DEAD FOR A DUCAT – SEASON REVIEW 2005/2006
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

You know Spring is here when you see lissom ladies jogging their wonderful shapes along the waterfront prom. In fact Spring is almost the only good thing about the season just finished – it heralded its end. I say “almost” because there are a few things we can rescue from the wreckage. Not much point dwelling on the statistics because the league table never lies. That’s really the only statistic you need to know. In season 2004-2005 we were the fourth best team in the country. Last season we were eleventh, and naturally almost all the stats reflect that. Which is why a sensible fan leaves those kind of figures to adolescent anoraks who like statements of the obvious. (So you scored less goals than you conceded, and you finished WHERE? Oh REALLY…………? Don’t tell me now…………the bottom team had less points than anyone else? Well I never…………) The figures gracing the waterfront are far more attractive and much more interesting.

Not much question by far the best thing in the season was Mikel Arteta. As it went on he got better and better and came very close to comparison with the great Colin Harvey. And if he can improve his body strength and tackling then he’ll get into the same star constellation. No small compliment, that. Mind you, the talents he has already will do even if he can’t add to them. You don’t need to be a discerning fan to note the dip in results when he got injured and fell out of the team. Not only did we start losing again we reacquired part of the miserable form – quite the worst of any Everton team I have ever seen – of the first half of the season. Tricky Mikky in outstanding form made all the difference.

Essentially this was the season when David Moyes made the final transition from rooky Prem manager to pretender to the front ranks. After this, from here on in, absolutely he stands or falls by his judgments alone, as he must. There can be no more allowances except in the realm of chance. Last season should have him looking intensely at his decision-making, or lack of it as some critics would have it. From next season on the team really will be his after the last vestige of Walter Smith players have left or sit on the bench contemplating an alternative future. So far David Moyes has plaited sawdust with the resources he has had and gave hope where previously there was precious little. Some of the performances he organised and motivated were little short of miraculous. Getting into Europe was a truly amazing achievement and it should never be forgotten. Now we will see if he can make the final leap by learning from his mistakes – legion and obvious during the last campaign – as all sensible men do. Each previous season took him a little bit further on, each of them made his steady advancement patent to all but the most bilious idiot or resentful weirdo. One hopes last season’s mistakes weren’t a default.

Given Villarreal’s exploits thus far it is fair to say our early-season Champions League joust with them was highly creditable for manager and team. I’m not the only one who thinks a little good fortune and a better referee (like everybody else I was truly looking forward to seeing Pierluigi Collina in action – also like everybody else I was disgusted by what I saw) in the second leg would have seen us through. Really, though, we could have little complaint losing to them. You couldn’t say the same about the awful first leg collapse at Dinamo Bucharest, which was nothing more than disgraceful for everybody involved. Sadly, the latter game set the standard for the season up to halfway. Up to Christmas we not only looked unlikely to shake off the affects, relegation looked an odds-on certainty. Playing disaster piled on playing disaster. Then came the reversal as though someone had set a wake up call next to the ear of each player. Suddenly we started getting results. Then Mikky got injured, we had a two weeks layoff, and that was that. Whatever class and unpredictability we had went with him. The season petered out to nothingness. It was all the majority of the performances deserved.

Where the players are concerned their inconsistency was baffling and it made for erratic phases of play in individual games. Often we had no “general” to organise play on the spot or take a game by the scruff of its neck and force the issue. Phil Neville tried to assume the role but really he just isn’t that sort of player. There was too a lack of physical strength and staying power in midfield and since this varied between individual players we frequently had a lopsided look, or were terribly vulnerable right through the centre. We leaked a lot of goals through central weaknesses and lack of pace, some of them outright embarrassing. You can’t help wondering if Per Kroldrup could have been much worse than some of the centre back form we saw.

Paradoxically, the loss of Nigel Martyn to injury wasn’t the disaster we thought it would be since that was about when form turned around. But Richard Wright doesn’t inspire confidence in any fan I’ve met despite that, and despite the fact that he hasn’t really let us down since he took over from Nigel, occasional bizarre decision notwithstanding. Apart from anything else he’s an unlucky man who wouldn’t have gained promotion under Napoleon. Most fans would like to see the two young ‘keepers Turner and Ruddy given more chances to show what they can do. Tony Hibbert’s form was mostly good but could veer wildly over three or four games until he got injured. Nuno Valente eventually established himself in reasonable form after a very slow start. Then he too was lost to injury and replaced by the inadequate and unfortunate Gary Naysmith. Nobody knows if Sandro Pistone will ever be fit to play for the club again. Centre back has been horrific ever since Davey Weir got outpaced for Villarreal’s first goal and then Joey inexplicably stuck one across the penalty box for an easy Man United goal in the season’s league opener. Matteo Ferrari looked the business to me but wasn’t played much in his obvious best position, which is centre back. Defensive form improved when Alan Stubbs made a surprise return at Christmas and promptly surprised us even further by playing really well. Phil Neville was generally our best and most consistent defender wherever he played.

Leon Osman was very good in spasms but then faded badly, as he always has. Tim Cahill disappointed where much was expected, perhaps too much. Kevin Kilbane generally played deeper than will allow his best move, which is running at right backs and crossing the ball. Andy van der Meyde was never fit enough to judge. Simon Davies improved after a bad start, had a few reasonable games, and then faded back again, so much so Steve who sits next to me asked in genuine puzzlement, “What the fuck’s he FOR?” Mikky Arteta was excellent whether wide left or right but he can’t do everything and he certainly can’t carry an entire team.

The front players suffered from awful service all season. However, James Beattie gradually improved himself to the point where he gave most opposing centre backs a gruelling time in the air and on the ground – when he had the chance, which wasn’t often. Occasionally he missed the kind of opportunity your grandma could have stuck in with her zimmer. Marcus Bent went to Charlton at the bottom of his playing fortunes and that left us with Jimmy McFadden and almost-retired veteran Duncan Ferguson. Jimmy Mac scored a few useful goals but continued to think it his main task to run straight into defenders and give the ball away instead of dribbling around them in ways previously demonstrated. Astonishingly, he still hasn’t learned to give-and-go at the right time. Nor has he looked the kind of playing partner needed by Beattie. This was surely The Big Yin’s last season and it showed. But overall none of them made a real impact and it was impossible to blame them if they weren’t getting even reasonable service. The goals tally says it all.

So not much room for encouragement. However, you will recall we were in the same preseason frame of mind before we finished fourth. The difference then was we had Tommy Gravesen more often than not playing out of his schizophrenic skin before he moved on to Real Madrid at Christmas and almost scuppered everything. We have never really replaced him. Only someone like Steed Malbranque could. What was most annoying was that when briefly we DID start to play last season we looked well capable again. Which infuriated all of us because it looked like the players were irresponsible and full of the wrong attitude, hence the perfectly valid questions asked of David Moyes. As I said above, more than anything else it was the loss of Mikky Arteta that finally did us in. Had he not been injured we might well have finished three or four places higher. That’s how tight the game is these days. The irony is he was injured during training and we couldn’t even blame the opposition. When fortune flows against you it does so in spades.

Plainly, incoming players are required to attempt to eliminate obvious weaknesses. The problem there is, like it or not, we don’t have much money and no amount of whining will change the situation. Anybody who has run a business will tell you the same simple fact of life: You can’t spend money you don’t have or can’t pay back. This is such a statement of the obvious it manages to avoid the more air-headed fans. Furthermore, few financial institutions are remotely interested in lending money to a sport, players and fans who have lived in cloud-cuckoo inflationland for too long. Those who witter on about “investment” might – but I wouldn’t make book on it – come to realise that professional sport isn’t assembly-line production or even the spiv-scam of property development in full flow. It just doesn’t work that way, for which see Newcastle and the millions they have spent. If it goes badly wrong (as it can for any club) you could find yourself in the lower regions for years in the manner of Manchester City or in near-liquidation in the manner of Leeds or, yes, Chelsea pre-Abramovich. Nor can you force someone to risk money in a situation which probably will never see a return better than you could get in a comparatively risk-free bank account. In another prototype, Southampton (remember them, yet another “example to follow,” now a division below us, new ground and all? How distant those Powerpoint presentations look NOW!) are currently threatened with takeover by somebody who claims they have been – yes, you’ve guessed it – “mismanaged.” Good job we didn’t follow their “example” eh? Now they’ve gone you can assume the next Flavour of the Month will be Tottenham. Then again, even Birmingham’s spending once got onto the radar screen. At least it did until they got, er, relegated.

Of much more sensible interest to us is how we use what limited resources we have. And that depends on David Moyes. By now he will have one thing totally clear in his mind: We can’t afford any more expensive fuck ups like Per Kroldrup or Andy van Der Meyde. We lost a lot of money on those transfers and if it was solely due to playing judgment then Moyesy has to hold up his hands. It was his call. Could Kroldrup have been any worse than the centre back weaknesses we saw virtually all season? If so, why did we sign him in the first place? And why was Matteo Ferrari, patently better than any of the other centre backs except Joey Yobo, not played while he was available? At this level professional sport has that kind of existential, querulous cruelty. It called into question once again Moyesy’s ability to handle so-called “star” players. If he hasn’t acquired it by now then it may be a bleak outlook for us. No club with ambition can succeed without them. We might all dream of a team made up entirely of completely loyal local lads who come through into the first team and win us glory, but the reality is that has NEVER existed since the founding of professional football and never will. Moyesy cannot justifiably highlight shortage of financial resources while not delivering when he has the chance, however limited. Thus far he has spent over twenty millions, no small potatoes. The question is whether he has taken the experience on board and not merely reacted against it.

None of which should obscure how well he has done when he got it right. Joey Yobo at his best is simply magnificent. Tim Cahill got better as time went on and he adjusted to the Premiership. Marcus Bent was a mainstay in the first half of the “fourth season.” Kevin Kilbane’s first season was a resounding success. Phil Neville has done everything asked of him, and more. Even Alan Stubbs’ startling return proved a winner. With decent service James Beattie has shown he can do the necessary. So on the playing balance sheet Moyesy is well ahead or he wouldn’t still be manager. But for him it is now or never. He must now eliminate doubts in himself and amongst others and make the final leap. No more Kroldrups, no more lousy substitute moves. In short, he really has to go for it. If it doesn’t work out, so what? He will have done his best and nobody could ask for more. If he has to move on, that’s sports life. The cycle will repeat if he leaves and the usual nutters attack his successor the way they attacked his predecessor, and the one before him, and the one before him, and so on ad infinitum. You wonder why any intelligent man wants to even bother when the game has that kind of weird, distasteful insanity attached to it.

For our club it isn’t a matter of what was, it is a matter of what IS and what we hope it will be. As Keith Wyness told me in interview – reinforced what many of us already thought in fact – we can’t really move forward until we have a new stadium. Where it is doesn’t much matter as long as the location is fit for purpose. Times have changed and old demography has long since evaporated and can be dispatched to the dustbin of history. However, in my view there’s no point moving if we don’t acquire a 50% bigger capacity. A stadium of 50,000 capacity is only ten thousand more than existing and would limit future ambitions. The optimum level is 60,000, or at the very least the ability to add easily another ten thousand seats at a later date. Anything less would move us forward, but only so far, and not far enough. We would be half-pregnant with abortion a distinct possibility.

The boardroom remains static until such time as someone makes a sensible bid. Not much action there, any more than there is at any other club, including those who have made total fools of themselves chasing the Thai prime minister, various American interests, Irish gangsters, local property spivs or East European nouveau riche. Bill Kenwright remains majority owner and will remain committed to the cause for as long his health holds out. It would be convenient if Paul Gregg would sell up and move on, which he clearly now wishes to do, since he adds nothing to the club or its future and self-admittedly knows bugger all about or has any interest in football. Our fiscal condition is relatively better than for years thanks to the administrative changes and financial deals – ignore the economically illiterate who tell you otherwise – made by the new organisation, though of course the bottom line could change overnight if we have another parlous season. Such is the roller coaster of professional sports life. In the meantime fantasists and loons warble on about distant visions such as the Cheshire White Rabbit, Lord Grantchester, or trolley-pusher Terry Leahy or even Paul McCartney. To put the latter figure into real perspective he was once asked at the height of Beatles fame who he supported, Us or the pinkies. Quite openly he queried, “Who’s winning?” So far as Grocer Leahy is concerned there isn’t the slightest indication that he knows anything whatever about running a sports club of any kind. All of which means, believe them when you see them and what they DO. If ever. Recall too what “businessmen” Alan Sugar and Terry Venables “did” for Tottenham and football in general (for which, see David Conn’s excellent footy books). Meanwhile hard reality beckons those with common sense and reasonable loyalty. The reality is Everton Football Club is for sale the way ALL football clubs are for sale, the way Man United and Chelsea and gawd knows who-all-else were sold off. Whether you or I like it or not is immaterial for now. That’s the way it is, all the rest being fishwife gossiping claptrap not worth the proverbial carrot.

Our fans have remained tremendously committed despite the standard of play suffered last season. The real test there will come when season ticket sales are complete and compared to previous seasons. I have renewed but I certainly wouldn’t blame anybody who decided not to. It’s a lot of money for ordinary families to fork out and nobody should take them for granted. In my view last season was awful, but not entirely so, and there were the tiny comforts described above. In the end of course it comes down to why you watch football and support your club of choice. If all you want is “a product” or “a brand” then frankly you should go watch a TV advert. If all you want to do is spout perennial irrational venom then you are best joining the BNP in Bootle, Waterloo or Crosby or reading the Sun, the Mail or the Daily Telegraph, or watching Sky TV. If all you do is use the game to express your own inadequacy and disappointment with life then you should seek trained counselling. Not that the game will ever be rid of those with the brain of a gnat, the intellect of a frozen pea and the morals of a guinea pig – they’ve always been there and always will be, which is why such poison morons should be scoffed at as a mild diversion. In any of these cases the game is better off without them and so are all decent people. They will never be satisfied. Clearly, professional sports or the virtues of straightforward loyalty are beyond them.

Next season nothing would give me more enjoyment than to see David Moyes and his players in confident and resurgent form with a few new players where necessary. The real fans are owed it. I hope they get it. And I hope David Moyes makes the final leap to the front ranks of managers. But in the stark world of professional football and its attendant illusions of deception self- and otherwise (see current events in Italy) he is running out of time. (12/05/06)