SEASON PREVIEW 2003-2004:
THE SLINGS AND ARROWS OF OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

It was a lengthy close season. Here’s one fan who was glad of a substantial break.

Football is in grave danger of becoming a soap opera sport surrounded by soap opera rumours manufactured by soap opera media and too many fans who act like soap opera extras. As the novelty of the current league cartel set-up wears off the game will need to look to its roots to reorganise, otherwise it will lose its freshness and regenerative abilities in a welter of Suits, balance sheets and rising institutionalised corruption.

And there have been no incomings or outgoings – unless you count the final signatures on Joey’s contract and the expiry of Li Tie’s loan period. Moyesy’s pursuit of someone called Davis or Davies or something from Fulham came to an abrupt halt when he refused to pay an absurd asking price. I can’t count this non-arrival as a loss since he didn’t stick in my mind in either of the two Fulham games I saw us play, nor in any TV extracts I bothered to watch.

So here we are, basically with the same squad and all our thirty-odd years old players a year on. Where youth is concerned, our bright spot is still The Duke, who officially attains adulthood in a few short months when he reaches eighteen and so becomes an official man. As he gets older he will find confirmation of Einstein’s musings on relativity – time apparently accelerates or decelerates according to your position in space, in his case footy space. We all know the strengths and weakness of individual players and the likely formation, 4-4-2. Not much point, therefore, going over them all yet again. In my opinion the main questions will centre on Moyesy and whether he can continue where he left off.

A central question is whether he had them playing “above themselves” or if he got them playing to their real abilities. I think it is the latter. The former is mostly bollocks talked by ageing pinkies or the Melledrew Tendency, the kind you take the piss out of to keep you mildly amused. You can’t get a whole squad to play “above themselves” for an entire season. It’s a rank impossibility. But you CAN get them to play at their best for longer. In any case one of the things about Walter Smith’s tenure (which rankled with most Evertonians) was his seeming inability to motivate the team consistently. Most of the time they didn’t even look as though they were trying. That all changed when David Moyes arrived. There were only a few games where you felt the side had given up the geist. The “failure” to get into Europe can be put down to inexperience on the part of players and management to cope with the challenge of the closing weeks. I am willing to bet a similar position this season would see us get over the final hurdle by playing much tighter. No question, everyone’s concentration failed at the crucial moment. We threw it away. Such is football life.

However, the next question is whether we will even find ourselves in such a good position.

Frankly I will be delighted if Moyesy and the team can give us a season like the last, plus some hope for the future with a couple of promising young players and maybe signing a couple of talented youngsters too. Based on their combined efforts so far Europe qualification is a realistic proposition for the following season. If attained, it will have been well and truly earned in accord with Moyesy’s public statement of preference. Moreover such an achievement would further cement burgeoning solidarity of the fans with manager and players. It would be another formidable step in the right direction.

Therefore it might help to concentrate on how we think manager and players will evolve individually and collectively this season. This happens with any group of humans but of course team sports manifest it as a public spectacle. And there’s the rub: Different individuals evolve (or learn) at different rates and this can have fluctuating affects on collective performance. It is an easy point to forget. The number of combinations is almost infinite, which is why the game is so gloriously unpredictable. And just because a player is at veteran stage doesn’t mean he can’t learn anything. It is also the cause of stress in managers trying to manipulate events in their favour.

So let’s look at David Moyes. Again no question, he was a revelation, just what we needed and a real strike of lightning. Last season speaks for itself. The man appears so determined it isn’t too difficult to imagine him listing pros and cons and then quite rightly making a thought-through assault on everything standing in his way. Everything he can affect, that is. Nobody of any common sense worries about things beyond their ultimate control. Only the gifted ones combine vision and single-minded determination to affect, to force the issues within grasp and reach. Moyes apparently has all the right gifts in the right place at the right time. But he is a work in progress, a young man, a classic Stendahl “brilliant maybe.” It is a safe bet he thinks so too. And if his public annoyance at last season’s failure to qualify for Europe is anything to go by, he’s exactly the type to get annoyed AND get even.

Which is fine by me. Engage. Fight the battle on your own terms as far as you can. Win. Learn the lessons and deploy to better affect next time. Never stop. Never slow down under fire. Never complain, never explain, leave that to the whingers and malcontents. Like all talented young men David Moyes has all of this in spades. The question – as it is for The Duke and any other young player – is how long he can keep the fires burning at their current intensity.

Which is where personal self-motivation comes in. Much has been made of Moyesy’s Scottish working class background and comparisons made with other similar managers past and present. In my view this is patronising, simplistic bullshit. Like them, David Moyes is his own man, who has arrived where he is because he is a hard-worker with an eye for detail and he expects nothing less from his players. He has acquainted himself with latest techniques without forgetting the fundamentals of human nature. Probably he would be an outstanding performer whatever his background. In short, he made all his main career decisions himself after his abilities became apparent. All outstanding managers in any discipline share this trait. Sensible people respond accordingly.

Only The Melledrew Tendency carp needlessly or for their own curmudgeonly purposes, but such gimps ALWAYS fail in the long term. Beware of anyone who boasts to you what long hours they work. Emergencies aside, usually this means they are useless at managing their activities or their time or they have been crushed by events further up the food chain. The same applies to gawd forsaken party apparatchiks who tell you they arrive first and leave last. Never trust anybody who implies timeserving = ability. Even John Wayne got an Oscar. On the evidence so far nobody could level that accusation at David Moyes. He works a job, not hours. He will do exactly what he thinks right and not more. For all that you can expect some of the fans to turn on him if things don’t go well because that’s what fans at all clubs do, no exceptions, when they need a ready made excuse. Already there is whining about how he dealt with Li Tie and the fact of no new incomings. I never pay any attention to these meffs except to take the piss out of them.

At this stage the query I have is whether he can handle so-called “big name” players. And really the only reason I raise it at all is because he hasn’t signed one and managed him yet. In retrospect you can’t count David Ginola, Duncan Ferguson and Paul Gascoigne because both of them were obviously way past their best when they arrived here at Walter Smith’s behest. Ferguson surely must now avail himself of a last opportunity or move on. Under Moyes, Kevin Campbell, Tomasz Radzinski, Tony Hibbert, Lee Carsley, Tommy Gravesen (relatively) and David Unsworth all actually improved their performances, consistency and work rate.

He brought in Joey Yobo, Li Tie, Li Wei Feng, Brian MacBride (temporarily) and Richard Wright. Individual results were mixed. Joey Yobo was a brilliant success at centre back but a failure at right back and inconsistent, we hope, because of contractual problems caused by his agent and former club. Li Tie showed promise but lacked physical staying power and then his former club asked too much for a permanent transfer so he is in limbo. Li Wei Feng didn’t make it. Brian MacBride was a big success for his short time here. Richard Wright was a big improvement in goal but still didn’t convince everybody. So the only outright “failure” was Li Wei Feng, and arguably his arrival was possibly an admin mistake anyway. Given limited resources this was a good balance sheet.

Then you have to wonder how our veteran players are going to perform and if Moyes can get them to repeat last season. If straight line logic applied to human nature you would automatically assume they would actually play better. After all, Moyesy has demonstrated he could get them playing to their best and you would think too they would want to make a personal point before they give way to Time. But that just isn’t the way things work. Some elderly legs will prove more vulnerable than others and give out early. Others may last longer and then fade at the end of the season. The degree of self-motivation will vary. Age will make some more injury prone than others. But once you do the final maths it is surely likely our season will suffer somewhere, somehow, because we have too many veteran players.

David Moyes’ big test will arrive when he has his first run of really bad results. He can no more avoid this than he can avoid the rising of the sun. The gobshite media of course will be delighted to kick him while he’s down, just as they did with Wayne Rooney when he was sent off last season. They will have their phoney “controversy.” It will also be a test of the fans, though it has to be said their loyalty has been amazing during the years of our nadir. But a sudden reversal of fortunes might be more than their flesh and blood could take. We’ll see.

I am willing to bet Moyesy will confirm his talents this season, that the team will respond again, and we will finish in about the same position and perhaps just qualify for Europe in the last place available.

Where the outfield players are concerned it is surely time for Joey to establish himself at centre back in place of either David Weir or Alan Stubbs. Dispassionately, I would prefer it to be Stubbsy who makes way because Davey is a better player. But footy being the confounder it is, Joey plays better with Stubbsy. Furthermore, Davey is one of our veterans in the cusp of retirement. If we can’t find a younger player than either of them then it looks as though Stubbsy would get the nod. I still regret Peter Clarke didn’t develop physically as we all hoped he would; at one stage he showed a lot of promise.

The best full back pairing is surely Tony Hibbert and Sandro Pistone. If, as long forecast, Sandro returns to Italy, then David Unsworth won’t be shifted by Naysmith unless there’s a dramatic reversal of form. I hope we never again see Joey at right back.

All of us know midfield is the cockpit of our playing misfortunes. Too many mediocre players, too many nearing or at veteran stage. With no new arrivals it will continue thus. It is make do and mend for Moyesy and hope fortune is on our side. But we might get lucky and they all enjoy an Indian Summer all at the same time. I wish. More likely we’ll get the same half-and-half stuff which drove us to distraction last season. This will get us by two thirds of teams in the division but will mean we still usually struggle against the top three or four.

Relatively speaking we are well off up front. A better midfield would guarantee us maybe another twenty/twenty-five goals per season and maybe as high as fourth or third place. A fully fit Radzinski in full flight is a terrifying sight for any defence. Nobody can catch him. The conundrum is how Moyesy gets him to play with The Duke. The main problem is that neither of them is a “holding” player. They both take the most direct route to goal and that isn’t always viable against determined defence. Which of course is why Kevin Campbell plays better with both players. It can’t go on forever. Kev takes some fearful physical punishment from behind, knees in his thighs, lower back injuries, and so on, and it has naturally taken its toll, as did the cruciate ligaments injury. The wonder is he can still manage ninety minutes. Along with Duncan Ferguson I cannot see him lasting the season. But I said that last year and was wrong.

It will be interesting to see how our youth programme progresses now the great Colin Harvey has retired. This was an incalculable loss to our club and should not be underestimated. Nevertheless, he has apparently bequeathed us a lot of promising young players. Whether they make it or not is another matter. As at any club, most don’t. The one name which keeps cropping up is midfielder Leon Osman, who will surely get his chance at some time this season.

Pre-season friendlies were useless for any purposes other than increasing match fitness and confirmation of our playing weaknesses. We usually won these when Walter Smith was manager – and then went on to a parlous season. We are about to find out if Moyesy has reversed the process.

In the boardroom matters remain unchanged, at least publicly. But probably the three way boardroom split remains which became apparent during the fall of the Kings Dock proposal. If the Halewood academy proposals fail too it is likely the board will finally lose any remaining credibility with our fans. In the meantime Paul Gregg has not sold up and moved on, but that may be due to delays through personal reasons. Philip Carter has not been replaced despite rumours to the contrary. Bill Kenwright remains the central staccato force in the club. Abercromby, Woods and Tamlin are apparently useless as a constructive element and seem to function purely as obstructions. Poor old Michael Dunford continues to draw most of the fans’ ire whether deserved or not – though it has to be said some of his actions constitute a threat to nothing but his own credibility. We badly need some fresh minds in the boardroom and preferably some fresh capital to ease the debt burden. The fact is we are not likely to get much change where it is needed, not unless a sugar daddy suddenly appears from nowhere. The football bubble has deflated, and a good thing too. Maybe now there will be a greater air of reality amongst fans everywhere, usual fickleness notwithstanding.

Me, I’m looking forward to a Moyes Watch. It promises to be very interesting in a rocky road sort of way. (03/08/03)