because either they (a) didn’t like his methods, or (b) didn’t like him. Early on most informed fans saw the ominous signs and feared the worst. Those feelings were more than borne out by the way the team played. The fact also is, the only players to play to form were those signed by David Moyes plus Wayne Rooney. Frankly the rest of the squad were a disgrace to themselves never mind to the name of the club. Had anyone in my profession behaved or performed the same way I would have dismissed them after a single warning. You and the rest of the team had an entire season of nine months to get it right. The guilty players failed because in the end they couldn’t care less so long as the money rolled in and the fans rolled up. It was execrable.

Yes, it is undoubtedly true David Moyes made some serious managerial mistakes. There isn’t a human being alive or dead who could say they are or were any different. It goes with the species. But Moyes at least demonstrated the previous season that his methods worked and enabled you to play better and more consistent football. The fans trust him even though he may yet fail. We don’t need you or anyone else to tell us the evidence of our own eyes. Most of us are capable of drawing our own conclusions without the intervention of some newspaper article. Furthermore, David Moyes has at least been honest and committed. We are confident he will try to eradicate his mistakes. Likely anyone who has come into contact with him will repeat this judgment. We cannot say this of the guilty players.

His major mistake appears to be that he told some of the older players they wouldn’t be here at the end of the season. Maybe he thought that kind of honesty would motivate them. If so, he was wrong, and badly wrong. It had the reverse affect. All of which reinforces Alan Hardaker’s comment thirty years ago that, “I wouldn’t hang a dog on the word of a professional footballer.” And that was of course well before present freedom of contract and huge earnings.

Last season the guilty players lost the respect of the fans. That respect won’t return unless the players demonstrate they have some professional and individual pride. It was that which was notably lacking and which made a lot of difference between fourth from bottom and much further up the table. At this level of first class football it can make a huge difference, and so it transpired. Just as finishing seventh the previous season had little or nothing to do with chance, so finishing fourth from bottom wasn’t measured by ill luck. Virtually every fan says we were shite and we roundly deserved where we finished. Nobody with footy sanity intact would argue.

Moreover, many of our fans now suspect the guilty players have had a devastating affect on Wayne Rooney’s development. Fortunately he is a great player in the making and will eventually shrug it all aside whatever happens. Sooner or later he will learn to see through the kind of charade played out last season. I suspect as he gets older he won’t be prepared to tolerate half-arsed efforts from anyone in the same team as he. All of which will throw the experience into even sharper relief.

So, Alan, if you and the rest of the underperformers want your credibility back you better start getting it right where it matters – on the field of play. Never mind the words, DO it. Until you do everything you say will sound hollow. In which case the fans will never trust another word you say. And they would be right.

(12/07/04)

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