Bio: James is European Correspondent of World Football Insider and was previously Contributing Editor of the Observer Sport Monthly. Back in 1994 , when James was just 15, he founded the successful Everton football fanzine, Gwladys Sings The Blues. James is also the author of  ’Everton: The School of Science’ – a new edition of which will be out next month.  James was kind enough to answer our questions. Have a read, it is instantly apparent that he is an Evertonian to the marrow.

I didn’t really have much say in the matter!  On my Mother’s side of the family they’ve been Evertonians since the nineteenth century.  My Grandfather, who is 86 and only stopped going to Goodison a few years ago, saw his first game the month before Dean scored his sixtieth goal, and both his father and grandfather were season ticket holders. 

 

The story on my Dad’s side is a bit more interesting.  He only moved to Liverpool when he was eight as his Dad was starting at Fords. Previously  he used to go and see Bobby Moore-era West Ham. Anyway, on his first day at school, the school bully asked him who he supported. “West Ham,” he replied in his high-pitched cockney voice.  The bully gave him a belt and said “Now you’re an Evertonian” and it stuck. Luckily Everton also won the title that year, so the attempts of his Liverpool-supporting brother and Man Utd-supporting father to sway him were easy to resist.  When he met my mum a decade later he was welcomed with open arms.

 

It’s a family tradition we’re all very proud of and I look forward to continuing it with my own children. 

Some of the misery of supporting Everton was quickly engrained. My first match was when we beat Arsenal 6-1 in  November 1985 and we were soon leading the table, so I was quickly hooked. Unfortunately it was also a season where Liverpool clawed back what seemed like an unsurpassable lead at the top of the table to win not just the league but the FA Cup as well. A month later England were cheated out of the World Cup by Diego Maradona and then Everton lost Gary Lineker to Barcelona.  It was all a bit like winning the lottery but losing the ticket.  I still remember moments – listening to us battering Oxford United but losing to a late goal, which basically cost us the title; or coming home from school and seeing about Lineker leaving.  For me, they were much harder to take than some of the 90s traumas.

Dixie Dean is the easy answer to this, but actually I’d stop off in 1939 and see the team that won the title that year.  To hear my grandfather and his friends eulogise players like TG Jones and Tommy Lawton 60 or 70 years after they played makes you realise just what great players they were.

Neville Southall – brilliant, brave, unconventional; a one-off in every sense of the word.  He probably saved us from the abyss in the early-1990s. I think a mark of his greatness is the fact that so few goalkeepers in the Premier League’s money-strewn era have come so close to his standards. Maybe Petr Cech, Peter Schmeichel and possibly David Seaman. But even with millions to burn,very few clubs have been able to match the standards set by a former bin man from Llandudno.

I think it’s got to be Dixie because his achievements will never be matched or beaten.  I got to know Ball very slightly just before he died. He was a very nice and very humble man who always had time to talk to a nervous young journalist ringing him up at home.  Very few people of his profile are like that.  I was devastated when he died.

I’ve said before that the measure of Young’s greatness wasn’t necessarily what passed on the field, but off it.  Like Alan Ball was, he’s just an incredibly nice, humble, decent and wise man and I think that that has rubbed off on fans.  Obviously it’s not my era, but I think he was a bit more of a divisive player than some people now credit.  Researching my first book and also the Everton Encyclopaedia, which I’m working on now, I’ve come across letters to the Echo and so on, where he’s been trashed by fans who accused him of going missing or not being up to the physical challenges.  But I’m sure every player in history has got stick off fans, or has had their merits debated.  I was at the World Cup in South Africa and even Lionel Messi was getting dog’s abuse off some know-it-alls.

I don’t think it’s been dire and we’ve played decent stuff. But we have lacked a cutting edge and that has affected results and impaired confidence. Maybe the Birmingham game was a turning point after we got a bit of luck.

 

 I think there’s two distinct camps forming, and the Moyes-out camp are not versed in the realities of modern football. They think that it’s our right to win trophies because that’s what Everton have done in the past – but football isn’t like that any more and you’re up against clubs with turnovers – and consequently wage and transfer budgets – three or four times the size of Everton.  Moyes is a miracle worker and in my opinion his achievements at the club – given the context of the era – are comparable with those of Howard Kendall or Harry Catterick.  Some people will sneer at that, but he has made Everton competetive when all odds are stacked against him.  If this Everton team were playing in any pre-Premier League era we’d sweep the board with the side he’s built.

 But take aside Chelsea and Man City – which are grotesque exceptions and not really run along any business logic – how many of these foreign investors would you actually want at Goodison?  How many of these investors have changed the fortunes of a club? Aston Villa have improved sightly under Randy Lerner and Sunderland a little bit under Ellis Short, but could you say they’ve been more successful than Everton? And as for the rest… 

 

We were too quick to accept Peter Johnson’s money in 1994 and were burned then. Look at Liverpool now, supposedly moving on to the elusive “next level” after the Texans came in as “saviours” three years ago. We should be incredibly careful now before jumping into bed with anyone.