Posts by matty:
Fear and Loathing in Walton (or: Everton vs. Wolves Preview)
November 18th, 2011Revolution is in the air.
Mubarak ousted. Gaddafi killed. Wall Street occupied. Kenwright..?
The Blue Union will hold its second demonstration against the financial mismanagement of Everton Football Club tomorrow at 2pm, beginning at the field on Spellow Lane and presumably culminating with a march to the Directors’ entrance at Goodison Park. Given yesterday’s debacle involving emails allegedly leaked from the account of Ian Ross (Everton’s Head of Communications), it seems likely that what this event will lack in clown costumes and John Heitinga cakes, it will make up for with the number of disgruntled Evertonians in attendance.
Considering the laundry list of failures and farces that has been compiled under the present board, you’d have to say that their PR department have done a remarkable job in keeping the fanbase generally happy over the last decade. Obviously they owe a lot thanks to David Moyes for achieving league positions that rarely make sense, the two Manchester clubs for paying massive sums of money for Wayne Rooney and Joleon Lescott, and to the fans themselves – the majority of whom have remained apathetic towards the off-field running of the club while the team has been doing well.
Sadly for Kenwright and Friends, you can’t fool all of the people all the time, which is why it should come as no surprise to them that the jig is finally up. The money for Kings Dock isn’t ring-fenced, the Fortress Sports Fund didn’t go into the bank on Monday, and Destination Kirkby wasn’t ‘world-class’, ‘effectively free’ or even legal. Now that the team is going backwards and the banks are refusing to accept Dave Hickson anecdotes as legal tender, something has to give.
Kenwright has been in a hole since Kirkby collapsed, and while his determination to just keep digging no matter what is almost admirable, his journey to the centre of the Earth must surely be coming to an end after the release of these emails. The club has done a good job of presenting a united front up to now, with Moyes, along with past and present players, routinely backing up CEO Robert Elstone’s claims that Everton remain ‘fiercely ambitious’, but all of that looks like a load of bollocks when senior staff members are allegedly describing the club as being in ‘financial meltdown’ in between drawing up plans to divide the supporters through manipulation of the media.
Though there’s definitely a funny side to a lot of was written in those emails – the idea of a man who seems to spend much of his day posting snide remarks on fan forums questioning the productivity of the CEO was particularly amusing – there were also parts that are at best worrying, and at worst scary.
Rumours of the board’s asking price being a sticking point with potential buyers would become ever more believable if the comment about it costing ‘upwards of £25m’ to acquire a 25% stake in the club turns out to be true, while the insistence that the Blue Union’s message is nothing more than ill-informed scaremongering will become a lot harder to swallow if the club are found to be dictating the Echo’s coverage of what is becoming a nasty, bitter episode. Such paranoid behaviour, along with in-fighting amongst prominent employees, certainly creates the image that these are people cracking under the pressure of having something to hide.
Still, there was some good news in the form of Marouane Fellaini signing a new contract, even if the timing of the announcement was a bit suspicious. Fellaini has developed into one of the better central midfielders in the Premier League over the last two years, and at 23 years old is only going to improve further. Between him, Jack Rodwell and Ross Barkley Everton have the makings of a very, very good midfield.
There’s also a game tomorrow, in case anyone had forgotten. Everton are playing Wolves at home, which is never much fun, but after turning them over at Molineux last time the two sides met it should be a game that Moyes and his players more than fancy themselves in.
John Heitinga, who is rumoured to be taking his Gravesen 2.0 act to Roma in January, will probably drop out in favour of Sylvain Distin with Fellaini coming straight back into midfield. God knows what, if anything, will happen up front.
Wolves will be strong and direct, with the horrible Karl Henry looking to win plaudits from knobheads like Martin Keown and Lee Dixon by going through the back of Fellaini about fifteen times before the referee finally books him for shame’s sake.
Everton are currently 17th, and while it’s not quite time to panic, they don’t want to find themselves down that end of the table much longer. A win over Wolves, who sit 13th, would push Everton two points above them and hopefully represent the start of a much-needed run of positive results.
Newcastle 2 Everton 1 Match Report
November 7th, 2011You could write these match reports before the games even kick off.
David Moyes made two changes to the team that was beaten 1-0 by Manchester United a week ago, with Phil Neville and Royston Drenthe replacing the suspended Marouane Fellaini and seemingly despised Diniyar Bilyaletdinov. John Heitinga and Phil Jagielka carried on in the centre of defence, which came as a surprise seeing as though Sylvain Distin had recovered from the injury that kept him out against United.
Everton started brightly and created the game’s first real chance; Ryan Taylor misjudged Louis Saha’s flick, allowing Seamus Coleman a chance to shoot on the half-volley, but the Irishman blasted high and wide when he really should have done better.
Coleman has been struggling lately. It seems like opposing teams have sussed him out, leaving him looking a bit too limited to cut it as a Premier League-level winger. In fairness to him, he’s a natural full-back and looked brilliant there during his loan spell at Blackpool, so there’s no reason not to think he’ll end up a long-term fixture in defence once Neville replaces Moyes as manager and appoints Tony Hibbert as his assistant.
As is usually the way, Everton were punished for Coleman’s miss when Heitinga turned Danny Simpson’s cross into his own net after 12 minutes. It was hardly a Kolarov-style whip from Simpson, but it’d be harsh to blame Heitinga when Tim Howard, the world’s quietest tourette sufferer, declined to give him any kind of shout.
The Blues responded well to going behind, with Jack Rodwell and Leon Osman drawing saves from Tim Krul, who is pretty good despite looking like the archetypal dodgy flapper, while Saha smashed the ball out of the stadium when through on goal – an effort made doubly frustrating by the fact it was a waste of Jagielka’s first accurate pass of the season.
Once again Everton were made to rue their wastefulness in front of goal, as Ryan Taylor slammed a belter of a half-volley beyond Howard on 29 minutes. Taylor then almost fluked himself a second when he over hit a cross that came back off the bar, and Everton hit the woodwork themselves after Saha reacted quickest to a loose ball and was unlucky to see his first-time shot strike the post.
Moyes was forced to make his first substitution just 41 minutes in when Neville went down under what looked like a fairly light challenge; suggesting he probably shouldn’t have been on the pitch in the first place. Distin was the replacement, and while it was a very negative change to make when 2-0 down, I think it was really more of an admission that Jagielka and Heitinga were struggling to cope with the physicality of Demba Ba and Leon Best.
With Heitinga shifted into midfield things were looking bleak. That was until Drenthe’s corner was met by Rodwell, who powered a superb header past Krul to make it 2-1 just before half-time. The goal sent Everton into the break on a high, and they used the momentum to make a strong start to the second-half.
Tim Cahill, who hasn’t scored in about fifteen years, came on to end the Heitinga midfield nightmare and boost Everton’s push for an equaliser, but the chances dried up after Dan Gosling (remember him?) blocked Saha’s goal-bound strike with his arm. As Gosling was on the floor and didn’t really move it’d be harsh to say he should have been sent off, but it was a stonewall penalty regardless.
Arguably the worst moment of the game arrived on 81 minutes when James McFadden made his first appearance since returning on a free transfer. He was never up to much first time around, so the sight of him emerging from the dugout looking like an extra from Rab C. Nesbitt probably did little to worry Newcastle’s defenders.
McFadden has never had any pace, which might explain Moyes throwing him in despite appearing as though he’s been on the Yak diet, so we could only hope that he had at least matured as a footballer in the three and a half years since the manager decided he wasn’t good enough. Sadly, his attempt to curl one in from an impossible angle when there were numerous blue shirts to aim for confirmed that he still thinks like a nine year old.
This loss drops Everton to 17th after Wolves’ win over Wigan yesterday, and just a point separates them from Bolton in 18th. It’s been a horrible run that has seen Everton earn just three points from six difficult fixtures – and worryingly they were six fixtures that accounted for twelve points last season.
Despite Everton playing fairly well and deserving at least a point, it’s hard to begrudge Newcastle the win or their impressive start to the season. Alan Pardew doesn’t have a particularly big squad to work with and was given only a fraction of the fees received for Andy Carroll, Kevin Nolan and Jose Enrique to find adequate replacements. He also had to deal with his pre-season preparations being disrupted by Joey Barton, who has become even more of a pain in the arse since learning how to read.
The injury which forced Yohan Cabaye off in the first-half on Saturday left Pardew without three of his four first choice midfielders, but instead of dropping his arse and packing the centre of the park with defenders he opted to give two young a lads a go in their natural positions. Obviously there’s no way this Newcastle team will qualify for the Champions League, but their positive approach will ensure they do alright.
Everton’s next six matches include home games against Wolves, Stoke, Norwich and Swansea. These, along with the trip to Bolton, are games that Everton really need to win if they’re to spend the second half of the season thinking about Europe rather than worrying about a possible relegation scrap.
Hopefully there’ll be money to spend on a striker in January, but until then Moyes needs to freshen things up and show a bit more confidence in his players. Drenthe has made a positive impact, but even with him in the side it’s hard to see where goals are going to come from when Saha, who isn’t suited to playing as a lone striker anyway, is supported by a midfield that always contains two holding midfielders (one of which is quite often a natural defender in Neville or Heitinga) and a full-back on the wing.
The defence has never really recovered from Lescott’s departure and is only getting worse (their one clean sheet this season came in a game where the opposition missed two penalties), so It seems like as good a time as any to switch Coleman to right-back. The only way he’s going to develop as a defender is through playing games, and even if he does leave gaps by bombing forward there will be two defensive midfielders waiting to cover.
I sympathise with Moyes, who has watched his team fall apart in front of him over the past two years, but he still has a number of highly paid internationals to choose from, and rarely passes up an opportunity to defend the board in the press. He’s never going to be a gung-ho manager, and that’s fair enough, but his tactics are becoming unnecessarily negative to the point where his team are now incredibly predictable and easy to defend against.
A couple of wins will change everything, but it’s easier said than done.
Chelsea 3 – 1 Everton Match Review
October 18th, 2011It’s fair to say that this is quite a depressing time to follow Everton.
After grinding out a 2-0 defeat at Man City, David Moyes looked like he’d actually sent his team out to win the game against Liverpool a week later, only for Jamie Carragher’s assistant Martin Atkinson to kill Everton’s chances just 20 minutes in by sending off Jack Rodwell for a tackle so brutal that it appeared to break Luis Suarez’s ankle from three yards away.
Thanks to Suarez’s Wolverine-like recovery powers he was able to continue, and gave the kind of performance that makes you wonder why such a good footballer feels the need to cheat whenever possible. Andy Carroll opened the scoring in the second half, despite being a complete donkey, and Suarez made it two with a neat finish after capitalising on slapstick defending by Sylvain Distin and Leighton Baines.
An international break meant that Moyes had to wait two weeks to try and get his team back to winning ways in their next fixture away at Chelsea, but despite ESPN talking up Everton’s run of five draws in league games at Stamford Bridge it never really felt like even a point was on the cards.
The FA graciously agreed to rescind Rodwell’s red card from the derby – though they curiously saw no reason to punish Atkinson for his woeful handling of an incident that he was right on top of, or Suarez for acting like he’d stood on a landmine – so Moyes was able to select the same team that started quite brightly two weeks earlier.
Everton again got off to a promising start, with Leon Osman and Louis Saha combining to create a chance for the Frenchman to cut in from the left wing and fire a shot that Petr Cech could only gather at the second attempt. Unfortunately Saha was so buoyed by his half-decent effort that he decided not to pass to any of his teammates for the rest of the game, instead opting to try and get a shot off whenever he had the ball, regardless of how many opposition defenders were stood in front of him.
Seeing Saha revert to type encouraged the rest of the Everton players to follow suit; Phil Jagielka started playing beautifully weighted passes to the head of John Terry, Tony Hibbert kicked himself up the arse while trying to launch the ball into space, and Marouane Fellaini got himself a pointless booking.
Chelsea opened the scoring on 30 minutes when the superb Juan Mata picked out Ashley Cole with a deft chipped pass which the England left-back guided back across goal for Daniel Sturridge to head beyond Tim Howard. What Distin and Baines were looking at while all this was going on is anyone’s guess.
Everton responded well to the goal and managed to create another opportunity for Saha to ignore several grey shirts in good positions and kick the ball straight at Terry. As half-time approached it looked as though Everton were well placed to regroup during the break and look for an equaliser in the second half. That was until Seamus Coleman gave a stupid free kick away and Howard and Distin decided to stand by and let Terry head in a second from Frank Lampard’s cross.
To their credit, Everton came out flying at the restart, with Osman unlucky not to pull a goal back when his guided shot struck the outside of Cech’s left post. It was short-lived though, and within a few minutes Chelsea were pressing Everton back and limiting their attacks to hopeless punts by Jagielka and Hibbert.
Moyes made his usual 60 minute substitution, bringing on Royston Drenthe for the struggling Coleman, but before the Dutchman had a chance to touch the ball Chelsea had made it 3-0. Mata combined well with Didier Drogba (who looks a shadow of the player he was two years ago), before centring the ball across goal for Ramires to stab in. It was poor defending again from Everton, with Hibbert and Baines particularly culpable.
Fan morale hit a new low when Phil Neville came on to replace the ineffectual Tim Cahill with about 20 minutes left, which enabled Everton to switch to the tried and trusted method of knocking it long to Fellaini when things aren’t going well. After 10 minutes of this Moyes decided it might be worth putting someone in the box that moves, so Saha was replaced by Apostolos Vellios, who only went and scored with his first touch.
There was to be no great comeback though. The final minutes of the game passed without incident, aside from a brief shouting match between Neville and Lampard after a late challenge from the former.
A third defeat on the spin leaves Everton sitting 15th in the Premier League and just a point off the bottom-three with a game in hand. It’s alright though, because they’ve just signed James McFadden on a free transfer.
Everton 2-2 Aston Villa Match Review
September 13th, 2011A late goal from Gabriel Agbonlahor cost Everton what would have been a well-deserved first home league win of the season as Aston Villa somehow escaped from Goodison Park with a 2-2 draw.
The fun started early with what has been reported as anything between 650-1500 disgruntled Evertonians making a peaceful demonstration against the board in the form of a short march from behind Everton One to the directors’ entrance at the ground. It was hardly 1917 St. Petersburg but a start at least – the highlight definitely being a clown walking around with what I can only assume was the world’s first and only John Heitinga cake.
Despite suggestions that protesting would create a negative feeling that would seep into the stadium and kill the players, it ended up being one of the better atmospheres for a standard fixture in quite a while, especially considering the attendance was the lowest for a Saturday 3pm kick-off in nine years.
Everton started brightly and dominated possession throughout the first half against a Villa team whose plan of attack seemed to be built around Emile Heskey winning headers against Leighton Baines, which in fairness worked for Arsenal when they did the same thing using Nicklas Bendtner two years ago. Unfortunately for Alex McLeish his master plan was thwarted when the shock of playing a decent through-pass caused Heskey to pull a hamstring.
Seamus Coleman returned to the starting line up after an injury lay-off and looked great against ‘The Man of a Thousand Broken Ankles’ Steven Warnock. Coleman’s pace and aggressive running is a breath of fresh air in a team that is generally slow and methodical going forward, and though he was out on his feet towards the end, his was one of the day’s most encouraging performances.
Leon Osman put the finishing touch on a nice move to open the scoring on 19 minutes. It looked for a second like Tim Cahill had cost Osman a decent shooting opportunity when he took the ball off his team mate’s toes on the edge of the box, but a clever reverse pass from the Australian allowed Osman to guide an excellent left-footed finish beyond the reach of Shay Given.
Soon after the opener came a quite surreal moment as Bill Kenwright’s face was shown on the big screen for about 15 seconds. The sight of Kenwright, who gave a bizarre sob story interview in the Daily Mail that was put out on the morning of the match, was initially met with a chorus of boos, only for a fair chunk of the ground to counter with a sustained round of applause.
It was so surprising that the cameras went back again to make sure it had really happened, and lo and behold, the man who ring-fenced £30m for the Kings Dock and provided us with an effectively free, world-class stadium received a warm clap. Score one for the Everton PR machine.
After the break everyone was reminded that there was a football match going on when Stilian Petrov curled a cracking effort past Tim Howard on 63 minutes for 1-1. The crowd and players responded immediately though, and within six minutes Everton’s lead was restored after the awful Fabian Delph made a ridiculous challenge on Phil Jagielka and Baines converted the resulting penalty.
Everton should have also had a penalty in the first half when Baines was blatantly tripped by substitute Barry Bannan, only for the referee to somehow fail to spot a foul that happened no more than five yards in front of him. It was a decision that David Moyes and his team would go on to rue after Agbonlahor’s 83rd minute equaliser stole a point for the visitors.
Agbonlahor fed to ball out wide to Mark Albrighton and made his way into the box where he took up a position in the middle of Jagielka, Howard and Sylvain Distin. Tony Hibbert, in because Phil Neville was presumably too upset by the despicable actions of the Blue Union and not in the right from of mind to play, made no attempt at closing him down and his cross was able to pick out Agbonlahor, who took advantage of Distin’s complete failure to react and headed Villa’s second.
It was an overall strong performance that deserved three points, but I suppose Everton were due some bad karma after mugging Blackburn at Ewood Park last time out. It was surprising to hear Moyes and Cahill criticising the fans in their post-match interviews (something you never see from Alex Ferguson or any of the United players), and all indications are that Everton are looking to marginalise the Blue Union by turning the rest of the fan base against them.
Hopefully the board will name a price sooner rather than later and we can find out exactly how hard they’re trying to sell the club.