ZERO TO SIXTY IN ONE SEASON
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Bily has a Russian Roulette foot. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. BANG! Yesterday word spread that Diniyar Bilyaletdinov was leaving Everton and heading back to mother Russia; Spartak Moscow had apparently agreed a fee though to be around £5m. If Moyes can get his hands on that money to strengthen, we could be in for a busy January. As soon as the news broke, most Evertonians split into one of three groups. First were the rheumy eyed romantics, their lips quivering at the thought of nice boy Bily playing for another team. Then there were those who thought that Moyes had wasted Bily’s talent by playing him out of position...
Eighty-three years ago today, Dixie Dean scored his famous sixtieth goal. Across the Atlantic baseball’s Babe Ruth also hit sixty. These two stars met twice, once in person and once in the record books. Before their talent rushed them into a sporting phone booth they were simply George Herman Ruth, Jr. and William Ralph Dean. They stepped out as supermen – “Babe” and “Dixie” and hit us with a swarm of achievements: 714 home runs (Babe), 37 true hat-tricks (Dixie), a headed goal from the half way line (Dixie), a ball in Detroit hit with such feral ferocity that it left the stadium (Babe), both men even clambered...
In the past few games Leon Osman has been wonderful. He has been the creative fulcrum in a team shorn of stars. That this Everton, a pruned squad facing the business end of the season, has done better than the superstars who started our season and flattered to decieve opens up a lot of questions. Perhaps those worried about our lack of transfer funds, and potential summer sales, should cast their minds back to 2004-05 when we finished 4th, after selling Wayne Rooney the previous summer and Thomas Gravesen half way through the campaign. Despite excelling in a weakened side, finally playing in the position that is best for...
The players and staff at Everton took about 60 seconds of his debut to understand his value. He’s the kingpin of the American team, the closest thing his country have to a big soccer star, yet he has no ego. That was, perhaps, the biggest thing that struck you about him. You noticed it when he walked into the dressing room and you noticed it after about a minute of his first game for us, away to Arsenal. He was playing on our right. The ball got knocked down the line, Gael Clichy set off on the run and he turned and tracked Clichy, step for step, for 70...
It’s amazing what happens when things are taken out of context The excruciating thing is that they both did exactly the same strange neck dance. Their actions before were different, the games themselves were utterly different, but the spasmodic neck move was the same. In both cases it was a dance borne from emotion shaved to the bone, they both looked like fish, slapping about on the deck, writhing for oxygen. For a split second Michael Thomas and Victor Anichebe share the same space, and then go their separate ways. Watching Michael Thomas’ goal is always amazing. Real football has the ability to make Roy of the Rovers a...
EVERTON 1 (Yakubu 63) – STOKE CITY 0. One thing we can safely say for this game, without fear of criticism, is that it lived down to expectations: Stoke were going to string four players built like rugby prop-forwards across their back four – tick; they came to defend, in depth, with no attacking ambitions whatsoever, so long as the scores remained even – tick; it would require patience and maybe a touch of luck to break them down – tick; it would not be pretty – tick. Thankfully, the only prediction that we got wrong was that we didn’t have to watch Rory Delap trundle up the touchline,...
Judging by the over-confident predictions coming across the blogosphere and from the twitterati you would have thought that Spurs only had to turn up on Saturday to claim the three points. In the event we had to give them a goal to keep them in the game.
The reasons that Rooney wanted to leave cannot be crowbarred into a tiny Tweet, they cannot be reduced from a barrage of grievances into a one-inch punch. The worn old adage that form is temporary and class is permanent holds true in another sense for Rooney. No matter how well he does on the pitch, he's always reminded of where he came from.
West Ham Chairman David Sullivan came out yesterday and gave his opinion on Yakubu’s market price. Sullivan said: “Everything has a price. You want to get Yakubu for £1-2 million and they are quoting £8 million and that is far too much. “They have to be more realistic. If they said £1-2m we might go back. We bid more at the start of the summer because we had more flexibility but, at this moment in time, having spent some of our money on other players we want him for £1-2m.” With gutter rag The S*n claiming that West Ham want £20million from Liverpool for Carlton Cole, are we to...
