HEAT: SEASON PREVIEW 2006-2007
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

(For Chris Jackson, great Evertonian, off to Australia with his good lady Alexandra. Therefore, lost to Civilisation and the Lower Street End. Match days will never be the same without his choice and novel use of our beloved language.)

A new season looms. New signings, new hopes, new euphoria, new dreads. And nobody has the least idea of its outcome. Mixed feelings abound, neuroses, masochism and obsessions redouble their hold: Football as vicarious substitute for success or disappointment in life. The mystery play opens its umpteenth act, the dénouement uncertain.

Meanwhile some Evertonians will predict great things, and they might get it right. Others will whine away, and they might get it right too. In either case the best and worst of human behaviour will appear among fans everywhere as it does every season. Nobody is going to concede they were only guessing and that, in reality, anything can happen and probably will. Once again hindsight will be a wonderful thing.

But you can safely ignore the kind of nerd who tells you the game is finished when all sensible people know all it needs is a damn good determined clean out and reform top to bottom, preferably starting with said nerds. It’s still the greatest game in the world in spite of self-pitying curmudgeons who only want you to be as miserable as they are in their never-ending pitiful search for five minutes of fame. Laugh them into their misery.

Nevertheless there remains as much house-cleaning to do as ever. It is a continuous process. What the idiots do not realise – and never will – is the game’s intrinsic qualities are its guarantees of survival in the face of seeming insuperable odds. Since its professional incarnation it has survived dictatorships of right and left, fascism and totalitarian communism, religion, sectarianism, tribalism, exclusion, organised hooliganism, juntas, nationalism, racism, greed, media hangers on, crookedness, disasters, war and political manipulation. Its sheer simplicity and, yes, beauty, are its best protection against the current threat of so-called “globalisation” and its handmaid, commercial exploitation. It will survive too all those who think their own misery more important than football. The game will only finish as a major sport when the great majority of people decide it is no longer useful to play or watch, and not before. We are a long, long way from that.

(Of course some countries are worse than others and as always Italy is the worst of the lot. Alas, they aren’t solo offenders. In Germany two referees have been jailed for fixing matches.The Belgian FA suspended six players and coaches and club officials at La Louviére. The Finnish club Alliansi were investigated for match fixing. Sixteen players and a former president of the league were arrested and accused of rigging matches in Portugal. A club president blew the whistle on widespread corruption over several years in Poland. And in Holland the Dutch FA are investigating serious allegations made in Voetbal International. Anyone who thinks the English game holds some sort of moral advantage better think again because even now players are allowed to bet on matches in which they aren’t involved. Then there are Luton manager’s Mike Newell’s allegations which curiously have faded from the radar screen. There were too match-fixing allegations centred on goalkeeper Grobelaar at analfield and other clubs over many years before, including Everton in 1963. Where there are large amounts of money there will always be corruption, institutional and otherwise. You just have to roll up your sleeves and scrub the place clean. Then get ready to do it all over again when it re-occurs. It has been that way since the inception of professional football, for which see David Conn’s excellent books.)

However, I’m on safe ground when I say the glaringly obvious and keep a straight face while saying it: We won’t win the title because we don’t have squad strength in depth. In which case our best chances are in the FA Cup and the League Cup. League-wise I would settle for a top six place and would be delighted with another miracle fourth. Overall I reckon the squad is physically lightweight too and this will cost us over the long run. Nothing new there, then. Events of course will contrive to make a monkey out of virtually everyone. They always do. We might even get relegated, a fate which wouldn’t surprise any of us if we don’t improve on last season’s appalling form. Such uncertainty is the game’s real attraction, especially if you’re playing Watford away in November. Not that that’s any consolation if you leak one in the last minute and lose. Then it’s an awful long way home to wonder why you keep punishing your instinct for comfort.

That’s the “predictions” out of the way. What of the reality?

First up, pay no attention whatever to the preseason friendly matches. They aren’t worth a carrot. Only dilettantes give them more than a passing glance due a fitness routine. Except for mild amusement or a useful run at pre- and post-match conviviality those matches might as well be consigned to your memory bin.

In fact both new signings Andy Johnson and Joleon Lescott are something of a gamble because they have played the majority of their football outside the top level. We’ll find out soon enough if they have what it takes to last and compete with the best. Joey Yobo and Mikel Arteta have re-signed and that is great news. Tim Howard has signed on loan and presumably will give the defence more confidence than Richard Wright. Paddy Boyle and Delron Buckley, whoever they are, are on trial. The rest are the same but one year older. So Moyesy’s gone the classic signing route right down the middle, goalkeeper-centre half-centre forward. If it works, he’s a visionary wizard. If it “fails,” he’s wasted an awful lot of dosh. Meantime, media infoclerks will do what they always do – sit on the sidelines and jeer one way or another at the losing side. Most fans will do the same. The professional game has never had and never will have a public sense of proportion on or off the field.

Likely our greatest weakness will be where it was last season and all seasons before, in midfield, though this might be mitigated by the return of Lee Carsley if he hasn’t transferred out by the time this gets posted. We sorely lack staying power in the engine room and now Carsley is one year older at thirty-two he might fade as the season goes on. If that becomes the case there should be no illusion of the midfield physical abilities of Tim Cahill, Leon Osman, Simon Davies or Kevin Kilbane because that is part of their limitations. None of them lack application or skill, only staying power. Which makes Andy Van Der Meyde’s near-invisibility entirely appropriate. In other words, plain as Cyrano de Bergerac’s nose, midfield is out of sync and has been since Tommy Gravesen left. Wistfully, one thinks of Steed Malbranque at his best. Or maybe the Academy will produce one of its annual miracles.

Of course much will hinge on two new combinations, James Beattie-Andy Johnson up front and Joey Yobo-Joleon Lescott at the centre of defence. Double success would be a huge vindication of Moyesy’s judgement. You have to say though it is probably asking too much for instant playing chemistry. If they are going to succeed at all it may take up to a quarter of the season before we see it, even though each of them have youth on their side. Where Andy Johnson is concerned some of the fans’ expectations are grotesque. Much of it appears to have more to do with wishful thinking or the inflated size of the transfer fee than the player’s achievements or statements. On the other hand only the whiners in your local pub will be happy if it all goes belly up – nothing new there either.

Mikel Arteta will be a marked man after last season. Owl arse pros will have absorbed the lesson of chasing his shadow and prepare accordingly. All of which means his game might suffer slightly and he may pick up more injuries. If he can still perform to his best levels then it will prove he truly is a great footballer. But nobody should expect him to carry a game, because he simply isn’t that sort of player. His cleverness with the ball is very reminiscent of Colin Harvey but that’s where the similarity ends. Harvey had a fearsome tackle and never ceased snapping at the heels of enemy midfielders (he was nicknamed “snarler” in the dressing room), something Mikky can’t and therefore rightly won’t do. Somebody has to win the ball, serve it to him the right way and then leave him to get on with it. He’s best wide on either side but generally gets snuffed if he goes into the middle for an extended period. If he delivers as well as he did last season then he will be even more firmly set in Evertonian affections. This assumes too our own players stop trying to kick him in training.

As we all know, I would be kind if I said our defence was iffy last season. Actually, it was undilute excreta in spite of Phil Neville’s best efforts to plug gaps everywhere, which meant his own form suffered. Essentially we had holes at goalkeeper, centre back and sometimes left back too. Unsuprisingly, everyone else was inconsistent. Small wonder we suffered catastrophic collapse in so many games. If all goes well the arrival of Howard and Lescott will fill two of the gaps but at the time of writing there are no signs we have adequate cover at left back. Nuno Valente has undoubted class without convincing he has necessary pace or consistency. There’s no point counting Sandro Pistone because his fitness can never be depended on anymore than Andy Van Der Meyde’s could. Gary Naysmith, alas, has suffered almost total implosion. One hopes Tony Hibbert has learned how to concentrate on his football – at its best, excellent – instead of a peculiar, irritating interest in seagulls circling the main stand. However cruel it sounds it is surely time Davey Weir and Alan Stubbs are regarded as either bench players for the last twenty/thirty minutes or emergency-only back up; both are now at an even more advanced stage and their legs are no longer up to ninety minutes of first-class football every week. It comes to all players when they reach their mid-thirties.

Moyesy continues to give promising young players a sensible chance to prove themselves. Both Victor Anichebe and James Vaughan were given opportunities at remarkably young ages and they both delivered joyously and in a fashion fully justifying his careful approach. Youth can be catalytic if it seizes the day. Notwithstanding injuries Ian Turner and John Ruddy might get further chances if they can improve their command of their area of play, but not before. Sadly, the casualty rate amongst young players everywhere in the game speaks for itself. Often too much is expected too soon by impatient or naïve fans, and the media are the worst of all. Moyesy’s approach is right.

As always, you can’t buy team balance or chemistry no matter how much dosh you have in hand. It’s either there or it’s not, though sometimes you have to be patient in bringing it out. Instinct isn’t always immediately apparent. Relatively untalented players can compensate for its lack by outstanding teamwork. But if it hasn’t arrived after a reasonable bedding-in period you can safely assume it isn’t going to happen at all. Then you have to start all over again. All of which can make good or great players look less than capable and get them frustrated enough to seek pastures new. In an era of players’ freedom of movement this has made it even more difficult to build or rebuild a good side, still worse if one or two individuals are disruptive or mischievous. Whether the current squad with its new additions has the necessary chemistry is an open question. If they are to succeed they will need every bit of the attitude that got them to fourth season-before-last. Anything less and we are in for a hard or frustrating time.

The main off-field question is whether David Moyes has absorbed the lessons of last season. Since he’s an intelligent man as well as ambitious and egotistical it would be difficult to believe he has completely absolved himself of what happened. By now all informed fans know he offered his resignation on the homeward-bound plane after the awful thrashing at Dinamo Bucaresti. Nobody’s perfect. One assumes he has the courage and humility to examine a good deal more than his navel. For instance, the odd substitute shenanigans during the away derby – which we should have won, the pinkies being less than average with Gerrard gone – had some of our fans awash in frustration. You couldn’t blame them, and there were other occasions you wondered whether Moyesy had given way to a siege mentality. Which means allowances made last season won’t be continued this season if he shows the same occasional obstinate disregard for the obvious. For a start he can ignore the nincompoops who still claim the fourth place season was an “overachievement.” If such idiots can’t see that seventh and fourth in three seasons (coming from where we did, and some of the footy better than good) is no coincidence then they can’t expect people to stop laughing at them every time they open their slack-jawed cake holes. The higher up the table we finish the more ludicrous those divvies will look. But it’s up to Moyesy to get us back on track and stay there. He has had a reasonable amount of money to help him – by no means a fortune but still an acceptable amount in our current straitened circumstances – so now the ball is firmly in his court. For his own sake as well as ours I hope he doesn’t fall short. Which means no midtable or worse.

In many ways anticipation of the coming season is summed up by the final absence of Duncan Ferguson, the Big Yin himself. Despite his occasional harebrained behaviour there’s no question we’re going to miss him. Whenever he was on the field you always felt you had a chance because the opposition was always so obviously petrified of him, even top class players like John Terry. At his best The Yin was well nigh unplayable. Of course the trouble was he was so rarely at his best because of injuries, then age took its toll. And despite his disciplinary record he took an awful lot of physical punishment without complaining, as long as it was mano y mano. It was the sly stuff he overreacted to, or the off the ball nonsense. In his place we now have an even bigger question mark.

We will miss too Nigel Martyn who helped steady the ship at a crucial moment in the club’s history and always went about his ‘keeping with talent, good humour and absolute sports professionalism. One only wishes he had joined us much earlier. He would surely have spared us some of our more embarrassing moments. But time spares nobody. Meanwhile Li Tie’s departure to Sheffield United left me feeling a little regretfull because he was among the first modern Chinese players to try his hand in England, something of an Oriental pioneer. I wish he had done better. In some respects he found himself in the same position as the first black players: Everyone gives you a bit more attention out of curiosity, racists out of bigotry. If the pioneer isn’t an instant blazing success out come the generalisations and sometimes the racist stereotyping. Fortunately Li Tie showed enough skill, energy and willingness to short circuit any attempt at bigotry. Sadly, injuries cut short his long term prospects at first-class level. You can bet, though, we haven’t seen the last of Oriental players and that they will get better as time goes on. Their sheer numbers will guarantee it.

The boardroom power game appears still to be at impasse. This is a good thing, though it doesn’t mean the club won’t be sold at any moment if the right offer comes in. Forget the pub crackpots who tell you Bill Kenwright runs the club “like a trainset.” It’s a particularly stupid term used by particularly stupid people; it means nothing whatsoever. None of them have the slightest idea what they are talking about, or how the club is actually run. Such nutters have a bee in their bonnet they can’t let out. If they do, all they have is the lonely silence it leaves in an empty head. They’ll have nothing else to cling to. The time to believe all the foreign buyers tosh is if and when a deal is signed. Rumours are everywhere and if one of them turns out to be true, so what? Apart from the Abramovich billions (ask yourself just how much is enough? Thirty million? A hundred million?………Who do you sell to? A Yank casino hoodlum? A Russian drugs dealer? A here-today-gone-tomorrow software dealer? Yet another tenth-rate Wirral property spiv?) none of the few that have gone ahead have been “successful.” Every club in the league is desperately trying, and failing, to get somebody in to “invest.” As everyone with any brains knows this is a euphemism for a buy-out. (Ask the pinkies as they make complete idiots of themselves dealing with ne’er do wells like the Thai prime minister as though they’re in seedy Great Homer Street Market.) And no club owners anywhere are going to sell out unless the deal makes financial sense to their self-interests. For the moment whether we like the system or not is immaterial. Everton Football Club and its owners are in no position to change the iron laws of capitalism. It’s as commonsensical as that. You listen to the crackpots-with-a-neurotic/personal-axe-to-grind at the peril of your own intelligence. If you want to change things – and who doesn’t – try to avoid whimpering alcoholic tears into a glass of lousy beer and gossiping like an old woman in some squalid County Road pub. Capische?

Keith Wyness has promised two things before the end of the year: 1. A proposal for fans’ buy-in equity/shares (the sort of thing we have all been talking about for years) and 2. Substantial progress on a new stadium. If he holds good to these two promises then it is another two items crossed off the list of past problems. Coupled with other advances in the club’s internal management the loonies are fast running out of whines to feed their phoney hysteria, something one finds hugely amusing and well worth rubbing in in one’s local pub. After all, the only thing that matters is restoration of the club to its former status. The deterioration of a decade and more isn’t going to be reversed in a couple of seasons. But a good and promising start has been made by the new administrative team. This offers no guarantees, only soundly-based hope and a lot more hard work. After everything the fans have been through this is a large step forward, preferably on the face of the whingers.

So here we are, waiting and wondering and up for it. Full of it in fact. Game on as usual. Enjoy. You’ve earned it.

(Actually, virtually anything is preferable to the spectacle of your average British male slob in Summer. You could always tell them before you heard them during the World Cup in Germany. Was there ever a mob of more unkempt ugliness in the history of our culture? Why do so many feel an urgent necessity to share their aesthetic illiteracy with the rest of us? Don’t they look in a mirror before leaving their cave or cardboard box or junky haven? Is it a cunning plot to gain revenge on the Americans – particularly the Californians – and Australians by dressing even more hideously than those tribes of fat, double-chinned, hairy legged, halitotic, no-necked, tattooed, ear-nose-lip ringed, spikey-haired or shaved-head, dandruffy, stale aftershave-reeking, reverse baseball hatted, baggy three quarters/half kecks with low (filled) pockets, black socks with dirty white trainers or sandals, doped-up, drunk, incoherent, ipod plugged, Big Brother-watching, bling neckchain-wearing pseudo beach bums? This version of gargoyle is undoubtedly the successor of former track-suit-and-trainers pornography. No, give me footy every time; there is at least an attempt at human civilisation.)