Sunday’s 212th Merseyside derby at Goodison can’t come soon enough – despondency and despair is in the air and doubts about David Moyes are being voiced, mostly it should be said, by the ill-informed media. What is needed is what we’ll get, a full house, raucous support, a tough, fast, physical game and all Evertonians united against a common foe, with no quarter given or asked. Everton’s team should contain more creativity and flair than of late with Bilyaletdinov back from suspension and Steven Pienaar now fully fit after playing ninety minutes at Hull on Wednesday. Our wings will finally be reopened for business with Baines and Pienaar set to re-establish their burgeoning relationship on the left – and on the right Bilyaletdinov should resume his promising start after a three game hiatus. Tim Cahill is long overdue a goal and we expect he will be reinstated to his most productive position – playing just off our lone striker. Given his huge experience of derby matches, we suspect that a now nicely rested Tony Hibbert will return at right back, but a slight groin strain means that Jack Rodwell faces a fitness test, as does Saha with his dodgy calf. Fellaini is by no means certain to win an instant recall and we suspect he will start on the bench.
Our XI to start (assuming Saha and Rodwell come through their fitness tests) set up in a 4-5-1 formation is: Howard; Hibbert, Yobo, Distin, Baines; Heitinga, Rodwell, Bilyaletdinov, Pienaar, Cahill ©; Saha.
Subs: Nash, Yakubu, Jo, Neill, Gosling, Fellaini, Wallace.

Torres, who is suffering from a hernia, has only done light training this week and will be fitness tested. Babel is definitely out but Johnson, Riera and Benayoun return to the Liverpool squad which is: Riera, Johnson, Agger, Carragher, Skrtel, Krygiakos, Aurelio, Insua, Dossena, El Zhar, Aquilani, Gerrard ©, Mascherano, Lucas, Benayoun, Riera, Kuyt, Ngog, Cavalieri, Spearing, Torres.

The reaction from most of the press was overwhelmingly against Tim Cahill’s mock manacle tribute after scoring against Portsmouth. The Australian midfielder, visibly on the brink of full blown tears, said he did it as a message to his incarcerated brother, to show that he was thinking of him. Sean Cahill was jailed for for six years in January over an assault which left his victim partially blind. The incident happened after Cahill left Delanos nightclub in Bromley and headed towards a nearby taxi rank.
Unfortunately, celeb press goons like David Mellor, eager to bash a quick one out (article that is) leapt on this story. In Mellor’s column for the Evening Standard, the famous Chelsea fan claimed that:

“Football can’t be turned into a propoganda platform for a ruthless yob like Sean Cahill”

The tragic thing about David Mellor is that he is very hard to take seriously. It is sorely tempting to mention as an opening gambit that he briefly worked under Jeffry Archer (what a nice way to start in politics) and to allude to that sex scandal (to borrow from Morrissey, “Caligula would have blushed”) with Antonia de Sancha where he had to resign as Heritage Minister.
Interestingly Mellor had previously claimed that PM John Major, and not the tabloid press, should decide his fate after his affair with de Sancha was discovered . And yet on the matter of Cahill and his brother, Mellor’s clamour was a part of the hysterical tide of opprobrium. I don’t condone what Sean Cahill did, but to say that he launched “an unprovoked attack” is clearly not telling the whole tale. I think Mr Mellor wanted an early night, and wrote a weak and easy piece without thinking.

Mystical types call it the Saturn Return – and most football fans will call it utter tripe. It takes Saturn about 29 years to complete one full orbit of the Sun and return to the exact position it was in when you were born. And when Saturn returns, a cosmic food blender of positives and negatives falls upon your shoulders.

The aforementioned mystic types, therefore, reckon that between the ages of 27 and 30 some funky bizarre stuff happens to us.

The Saturn Return is most famously associated with musicians, and in particular The 27 Club, an unsettlingly large group of musicians who died at the age of 27. From mythic Delta-Bluesman Robert Johnson – who was said to have sold his soul for his intricately brilliant guitar skills – to the famous five of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain.

I find it somewhat strange that this myth about the Saturn Return hasn’t swung over to football. Certain players rise and fall like Icarus, and I’ve always thought that Dixie Dean’s stellar 60 goals in one season, followed by the loss of both his legs late in life, points to some kind of shadowy Faustian pact. Personally I thought it was all a load of wacky 60s rhubarb – until Tim Cahill returned for my Everton.

Cahill’s return is now surely reaching its peak, with a sublime goal on Sunday against Chelsea. I have to admit that up until last weekend, my memories of Chelsea games have all merged into one giant hemorrhoidal pustule.

Wafer-thin charcoal biscuits masquerading as burgers, Chelsea fans popping up off their seats to laugh at a foreigner in the Toffees team – smugly unaware of Chelsea’s own phalanx of foreigners – gippy little goals which come back to haunt me again and again like a persistent pop-up error message on a computer screen (Mutu’s handball!).

I even witnessed what can only be described as an Everton roast – no, not the Newcastle United kind – where a ‘Chelsea MC’ scuttled onto the pitch before the game and ripped into Everton for five minutes, boozy guffaws echoing back at the comedian with the mic.

For us Evertonians, who have more history in our nose hair, watching Chelsea beat us over the past few seasons is like an aged Peter O’Toole jealously watching as Callum Best waltzes off with a bevy of beauties. Chelsea, on the other hand, don’t do history, for them the past is only a distant cousin, marked by a few splutters of success amidst the tepid treading-water.

What you can judge from the above passage is that Chelsea lack class. They are the Michael Carroll of football teams, lottery louts who are suddenly in the money, with an utter lack of scruples but an ocean of roubles. Cahill’s late equaliser was the perfect antidote to this mess, for a sweet second the Aussie was the same way up as his countrymen Down Under with an honest and brilliantly executed bicycle kick.

And this returns me to the Saturn Return; Cahill – though a strong player before his injury lay-off, has come back even better; he is 27 years of age – perhaps his Saturn Return has brought him more focus and resolve? There are other examples, too; Ronaldinho, in all his distilled, buck-toothed glory, has also had his Saturn Return – and the first major slump in his career.

George Best, the Manchester United legend, who was too differently skilled for even the word ‘unique’ to adequately describe him, quit the Red Devils at 27. So next time you’re watching your team, watch out for those 27-year-olds.

Chelsea 1-1 Everton – Acrobatic ‘Roo saves Everton!

Everton approached this game having recorded victories in each of their last five calendar entries. With Arteta out injured, Moyes moved Phil Neville up to midfield and brought in Hibbert at right back, a move that always provokes queasy unease. Perhaps Gravesen should have started in Arteta’s place – to put Phil Neville in Our tater’s place is surely switching silk with sandpaper.
As it was, a cavalcade of Chelsea chances came in the first half and they were all scuffed, missed, or saved. Everton started the second half with a much more positive shape, bringing on McFadden and Anichebe for Neville and Yakubu, a change that was a necessity for Everton to attempt to feature in this game; in the first half Everton hadn’t mustered a single decent chance.
It took a while for things to change in the second half, but Carsley produced Everton’s first real threat on 51 minutes, the Brummie couldn’t replicate his superb effort last week and instead scooped the ball well over the bar.
At the other end Howard was kept busy, as Chelsea cranked up the pressure, and with every chance it looked more and more likely that they would puncture Everton’s defence. It was Drobga who eventually put Chelsea into the lead evading his jailer Lescott and heading in at the near post from a corner on 69 minutes. Again clutching his badge like it means something to him, Drogba sits on the razors edge of hypocrisy – how long before another outburst comes out?
Moyes, finally forced to play a more creative hand, brought on Gravesen, his goggled eyed genius on 76 minutes, bringing him on for Lee Carsley. But this was to no avail as Chelsea looked to be easing towards victory; Moyes must be worried that despite his much vaunted new depth to his squad, his team still rely on Arteta as their creative fulcrum – as it was there was noone to truly take the fight to Chelsea – until the 89th minute that is. Tim Cahill added a splash of antipodean colour to Everton’s black and white performance. A beautifully executed overhead kick yet again showed how much Everton have missed their man, points shared – and an excellent result for Everton against a Chelsea side whose defence was so tight and strictly marshalled that they hand’t conceded for aeons.
Next up: Sunderland At Home.

David Moyes’ disgust with derby referee Mark Clattenberg is so all consuming that you wouldn’t put it past the Scot to take out television adverts warning against the biased ref. Before yesterday’s game Moyes used his team’s UEFA cup press conference to slate Clattenberg, and then even added some extra bile into his programme notes about the referee. Everton’s 3-1 win against Larissa then, couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.

This game had everything you would expect from the unpredictable and unsettled mix that is the Everton squad. Arteta was as always fabulous, playing football in a similar manner to Napoleon playing Risk, and Lescott (although caught daydreaming for Larissa’s goal) was reminiscent of the Tony Adams fashioned by Arsene Wenger – and made several surging runs from the back.

Everton started well, scoring through the returning prodigal, Tim Cahill – later described by Moyes as “our Johnny on the spot”. Cahill’s diving header in the 14th minute instantly exorcised any derby ghosts, the Australian’s celebratory run towards the corner flag and subsequent “Boxing ‘Roo” routine must have sent hearts soaring.

Everton’s second, a gloriously manufactured goal, starting on the left with Cahill, who sent Baines sprinting down the wing, delivering a cross to Pienaar who then flicked the ball back for Osman. Leon still had a split second before he arrived to meet the ball, and it is in that silence, that static calm before the storm, that the genesis of a truly great goal blossoms. Once Osman made contact the ball wriggled through the air, eager to reach the back of the net – it was easily one of the best goals by Everton this millennium.

With so many players returning we have some fascinating partnerships that could emerge, Gravesen paired up with his replacement Arteta and they showed glimpses of a preternatural understanding – similar to the short lived – but superb – passing relationship between Gravesen and Paul Gascoigne. But before we could enjoy this game too much, Everton, as they so often do – dragged us back into a world of uncertainty. It was somewhat fitting that after a derby game in which no Everton player scored, and many events seemed utterly out of our control – Everton would control yesterday’s game totally, so much so that even Larissa’s goal was made by Everton. A trickled ball to Lescott from Howard, and a ponderous response by the England international, let in the Brazilian Clayton.

All the tension of a possible defeat was then deflated by Anichebe, who came on and showed us what an important asset pace is (so sorely lacking with McFadden), and also exhibited a lot of strength too – bundling past two defenders for another European coup de grace by the young Nigerian.

Everton (4-4-1-1): T Howard – A Hibbert, J Yobo, J Lescott, L Baines – M Arteta, L Osman, L Carsley, S Pienaar (sub: A Stubbs, 88min) – T Cahill (sub: T Gravesen, 66) – J McFadden (sub: V Anichebe, 66). Substitutes not used: S Wessels, P Jagielka, Nuno Valente, Yakubu Ayegbeni. Booked: Yobo, Lescott, Gravesen.
Larissa (4-4-2): S Kotsolis – M Sarmiento, N Dabizas, I Kyriakidis (sub: A Lampropoulos, 75), S Venetidis – G Gkalitsios, G Fotakis, M Foerster (sub: A Venetis, 78), F Parra (sub: C Kalantzis, 58) – I Bakayoko, C Alexandre Silva. Substitutes not used: F Kipouros, I Kotsios, D Gkikas, P Katsiaros. Booked: Dabizas.
Referee: M Ingvarsson (Sweden).

Whilst bearded goon Rafa Benitez is weeping to all and sundry about his team’s lack of form, Everton are calmly preparing for Saturday’s game at Goodison and have been given a timely boost by the return of Tim Cahill. Whilst Rafa and his entourage are followed by a swirl of rotation controversy wherever they go, Everton have never even had the luxury of rotation, up until now that is.
Boxing ‘Roo Cahill’s return has given David Moyes an unusual treat, a selection dilemma in midfield! Moyes chirped:

“Tim started training on Monday and we are pleased to have him back..There is no doubt we have missed him since he’s been out…He is a goalscoring central midfielder with drive and when you look at the goals he has scored for Everton in the past three years, he has been a big part of our success.”

Cahill , who has scored three times in six games against Liverpool could possibly be joined by goggle eyed Tommy Gravesen, Moyes said: “

Tommy has done a bit of training and we will keep monitoring him…We have had to limit his involvement, but he is doing better.”

Adding to the jovial party spirit is the fact that AJ has returned from his ankle op and will be starting some light jogging (or in Yakubu’s terms some normal training) and could be back for the November 8th game against Nurnberg.