01/11/05

The Game’s Gone Mad!

Three months back, I wrote a piece for this website titled “Football’s Fooked” – an overview on the state of the game as I see it today. There’s never been as much money floating about in the game – the only problem is that the slush fund is being shared amongst the privileged few... and the rest can sod off, staving administration along the way, hoping to unearth the next Wayne Rooney in order to survive another few years.

Poor old Johnny Haynes was laid to rest last week, a great footballer in his day but known forevermore not for his talent but rather as being the first player to earn a £100-a-week wage packet. I wonder… do the likes of Rio Ferdinand appreciate their ridiculous financial demands being met or do they remain in cloud cuckoo land, oblivious to a real world that exists outside their weekly toil on a football pitch?

Ten league games into the season I’d like to offer also that football, as we know it, has gone mad. Stark raving mad! The Premiership itself, supposedly “the greatest league in the world” is already reduced to a one-team canter – Chelsea having won 39 of their last 49 League fixtures and a ludicrous goal difference of plus 79! How in God’s name can anyone compete with THAT?

Unless, of course, you seriously reckon the Wigan Athletic dream can continue… Bloody hell! Wigan Athletic, lying second in the top flight of English football??? Even crazier, they are there on merit — this year’s “Everton” — being patronised to the hilt by all and sundry, until the wheels come off and they find few friends remaining. Little Wigan, the footy team from a rugby town, cock of the northwest just now, looking down on the rest of us. Madness!

God knows who’s next to overtake us – will it be Hull City, reborn over recent seasons and now pushing for the higher echelons of the game? Brighton & Hove Albion perhaps? Now that they’ve secured planning permission to build a stadium of their own, who knows what lies ahead for them in the next five or six seasons.

As we stand idle on many issues — none more so than the Goodison Park debate — what odds on a plethora of unfancied teams coming up through the League and overtaking us? Laugh you bloody well may – take a look at the League table and observe Wigan’s lofty perch! We’ve long since forgotten Fulham’s predicament of a decade ago. One foot in the grave until Al Fayed financed their renaissance. Another Premiership side, Charlton Athletic, not so long ago, were playing home games at Selhurst Park and Upton Park. Their home at The Valley was derelict. Now they’re talking of extending the capacity at The Valley to a figure in excess of our own capacity at Goodison — and they also possess a squad equipped to perform consistently in the Premiership.

The wise sages in football all nod knowingly; the Premiership trophy shall remain at Stamford Bridge for a further twelve months. The only other two teams deemed capable of offering any sort of challenge to Chelsea’s dominance — Manchester United and Arsenal — have both been battered into submission already. The game is up. Ten games played!

United’s capitulation on Saturday against a previously uninspiring Middlesbrough side has surely decimated what little confidence remained. It is amazing how they are now viewed by many as being a “one-man team” (Rooney), their glory days rapidly becoming a distant memory and hard to accept I’m sure. But, tough, that’s football. Happened to us. Happened to Liverpool. Happening to United! There’s no room for sentiment in this game and for all the pots Alex Ferguson has claimed over the years they will count for diddley squat should he end his days paralleling Brian Clough’s rapid decline. Bless.

Anyhow, who gives a toss about Manchester United’s current woes? The lack of sentiment in the game — well, we’ve witnessed enough at our place already this year. The frustration I can understand perfectly after 38 years of being an Evertonian living on this planet. The venom is what’s astounded me; the sheer panic that has seen many Evertonians looking for David Moyes to be ousted — the man solely responsible for the decline from a magnificent, erm, fourth... to a basement twentieth!

Who gives a shit about the fact that Moyes has been at the helm when we’ve bucked the trend and finished above better teams (dare I include the current European Champions!), managed to qualify via a final League position for European football — something not achieved for many many years by any Everton manager. That in itself is a shocking indictment on a club of our supposed standing, one of the traditional big-five clubs. We talk a good game at Everton but sadly it’s more in reflection of past glories rather than, erm, Magnificent Sevenths and fourth-place finishes in the modern day Premiership, some 30+ points behind the champions!

There’s no defending the lack of points accrued over the past calendar year — a truly appalling return on the back of great (misguided) promise this time last season. Factor in Moyes’s failure to secure the services of a proven goalscorer (not many of those about in the summer) and some see that as reason enough to get shut: School of Science we most definitely are not. Ergo, Moyes must go? You must be “having a laugh”!

I hate repeating it again and again and again – getting shut of the manager solves nothing at Everton. Sliding doors, one out, one in, new man, new scarf, same squad of players, same Boardroom, same lack of money available, same Alan Myers reporting the latest re-birth of the Goodison Blues on Sky Sports News… It’s the culture of football these days — first sign of a rot setting in and the manager comes under the spotlight, aided and abetted by the Sky Sports News muppets making a crisis out of a drama. Don’t forget to press your red button on your sky remote as YOU the viewer decide whether or not David Moyes should be removed…

One manager with reason more than most to be content with his work to date is Charlton’s Alan Curbishley. I hate viewing Charlton Athletic as a prime example of a club seemingly well run but there’s times when stating the obvious needs repeating! Here’s a man who has experienced the good and the bad — with a little ugly thrown in for good measure. They’ve had their highs, endured a few lows — including relegation — but persisting with the man, acknowledged by his peers as a good manager, has now been rewarded. How many non-Charlton fans ever consider Charlton a potential candidate for relegation at the start of every season? Very few I would imagine. There may be no trophies to show for their efforts but considering the progress they’ve made over the past decade or so, and the climate of fear that envelopes the Premiership, the fact that Charlton are now perceived to be one of those teams annually chasing a Uefa Cup spot shows how far they’ve come. Faith in ability rewarded.

We should follow suit. Warts ‘n all. Sometimes you only appreciate what you had when it’s gone. Moyes may well be overseeing an under-achieving Everton side at present but he’s the same fella who brought smiles back to Evertonian faces, young and old alike, with an upturn in our fortunes since his arrival, culminating in last season’s fourth place finish. Would we really be better off getting shut of him sometime soon if we continue to labour nearer the foot of the Premiership? Somehow I don’t think so. Getting shut of Moyes? I’m telling yer…

The Game’s Gone Mad!