Tony Hibbert – Some Managers Do Have ‘Em OR How I learned to stop worrying and love our right back.

Take a sprig of Baldrick, just a dash of Eminem, throw in some David Burroughs, Marc Hottiger, and Earl Barrett, as well as a nervous field rodent and a shoe. You have both a recipe for disaster and Everton’s erstwhile right back, Tony Hibbert. The current holder of the club record for European appearances – beating even Brian Labone and Colin Harvey – is also my player of the season.
 
Spare a thought for Tony Hibbert this summer. As we drool over the World Cup he’ll be sitting at home twitching. Not that Tony has anything particularly wrong with him, twitching is just Hibbert’s natural state, like Drogba’s is lying prone on the floor, and Rooney’s is screaming. This and every summer is the summer of Hibbo’s discontent, a close-season silence, that is filled with nothing but transfer chatter. As our worst player, Hibbert’s head is on the chopping block every close season. Even if he survives the line of suitors for his job, he has to also successfully traverse rare tropical parasites attacking him.

Last year, Hibbert had to deal with Moyes’ roving transfer eye, a husband leaving the house and coming back with not one, but four new wives. The Scot started the season frantically searching for a new right back, but at the end of the campaign Hibbo was again last man standing. Our chief target Kyle Naughton went to Spurs instead and flopped, Lucas Neill left for Turkey, Seamus Coleman went out on loan, and Heitinga settled in a different position, leaving Phil Neville as the only other contender.

It has been a strange see-saw season at Everton, the first half was spent staggering from one injury to the next, while the business end was spent clawing our way back up the league. Only one player is such an infuriating blend of positive and negative: Tony Hibbert, the good, the bad, and the ugly all rolled into one. For that reason, Hibbo is the perfect player of the season, and here are some examples of his brilliance:

I. His penalty winning dive at Turf Moor – deftly executed and largely ignored by the press, as this is Tony Hibbert of “face like a shoe, the scouse Cafu” fame – not the actual Cafu (in which case he would be derided as an invertebrate diver)…

II. Like “Cripplegate” the lame dancing master , there is something incredibly endearing about panicked hang-dog Hibbert with his long, loping, Land’s End to John O’Groats passes…

III. So great was our ruinous injury list that the poor sod even played centre half at the Stadium of Light against Benfica’s sharp and hungry goal-getters. A match report at the time told of Benfica’s faithful Eagle ‘Vitoria’ that lands on an on pitch podium before the game. It was pointed out that with Everton’s injury crisis, there must have been a vulture feasting on crippled Toffees above Moyes’ dugout…

IV. My favourite Tony Hibbert moment, the few seconds that sum him up perfectly, was when he scored an own goal at West Ham. With the ball swept past Howard, a goal for the Hammers seemingly inevitable, our Tone charged back to heroically clean up. Hibbo managed to catch up with the ball, but as he tried to clear he fell back into the goal and sliced into the roof of the net in an awkward pratfall.
 
With Tony it isn’t about Goodison Park being the 12th man, but about Hibbert being the 40,158th fan; a prole player sitting amongst the pros. As he scuttles up the pitch with his perma-glum face, the time bomb of a long ball pass ticking away in his head,dodging verbal bullets from the fans, and usually messing up in a host of ways. You have to admire Tony, he’s a survivor,  a footballing cockroach that would still be around even after nuclear armageddon.

Tony Hibbert, some managers do have ‘em. Put in single file, Hibbert’s critics would stretch around the world, twice, but after this train-wreck of a campaign – he’s the only choice for player of the season, especially after his man of the match award against Portsmouth on the last day. He was all swinging crosses, half volleys, and nippy darting runs, it was a last match epiphany for Hibbert and I hope it can last for our right back with two left feet.

The only thing that today’s referre Mark Clattenberg and I can agree about is that Tony Hibbert, so poor this season, doesn’t deserve to be on the Goodison Park pitch. Clattenberg sent off Hibbert for his foul on Gerrard, the subsequent penalty being despatched by Kuyt, who got another in the last minute, from yet another penalty – this time conceded by Phil Neville – caught with his hands in the biscuit tin – diving to save a certain Liverpool goal.
And the game started off so well, Hyppia scoring a wonder own-goal which we all thought would exorcise the ghost of Sandy Brown – alas , it wasn’t to be as Clattenberg, Hibbert, and Neville conspired for a painful defeat. Clattenberg left Everton fans tearing their hair out as he denied Everton a even later last-gasp penalty, which seemed like an obvious foul from Carragher – Is Clattenberg a red?