The Ears and The Muse
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

“The harp that once through Tara’s halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls
As if that soul were fled.”
THOMAS MOORE – Song, “Irish Melodies” (1807).

What are we to make of Francis Jeffers on loan from Arsenal?

More to the point, what is HE to make of Francis Jeffers?

Plainly his future hangs in the balance more than ever. Unfortunately we have seen it before, if not in Jeffers himself or in Michael Ball or Billy Kenny, in other promising players in other clubs. And not only in football. Lack of staying-power or wilful self-destruction is not new to the human species. The familiarity of it makes it no less poignant or faintly tragic. Nevertheless one cannot escape a frisson of regret for yet another seeming evaporation of that precious element, talent. It is still rare enough to treasure in the face of its whining, inadequate opposite. Then again, maybe he didn’t have enough of that valuable commodity to get him through life in the first place. Realistically, who can tell? In professional sport the only cruel measure is what you do in play. Nothing else matters. There is virtually no leeway for human weakness not even after due allowance for manager-directed team requirements or tactics.

His latest contretemps, this time with David Moyes – shades of Michael Ball and Dick Advocaat at Rangers – was sufficient for almost every Evertonian I know to say, “Enough is enough. Goodbye.” In fact veteran fan Stevie H who occupies the next seat to me in the Lower Street End long ago said, “I’d have the player back any day but not the man.” In the circumstance how right he was. Yet still you can’t help but wonder what might have been………………

If the stories are to believed Moyesy didn’t pick him for the Tottenham match. Jeffers promptly went off his head in full view of the rest of the team. Somehow Blue Kipper got hold of a photograph of him in the tunnel (lord knoweth how) giving two fingers toward the pitch. Next day the manager offered him the chance to withdraw his comments in private. Jeffers repeated them. He was told he would never play for the club again and Arsene Wenger promptly quite rightly confirmed he wasn’t returning to Arsenal either, that it was a matter for Everton. Next day he apologised and was “reinstated,” whatever that means. It is of course difficult to see how any manager in any discipline could do more than tolerate his presence for just as long as practicable. In this case it is until the expiry of his loan period at the end of this season, a matter of weeks away. In my opinion if all of this is true then The Ears has only himself to blame. His future looks bleak indeed. Unless there is a sudden reawakening of ability one can only see a long maybe not so slow slide into playing obscurity. For the man himself it will be a tragedy, for virtually everybody else nothing but a slight passing breeze. Such is life. The sooner Francis Jeffers learns this important fact surely the better his life will be.

When he first appeared in the Everton first team at the age of eighteen nothing could be further from everyone’s mind. He was outstanding at a time when we needed good players even more than we need them now, and that’s saying something. We hadn’t even scored in the Street End for what seemed an eternity. He turned on his left foot and casually slapped one in right-footed, nothing special. But it broke the spell and illustrated just how poorly equipped we were at the time. He was greeted like a conquering hero, which he was within limits. In many respects he had the same sort of penalty area opportunist qualities of Ian Rush. He had all the confidence and determination of youth in his play. And he was one of us, an Evertonian. If he carried on developing he seemed to have it made.

Then came a close-season demand for a transfer after he was overheard in a city centre restaurant, wildly in his cups, loudly telling how he was off to Arsenal. He withdrew the transfer but the damage was done. Eventually he made the move without much sign of regret from Evertonians, except from those tedious curmudgeons ready to blame everybody else at the club including the gateman. He had his opportunities at Arsenal where Wenger rightly dubbed him his “goal fox,” a superb use of descriptive English in keeping with that manager’s abilities. Most informed fans fully expected him to succeed with much better players around him. He failed and became prey to injury into the bargain but not before he scored one predictably against us in the final match of the season and then took off in a wild celebration. For which some of our fans have never forgiven him. Actually I saw it more as a gesture of relief after a long barren spell. Whatever, these are the kind of things some fans take to heart in a passé sort of way.

After a couple of seasons where he did nothing special at Highbury he came back in a hurried eve-of-this-season four-man signing by Moyesy after the Sean Davis transfer collapsed on medical grounds. His arrival appeared to owe more to outstanding financial arrangements with Arsenal but this has never been confirmed. Though nobody cheered loudly there was a tacit hope that maybe, just maybe, his return might rejuvenate his career and that could only be good news for us however temporary his stay. But it didn’t work out even though he got two last minute equalisers against Fulham in the FA Cup. He simply made no playing impression. David Moyes rightly did not put him in the forefront of his plans. Who could blame the manager? Certainly no sensible fan could, assuming the above story to be true.

So much for the story so far.

Like you, I have no idea what the future will bring for him. For his sake I hope it is good. But surely his time at Everton is over after the end of the season. I suspect Moyesy will do the diplomatic thing and politely see out the terms of the loan and then Jeffers will be gone. If this transpires I cannot ever see his return. Nor, given his performances this season, can I see him breaking into Arsenal’s magnificent first team. The precedents say he isn’t good enough. By or during next season he might well find himself in a situation where he hugely regrets his behaviour.

It would be easy to jeer at him for the mess he has apparently made for himself. Yet there might well be a good deal more to the story, a parable for anybody sensitive enough to see beyond mere football. Maybe things just went wrong for him all at the same time. Maybe he tempted fate once too often with his adolescent behaviour and fate turned on him and bit his arse hard. As I said, he isn’t the first and he won’t be the last.

During his spell at Arsenal I occasionally watched him in action on TV. Even allowing for all the deficiencies of the medium you couldn’t help reaching the conclusion he was way out of his depth. This would have been normal at first if he learned from the experience. But he never seemed to. Somehow, all the cockiness and verve of his early game had disappeared into what looked like technical funk of the game around him. On a couple of European occasions his misses cost Arsenal dear. The spectacle apparently turned a lot of Arsenal fans against him. In the end they had little or no confidence in him. One of the saddest sights of all was little noticed at the end of our home game against Arsenal, the match of Wayne Rooney’s famous winning goal. They shook hands and he walked off unnoticed amidst all the hysterical celebrations. The contrast was vivid.

One can’t help wondering if Jeffers didn’t feel how much he had missed as Wayne Rooney went from strength to strength even during the present learning curve. Maybe he thought he could re-fire his own career if he came back and played next to the prodigy. Maybe he was plain homesick. Yet when the chance came he undeniably failed to take it as hungrily as you must in life. Even at best his play lacked certainty and sometimes looked outright incapable. It was a far cry from his early days. Maybe he had too much too soon. Maybe he came to believe his own publicity.

In fact the only one who knows the whole truth is Francis Jeffers himself. Even then he might not admit it to himself if he is as flakey as he sometimes appears to be. If so, he is likely to reach a point in his life where the truth will suddenly hit him like a charging buffalo. At which point he would be filled with regrets and self-recrimination. The affect could be devastating. If on the other hand he has had the common sense to reappraise events maybe he could still salvage something from the apparent wreckage. Whatever the case he would do well to recognise that life doesn’t often offer a second chance let alone a third. He is still young enough for the chance to be hanging tenuously but it won’t dangle much longer. At times like this self-motivation and determination are absolutely paramount. Everyone of goodwill will wish him well in his final crucial choice during the next year. After that his chances of resuscitation will be almost nil.

In limited if unwanted respects maybe the Jeffers experience has something constructive for Everton Football Club. Maybe it has added to David Moyes’ managerial experience. Maybe it is a none too subtle warning to gifted young players like Wayne Rooney. Maybe it is a warning to the club’s owners never again to countenance such a switch whatever the financial conditions. Maybe our younger fans will have learned a bit more about the capricious nature of the game.

There are a lot of “maybes” in there. But there’s only one set of Ears that should be listening to The Muse.(17/04/04)

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