Now is the summer of our discontent.

Summer is an atrocious time to be an Evertonian. Nails are bitten to the quick, nights are sleepless, and the fevered clamour amongst the gutter press for a full-scale Everton exodus reaches unbearable levels. With Pienaar still flirting with our offer, Arteta a possibility to leave, and Johnny Heitinga sending a volley of mixed messages our way we could be forgiven for forgetting about Dan Gosling.

If you’d have asked me my opinion of Gosling last week I would have told you that he is a solid young player, and a promising prospect for the future. All that is now in tatters. As word first spread my initial ire was focused on Everton. Let’s face facts, we are noted in society for our cock ups – from Muller to Ravanelli, from Rooney to Lescott and from Kroldrup to Manny Fernandes - we know how to botch a deal and sell a player.

However, as more noises have emanated from Goodison it now looks like Gosling deliberately intimated that he would sign a contract extension whilst behind the scenes he was planning to leave Everton for nothing by using a loophole (the loophole being that the contract extension offer was verbal not written). He dragged Bill Kenwright and David Moyes through a tribunal (and they must have been spitting bullets) to secure his “freedom”.

Still more rumours claim that the £15,000 a week offered  by Everton wasn’t quite enough for young Gosling, and that he wanted guarantees about first team football (madness for someone as young as him) and to play in central midfield (even more idiotic considering the wealth of talent we have there).

The pain comes from a combination of factors. His move to Sunderland/West Ham/Newcastle is an illogical move down. His move has weakened us financially (we could have got at least £4 million for him) – and in terms of our squad. The betrayal also hurts – and it was a betrayal that showed barefaced cheek.

One word of warning to young Gosling: Players tend to sink without the Moyes buoyancy aid. Players far far better than you (Lescott, Pienaar, Andy Johnson, Saha) have proven what a man manager Moyes is; he squeezes players’ talents to the pips…I hope you sink like a stone you cheeky bastard. You reneged on gentleman’s agreement, you don’t deserve one iota of respect.

PS. I cannot wait until you return to Goodison, and long for your red face to be replaced by one of our blue shirts.

World Cup 2010: England

http://twitter.com/dixiessixty
Germany 4-1 England. It was an escape from victory not Escape To Victory, a bust rather than Dambusters.
 
And soon after a stampede of familiar moans charged across the horizon:
 

•   “It was because we have a foreign manager” (forgetting how the last English manager performed)
• “They are overpaid” (forgetting how well the players did for their clubs)
• “We need a manager like Maradona” (I thought Capello’s appointment was needed to add discipline; to tame the wild English style)

It is interesting that we compare England to Italy, Germany and France (“they would never employ a foreign manager”) when in reality there is no comparison. England are miles behind.
 
 Of them all, Rooney confused me the most. I’ve never seen him play that poorly. He was a Bruce Banner who couldn’t turn green, a Clark Kent so glum and listless that he couldn’t even be bothered to look for a phone box. For a player so used to harrying and dazzling opponents, he was unbelievably off form. He wasn’t himself. Rooney was so incognito, so unrecognizable,  he could have held up a South African bank in broad daylight and still not have been picked out of an identity parade.
 
In the end, it was just like watching Brazil. The dystopian film, not the fantastic team. 

 Andy Hinchcliffe (1990-98)

Apps 182, Goals 7

Tasty left foot

 Hinchcliffe was our left-footed dead-ball specialist during the nineties. Perhaps not as accomplished the right-footed dead-ball specialist that is still clinging onto the England squad for dear life – but actually more well-rounded. Because of Mr Beckham’s Murdochian stranglehold on football it is easy to think that good cross and set-piece merchants are immobile automatons obsessed with angles and lining up their Coke cans in an orderly fashion in their fridge. This would be wrong. Whereas Beckham has all the mobility of Dr Strangelove stuck in a mud drenched lay-by, Hinchcliffe was actually quite quick, and occasionally took on players too.

David Beckham made his first international appearance in September 1996 against Moldova – Hinchcliffe was in the same side – and although nowhere near as accomplished as Beckham, our left-back was criminally underrated at international level.

When George W. Bush was basking in the light of reelection he gave special thanks to Karl Rove, calling him “the architect”. Duncan Ferguson’s place on this list, and some of his most memorable goals are due in large part to Andy Hinchcliffe – the architect of many a towering headed goal with his whipped, inswinging corners. Hinchcliffe is even memorialised in music with Finnish composer Osmo Tapio Räihälä writing “Hinchcliffe Thumper” in 1993.

#57 Joe Parkinson

#58 Tony Kay

#59 Duncan Ferguson

#60 Thomas Gravesen
[ad#Google Adsense]

"A good tackle is just as good as taking three people on and passing them. It is a skill you need to learn and a good tackle is as good as a good free kick."

1994-99, 105 apps, 4 goals

Everton’s 57th best player (and Bournmouth’s 9th) is another one like Tony Kay who never came anywhere near to fulfilling his potential. Whereas Kay’s career was halted by draconian punishment, Parkinson’s was curtailed by injury – a cartilage tear that “despite operation after operation kept ripping”.

Joe ran himself into the ground for Everton, and by playing through serious injury and making do on pain killing injections he put his career on the line for our club. It is interesting reading interviews with Parkinson; the poster boy for the “Dogs of War”, he was someone who was proud of his tough tackling, regarding it as a skill which he had mastered. Parkinson played his last game of professional football when he was 26 and retired in 1999. Joe he left behind his FA Cup winning performance against Man Utd and a series of midfield tackles which must still make the recipients wince.

[ad#Google Adsense]

Tony Kay (1962-64)

57 appearances, 4 goals

Tony Kay was Britain’s most expensive footballer when Everton swooped for him in 1962, paying a British record £60,000 for the red-headed wing half. Ponderous players attempting a midfield filibuster were greeted by Kay’s menacing physicality as well as his abundant skill. Harry Catterick, a shrewd judge of talent, clearly had big plans for Kay – plans that sadly never fully blossomed.   That Kay is instead remembered for becoming embroiled in a betting scandal during his time at Sheffield Wednesday and being banned from football for life is one of Everton’s biggest tragedies. Capped once by England, Kay resembles Everton’s major “what if” and the reception he received upon his return to Goodison with other past legends hints at the player he could have been.

#60. Thomas Gravesen (2000-05, 2007-08)

132 appearances, 11 goals

From the beginning of his Everton career, Gravesen set out to get noticed, playing like he should have an exclamation mark grafted onto his surname. The excitable Dane even saw red in one of his first outings, a “friendly” against Blackburn Rovers in 2000, for some appalling tackling.

Gravesen had two stints at Everton, but his first was his best. Often starved of a partner to exchange skilful midfield repartee with, he was forced to roam on his own – a goggle-eyed, shaven-headed hunter-gatherer. Why is he on this list? Gravesen polarises opinion like Marmite, Spam and country music, but Tommy drove a workman-like Everton towards fourth spot and turned Real Madrid’s head before he could finish the job.

Despite looking like he should be stroking a cat whilst plotting James Bond’s downfall from a hollowed-out volcano, he was hugely talented.

Often starved of a partner to pass and exchange skillful touches with, he was forced to roam on his own, and when the mood took him he would often head down blind alleys and cul de sacs, submerged in his own skills with his head down. When he came to he would often find himself near the corner flag.

If Everton are a Bill Kenwright production then Gravesen was the star of the pantomime, a player who grimaced and gesticulated when he played, and with his shaven head and bulging eyes he looked every part a Mad Dog of a midfielder. His theatrics were often greeted with an “Oh Tommy, Tommy…” bellow from the stands, and the songs of the fans were echoed back with his larger than life skills.

His amazing chipped pass to Lee Carsley against Arsenal and his goal from the edge of the area against Crystal Palace were both world class in their execution. Tommy did come back for a muted second coming and waved goodbye to Goodison by dispatching a penalty against Fiorentina. He retired from football last season.

I’ll never forget Thomas Gravesen, charging around the midfield like a rebel without a cause, but in some ways his Mad Dog persona perpetuated a huge myth about the Dane. Simply because he looked like a hard man midfielder people began to claim that he was. If I had a pound for every time Tommy was given the moniker “tough tackling” I would have a fortune to parallel a dodgy Russian oil oligarch.

If Gravesen goes off into the sunset and his career dwindles and meanders to an end I hope he isn’t remembered as a hard man midfielder. In truth he couldn’t tackle very well at all – and much of the confusion must surely rest on the shoulders of his midfield lookalike Lee “Harry Hill” Carsley.

In reality Gravesen was very over excitable, but that always translated itself into mad mazy runs, and charging after the ball like a blue arsed fly and not the hard-man ultra violence he was accused of.

The bare truth is that Gravesen simply wasn’t the glass chewing, no-prisoners enforcer that many thought he was – this utter misreading of the basic tenets of his game wasn’t just among fans and pundits – Real Madrid tried to play him as a defensive midfielder and essentially failed.

David Moyes, the man who had the temerity to say no to Mark Hughes, let rip today – and I love him even more for it. According to every news source with a pulse, Moyes has torn “Sparky” a new one for not understanding the word “no”…

The Independent’s Paul Walker writes:

Moyes, preparing his side for tomorrow’s season opener at home to Arsenal, launched a bitter attack on Hughes and City.

He said: “There is no dialogue between us and Manchester City as far as I know.

“Maybe City are having dialogue with somebody else, but it is not between me and City.

“He (Hughes) said they were talking to people who make the decisions here. Well he knows who makes the decisions at Everton and it is me.

“He has never once picked up the phone and given me a call, so he is not going to get the answer. I am the one who makes the decisions here, not like other clubs.

“It has disrupted us. They have been talking about it and we have not been talking about the start of the season, that has been disruptive. So maybe that is what the overall plan was.”

Moyes added: “I look back and see how Real Madrid did their business with Manchester United (over Ronaldo). It was done at the tail end of the season, and it was done quickly to allow United to buy if they wanted to do so.

“We cannot be getting offers a week or two to go before the end of the deadline. And the offers they made shows that we value Joleon Lescott far higher than they do.

“Joleon is a massive player for us, we think so much of him and do not want to lose him.

“The players here think so much of him, and as a (coaching) staff we do.

“His head has been twisted and I cannot say the way things have been done is right, it is not how we do things at this club.

“But maybe their football club is different, I control things here, maybe it is not quite the same there.”

How many times does Moyes have to tell Hughes that Lescott isn’t for sale? Should he carve it onto Hughes’ forehead with a Victorinox? And isn’t it brilliant that are next game after Arsenal is Man City away?

This was originally published on the Times Fanzine Fanzone Page.

And it continues…Lescott wants to leave, Moyes doesn’t want to sell, and Hughes is still returning with bids for the player. The harder Moyes rejects the bids the more the Welshman boomerangs back. Hughes’ bids amount to Chinese Water Torture; an incessant drip – intriguing Lescott and annoying Moyes in equal measure. All this is surrounded by hordes of blithering idiots, who munch unquestioningly over the daily tabloids. It’s impossible to know what is happening at the centre of the storm, but here are three views…

I. Mark Hughes is a pillock.

A dangerous pillock who won’t take no for an answer in the worst way, a transfer rapist. His mumbled admiration for Lescott, and his clumsy public bluff (claiming that he’ll move on to other transfer targets if something isn’t settled soon) are brazen brushstrokes on a backdrop of Moyes’ blanket rejection.
Behind the quiet steely front, the iron curtain that is the Welshman’s atrophied face, complete with brillo pad hair and a crack of a mouth permanently on the verge of succumbing to lockjaw, lies a scared man out of his depth and bereft of imagination. A man who, somehow, despite having an oily ocean of millions to spend, cannot look beyond Everton’s second best defender as a transfer target.
Moyes is jealously annoyed with Hughes for several reasons. Hughes has a bulging war chest, Moyes has a pittance. City were midtable but got bought by very rich men, Everton have been camped in fifth place for two seasons but cannot find a buyer. The day after Moyes claimed that none of his players were for sale, Hughes thrust a cheeky £15 million Lescott bid under the Scot’s nose. Moyes was already having a barrel-scrapingly bad summer in terms of transfers, most notably being gazumped by Tottenham over Kyle Naughton, and now this?? He had promised players like Jagielka and Arteta – signed to long term contracts – that Everton weren’t a selling club. Moyes had to deal with no strikers last year, does he really want to risk playing with no defenders this time around?
Moyes views Lescott – a polyglot defender who can play centrally or on the left – as essential to the team, and is backed up by a fanbase who are prepared to sing for their stopper, even if his head is being turned. Lescott is meek,and its a world cup year so if Moyes keeps him, he won’t be able to let his form dip if he wants to make the squad.

Despite all this Hughes continues his lusty groping and refusing to take no for an answer.

II. David Moyes is a pillock.

Moyes knows that Lescott wants to leave, and has known for some time. He could sign a cheap player who could fill in for Jagielka until his return from injury, and then act as cover for Jagielka and Yobo at the back. The money from Lescott could have gone towards upwardly mobile youths (Elm, Delph, Naughton) , big names we’ve been known to want (Moutinho, Sessegnon, Defour), or even to secure Jo on a permanent deal. Moyes is the unwanted side in a love triangle, acting like a shunned boyfriend; refusing to accept that the relationship is over.
Moyes is swiftly becoming a rusty haired anachronism – you cannot tell players no these days, we are the generation whose fans give their souls but not their bodies, and whose players give their bodies but not their souls. Lescott is a professional who has been told he cannot move to new employers who are willing to double his wages. Only in football would this be seen as acceptable. Simon Kuper recently wrote that managers should “be as eager to sell good players as to buy them.” Moyes should listen.

Despite all this Moyes continues to cling to Lescott, refusing to give yes for an answer.

III. Joleon Lescott is a pillock.

Under Moyes’ protective wing he has improved immeasurably, cemented a spot in the fifth best team in the land, and fought his way to deserved international recognition. Lescott’s desire to go to Man City (or “Money City” as Kolo Toure accidentally called them) begins and ends with the promise of a fat paycheque. Take money out of the equation and Lescott would turn his nose up at a move to Eastlands. No one can predict how the Man City experiment will turn out this season, and he could be plunging head first into a sea of chaos. Joleon is mistaking ambition for greed, and I would love to see the wording of his transfer request.
Lescott’s timing is also atrocious with days remaining until the start of the season and he should be vilified for handing in a written transfer request whilst away on international duty. Lescott is risking a career with the best young manager in the British Isles and a more stable club for a crazed menagerie of blustering egos; its tantamount to a small kid’s desire to run away and join the circus.

Despite all this Lescott continues to cling to his transfer demands, refusing to take no for an answer.

Ed Bottomley

Loyal to the Lucre?

Whilst summer rolls into action many Blue websites have been indulging in Evertonians’ favourite warm-weather pastime: Kenwright kvetching. Some anticipate a summer of scraping around for money, missing out on signings, and seeing our Chairman fail – once more – to sell the club. I’m actually glad Kenwright has failed to flog our beloved Toffees, and because of that, in my eyes he is the perfect Chairman…

If Kenwright is unqualified to run our club, then why is a rich Sheik more acceptable? Would a moneybags owner shed blue tears when we lost to Chelsea? Would he be able to wax lyrical about Mikel Arteta, comparing him to Alex Young like Kenwright did? The sad truth is a Chairman’s success is totally dependent on his money, and his ability to attract investment if he has no money himself. I see it a different way though. Yes, Kenwright’s theatrical tendencies make for ridiculous sound bites: “watch this space”, “I’m working 24/7 to sell this club.” are both embarrassing public belches – but the fact that Kenwright hasn’t been able to find a buyer is a bonus.

I do not want a billionaire at Everton. For all those people moaning about a move to Kirkby, selling to a Sheik would be the ultimate sell out – he would own our soul. The last few years have seen several filthy rich oil-igarchs waddle over the horizon, and the problem is their ridiculous appetite and their crazed shotgun approach to transfers, spraying bids everywhere. It’s strange to think that we may look upon our fifth placed finishes as “the good old days”. Days where we fielded a team of honest, well drilled pros, players who we love and who love us, rather than multi-millionaire drones. When we ask for our billionaire saviour – do we really want to enter that world, of Glazers, Gillettes, and Kenyons? A world of shelling out and selling out, of many rubles, no scruples, and gluttonous gloating. I would rather watch a snuff movie starring my parents.

If a white knight with wads of cash did come to Goodison, Moyes would undoubtedly face a different climate – no more late night pillow talk with Kenwright and – ironically – just as many stipulations and restrictions on spending. We are potless, but if we became Mersey Millionaires again, would Moyes have full control over signings? …And the funniest thing? We might not even finish fifth! Worth selling our souls for that? Some quarters of Goodison fight so hard against Kirkby, and demand we stay at Goodison. And yet they have no problem praying at night for a billionaire who will suck away the essence of our club, even though we’d have a roulette wheel of playing staff, unnatural pressures on Moyes, and a team as nebulous, unbalanced, and unwieldy as a pet shop run by Dr Moreau.

To me, Mark Hughes has always been likeable, and Man City always harmless enough. That was until the money started flowing like wine at a Roman Orgy. Mark Hughes, the “centurion with salt and pepper hair”, is going to find it hard not to turn into a debauched Nero. When you can have almost any player you want, when you can make Eto’o and Kaka think twice, you are bound to go a little crazed. But City’s team are still Ersatz Galacticos, they haven’t earned their Top 4 stripes yet…

Some Blues are bemused by Lescott going to City, calling this a step down. But City’s bank balance is monumentally huge, meaning that – in a league where everyone is loyal to the lucre above all else – they are bigger than us. Let’s not prattle on about history making a big club, the Premier League is like 1980’s Wall Street. Money is everything. Gordon Gekko said it best: “The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”

If Lescott can double his wages by moving to Man City -a team that will soon be dining from English football’s top table – why are some fans asking for him to loyally kneel at the Goodison trough? Was he loyal to Wolves? No, he moved to us, a club with more potential. Again, he is doing the same if he leaves us for City. As much as I want the Peoples’ Club to be poster boys for potless Premier League success – we all have to admit that Man City’s bank balance makes them far more upwardly mobile than us.

Moyes has made it clear that he doesn’t want Lescott to leave, apparently not even for 20 million (could he really turn that down though), and Lescott’s few words on the matter sound like an “I’ll do as I’m told, gub’nah.” The press though, have been sitting and watching, breathing heavily like a parking lot dogger – and are squirming with glee ; claiming that Lescott just has to “agitate” to get his dream move. And who can blame them, transfer tripe sells papers.

Thanks to the press frotteurs, rubbing their words against Lescott, almost daring him to ask for a move, this is a matter beyond Moyes. Lescott may not be loyal to the Man City lucre, but our board may be….And the money, whatever portion of it that Moyes sees, could help us get a right back (“the Scouse Cafu” is more Clark Kent than Superman) and an upgrade on our doe-eyed Smyke, Leon Osman.

To twist and mangle a famous quote: “In the next week or two this house, the nation and the Rt Hon Lescott himself will learn of what metal he is made’

Let’s continue the fight without a sugar daddy. We are Sensible Soccer – they are FIFA ’09…We are a local independent record store – they are a faceless music franchise… And with any luck we’ll be Godzilla and they’ll be Tokyo

Today’s papers are awash with stories of Man City’s latest transfer capers; and apparently Mark Hughes is preparing a bid for our very own Joleon Lescott.

It’s midly irritating when the Sun and Mirror are prattling on about players leaving Everton, but it’s a whole different matter when the broadsheets start getting in on the act too. Today’s Guardian reports that City’s “opening gambit” will be around £15m.

Obviously £15m is a huge amount, but Lescott is a hugely important player to us. If we can squeeze £20m out of them then the offer looks tempting, but Jagielka will not have recovered from his knee injury until October at the very earliest. What that means is that Jack Rodwell – who is being drooled over by every journo with a pulse thanks to his “tour de force”/”superlative”/”immense” display in defensive mid for the U-21′s – would have to play at centre half again, until Jags got back to fitness. Either that or Moyes would have to pull yet another brilliant defensive signing out of the bag.

So City’s massive bid, shouldn’t just represent Lescott’s value to the team, it should also take our lack of backup into account. Rodwell is excellent, but very young to be expected to consistently perform at centre half for the opening months of the season.

Looking at it from a purely financial perspective, £15-£20m is a glorious profit on a player that Moyes bought for £5m, and we all know that Lescott has two ropey knees, which often need treatment after games. Could we be getting £20m for a player that – when he hits the 30yr mark – could descend into a footballing Douglas Bader – like Paul McGrath or Ledley King? On the other hand, money is nice, but players are better – could we find an instant replacement for Lescott?