Like Dixie, Big Bad Bob was a growling muscle car of a striker. The Latchford goal machine roared into this final match of the season on 28 goals – two short of his target and the Daily Express prize - but in this game none of the first three were scored by him...
EVERTON 2 (Pienaar 5, Stracqualursi 71) – CHELSEA 0 WITH the twin peaks of Chelsea and Manchester City conquered 3-0 on aggregate the burning question is; can this form be carried forward into the FA Cup, can Championship Blackpool be similarly swept aside and a quarter-final place secured? If Everton approach that encounter with the same hunger and cold-eyed determination shown in their last two home games there can only be one winner. This new-found confidence and momentum must be sustained and channelled into ensuring that meaningful progress is made in the only competition that remains open to the Toffees this season. Up until two weeks ago Leighton Baines was playing...
Everton 2 (Pienaar 5, Stracqualursi 71) Chelsea 0 THE mantra amongst weight obsessed celebs is “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” – ours should be similar. No league victory for either Man City or Chelsea will come close to matching the full blooded joy of our pair of empty wallet wins. It took just five minutes for Everton to take the lead against the King’s Road dilettantes – Pienaar running on to a ball in the box and lashing into the roof of the net. My mind instantly turned to Saha’s goal seconds after the start of the FA Cup final against Chelsea. It came too early, and I...
The ground just shifted. When even a ‘permanent’ member of the Premier League’s elite like Arsenal can’t hold onto their top players – when Arsene Wenger concedes that the financial firepower of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester United and City now sets them apart from other clubs – you know something significant just happened. Perhaps Cesc Fabregas finally moving to Barca and ending what has become an annual season-end saga isn’t a surprise – but the price is. £30m plus add-ons of £5m or so for one of the best midfielders in the world, who is young (24) and still had four years left on his contract appears close...
EVERTON 1 (Beckford 74) – CHELSEA 0 When Seamus Coleman trudged off the pitch after an hour to a standing ovation, having been shown a red card, the only Evertonian in the stadium not to applaud the young Irishman was David Moyes. He need not have worried the sending off merely galvanized his team to even greater efforts and ignited the crowd; Goodison smelling injustice and bearing a grievance is a fearsome place. From the moment Peter Walton reduced Everton to ten men there was only one winner and it was one of the finest solo goals of this, or any other era, which settled the game. Despite dominating...
For a while now we haven’t been getting the desired results, and Wigan at home continued this worrying theme. Again though, we played well, we created chances, we utterly dominated. Following the full-time whistle, a tsunami of kvetches and grumbles came back from annoyed Everton fans, accusing Moyes of being too negative, of 4-5-1 being the wrong formation, of our performance being “poor”. People vented on blogs, on Twitter, even on 5-Live (prompting a Krakatoan defence of our manager from host Darren Fletcher). Did any of these people watch the game? Normally when a player hits the bar, or fluffs a one-on-one, the event is used in mitigation of a poor result: “we...
At least that’s what the press would have us believe. I find it ridiculous that journos on TV and in newspapers are constantly linking Everton players with a move away from the club, it’s as if their shallow paddling pool minds can’t fathom good players playing for Everton. The rote line is similar for every player, and it goes something like this: “Everton are a good club, but for X to really get success he has to move on.” This summer, the transfer tales have reached Pinocchio levels, with a huge slice of our squad as well as our manager being linked away. If all these players are good enough for a...
