When is fair play unfair?

Empty seats at the Reebok

There has been a lot of talk over the last few years about the growing predictability of the premier league. A pattern that began in the mid-late 90s seems to have accelerated in recent years, with the gap between the top teams and the rest of the premier league becoming wider and wider.


The forthcoming UEFA fairplay regulations are intended to redress some of the imbalance, limiting clubs spending to a proportion of their turnover. Theoretically, this would prevent rich owners coming into smaller clubs and spending hundreds of millions on new players without a sustainable business to fund it. However, it's a plan with flaws. Clubs will find loopholes, such as signing massive sponsorship deals to increase turnover. This is supposedly limited as part of the plan but as yet Manchester City do not seem to have been called to account for their incredibly fishy sounding stadium naming deal with Etihad. With the regulations pegged to turnover, it also means they essentially protect the status quo even more so than currently. The rules benefit huge clubs like Manchester United and Bayern Munich who have already invested in massive stadia and set up huge merchandising operations around the world. Smaller/medium-sized clubs who have challenged at the top of European football after investment from rich owners such as Villareal would be less likely to repeat their feats.

My favourite players (in no particular order): 2. Dejan Savicevic

Before I start, apologies for letting this blog slip over the last few months. Winter's coming....more effort will be made!

To get things moving again here's the second in the 'my favourite players' series.

Up 2nd is another Eastern European who played in Italy - Dejan Savicevic. Savicevic was a Milan and Red Star legend, a classic enigmatic number 10, inconsistent but at times sublime.

For the sublime see Savicevic's performance in Milan's demolition of Johan Cruyff's Barcelona in the 1994 UEFA Champions League final. I remember watching this game as a 16 year old - the way Milan beat Barca this night was jaw dropping. Capello's Milan handed out a trouncing of the most emphatic kind on the biggest of stages. Savicevic created the first goal for Daniele Massaro with a typical surging dribble and then put the tie to bed by scoring Milan's third with an outrageous lob from distance. It was an absolute peach, a brilliant combination of quick thinking and technique. He then clattered the post before Marcel Dessaily put the cherry on top of the cake with a fantastic fourth.

No words could illustrate Savicevic's talent better than the video below. It's quite long but worth watching to the end i think as it shows footage i'd never seen before from his international games for Yugoslavia and from his time at Red Star. His dribbling skills are awesome, somewhere up there with Maradona and Messi i'd say. Bloody brilliant!

And to cap things off I found this whilst researching his youtube catalogue.

Against all odds: Everton defy injury crisis again

Just when it looked like the 2010/11 season was going to fizzle out as meekly as it fizzled in Everton have only gone and woken up. A stellar sequence of five wins, two draws and just one defeat from the last eight games have resulted in a move up to 7th place in the Premier League and given the blues an outside shot at qualifying for Europe.

Criminally underrated Osman is on great form

And yet even more astoundingly this purple patch has coincided with a crippling injury crisis which has seen Fellaini, Arteta, Saha, Rodwell and Cahill all absent. Amazing! Or it would be, were it not frankly completely predictable.

Year after year, when the chips are down, when the team is on the ropes, when the star player injury hoodoo has struck David Moyes' Everton teams have gone on phenomenal runs of form. So why is this?

What makes a good owner?

As i've noted recently, pressure is growing on the Everton board to provide some answers as to why the club apparently finds itself in such financial turmoil.

In the circumstances i've found myself wondering what it is that makes for a good football club owner. Here's what i think are the big 3:

1) Financial resources and business acumen

I don't think Everton need a mega-wealthy benefactor to come in and fritter away his billions to be successful. I think the club already has a lot of the ingredients to win things. Whilst they will need a certain amount of wealth (more than Kenwright) to allow the club to access credit on more favourable terms, I believe it is equally important to get an owner with business acumen. If someone could get the club punching just a little above it's weight through running the business more professionally, I really believe it could bring success. It's a travesty that administrative errors led to Everton losing a valuable young player (Gosling) for nothing and that the board wasted millions unsuccessfully pursuing plans for two ground moves. 

2) Someone with vision

For most Evertonians their beef with the board isn't really the lack of personal money they have injected into the club, rather it is the complacent, short-sighted way that they seem to have managed the operation for years and years. This has seemingly led to the club being outmanoeuvred by competitors with similar or fewer resources than Everton. I think we need someone with the vision to be proactive rather than reactive and make the most of opportunities when they arise.

3) Someone who values and communicates with fans
The fans are a football club's customers, the money they spend attending games and buying merchandise is a club's biggest source of income other than from television rights. These days the internet means that fans have access to more information and opinion about their club than ever before. For businesses in every sector the growth in internet use has made it increasingly hard to control the messages that their customers recieve about them. Now anyone can publish, the message that customers recieve tends to be whatever the masses say it is. The phenomena is even affecting dictators!

Social media is about having a two-way conversation and gradually this is what football fans are beginning to expect from their clubs. They want a chance to ask questions and recieve answers, give feedback and receive acknowledgement. The current board of Everton Football Club don't seem to have cottoned onto this yet, but I would like a new board to make addressing it a priority.

Bizarre transfer window puts pressure on Kenwright

In the aftermath of a rotten January transfer window for Evertonians, attention has now focussed sharply on the clubs finances and ownership. The inexplicable loss of two strikers on loan and the sale of Steven Pienaar without any replacements coming in was probably a worse than result than most of us could possibly have imagined.

This bizarre state of affairs, added to a patchy season on the pitch seems to be awaking the national media to the clubs financial situation. On 2nd February the BBC's Phil McNulty pondered 'What next for Moyes & Everton?' and on 4th February Andy Hunter of the Guardian wrote about Everton's 'dangerous drift'. This type of publicity may well push the debate on the merits of the current board from message boards and forums (where it has been raging for years) out into the stands, pubs and living rooms. If that happens pressure is sure to grow on the board and Bill Kenwright in particular to provide some answers as to why the club finds itself in the current predicament.

A new era for English football?

Is it just me or are we starting to see a general shift in playing styles within English football?

It's not so much the top 10 clubs in the Premier League that i'm referring to but those teams that might expect a Premier League relegation battle and even a number of teams in the Championship and League One.

The change in style i'm referring to is a move away from the defence-focussed, direct style of play that for several years, most teams below the top-10 in the Premier League felt the need to use. The style of play synonymous with Sam Allardyce, Gary Megson and even David Moyes early in his Everton career. At the time it was seen as the most effective way of achieving results on meagre resources.

El Diego - a christmas treat for you

A couple of years back I was late for Christmas dinner at my mum and dads because i got sucked into a brilliant documentary about Diego Maradona that was on Sky Sports. Being a slightly contrary so-and-so i'd always rallied against Maradona-hate that is prevalent against most Englishmen. Watching that documentary only reassured me that I had been right to look past that handball and the drugs. He obviously did cheat, which is wrong, however there are plenty of Englishmen that have cheated to win over the years, perhaps in less blatant ways but that doesn't actually make him any worse than them.

So firstly, if anyone is able to tell me what the name of that documentary was I would love to know, i've searched but never found it.

Secondly, make yourself comfortable and have a look at this brilliant compilation of Maradona's goals at Napoli. Ok, some of the goalkeeping is woeful, but I swear to god this compilation includes about 5 of the best 10 goals you will ever see!

Hands up if you love christmas!

English football and Christmas. They are like two old friends living on opposite sides of the world. Spend some time apart and it’s easy to forget how well they complement each other, but when it’s time to meet up again it doesn’t take long before the old spark is reignited.

For all the good a winter break would do players I’d hate to lose the packed festive fixture schedule. All year most supporters have to wait a week between games, but come Christmas we can all enjoy the hectic high’s and low’s from playing every three days.

For Everton it’s the start of a particularly important period for our season. We play Birmingham, West Ham and Stoke between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. If we are to start making our way up the table we really need to be picking up 7 points out of the possible 9. We will also find out whether Moyes has figured out an effective way to beat teams that adopt a cautious approach against us. To follow it up we have tough games against Spurs and Liverpool with the FA cup third round sandwiched between.

January 1^st also see’s the opening of the transfer window. It is notoriously difficult to do business in this window but this year Everton really must do some. We cannot complete the season with a strike force this blunt and the news that Landon Donovan will not be coming in on loan means we also need to address the right-side of midfield.

With Steven Pienaar out of contract in the summer, rumours are circulating that he will also be sold, possibly to spurs with Nico Kranjcar coming in the opposite direction. As brilliant as the South African is, this has to be good business as we just cannot afford to let our players see out their contracts and leave for free.

As far as the right-side is concerned I think the key thing is to get someone who can carry the ball at pace and who is a ‘specialist’ in that position. We have to save money for strikers so I’m thinking someone at the Routledge, Eagles level rather than some blockbuster talent.

God knows what we’ll do about a striker, but I doubt we’ll get much of an improvement for spending less than £10-15million. We might just have to make do with a loan until the summer, unless we are able to get really good money for fringe players or choose to sell a big player.

Glory at Eastlands only underlines our problems

Another season, another fantastic win at Eastlands. City must be sick of the sight of Everton and Tim Cahill in particular.

As brilliant as Everton's 2-1 victory over Manchester City was, it only underlines where our current problems lie. When we can sit back and soak up pressure against a team that is coming at us we can get a result anywhere. Draws away against Chelsea and Spurs, the 3-3 against United, the easy victory over Liverpool and now a win away at City illustrate this.

Strange as it may sound, the issue we have is that the likes of City and Chelsea are in the minority! In order to improve we need to find a way to get three points consistently against the likes of Wigan and West Ham who will sit back and invite us to make the play. We need to refine our tactical approach to succeed in these situations and somehow find the right blend of players to execute it. The Everton that qualified for Europe in 07/08 and 08/09 easily dispensed with lower teams but failed time and again against the 'big 4', last year we evolved our approach and were hit and miss against both and this year we've hit the other extreme. What we need now is two Everton's!

Over to you Davey.....

When was the last time we scored a goal like this?

Remember when our strikers could get in behind a defence? Check out Yakubu's third against pompey back in 2008 and refresh your memory.

Everton 3 - Portsmouth 1 (Mar. 2, 2008) - Click here for more amazing videos

P.S I also loved Cahill's goal in this game. Power play!

What's David Moyes up to?

David Moyes has taken the unusual step of publicly declaring his interest on taking a player on loan, seemingly before even initial talks have taken place. And not just any player, David Beckham!

So what's he up to? I suppose there is a small chance that everything is exactly as it seems and Moyes is just trying to get his man. But then why do that through the media? He mentions in the interview that Beckham is good friends with Phil Neville - why not sound him out that way? That explanation just doesn't add up for me and it would go against the secretive manner in which Moyes usually goes about his business.

So that leads me to believe that it is nothing more than a story for the media. The next question is why? Some cynical Evertonians are suggesting that it's merely a PR stunt to generate some excitement amongst the fans during an underwhelming season and stimulate some half-season ticket sales. It could be this, and the way that Moyes has gone about it is so out of character that it would stack up.

The only other explanation I can think of is that it is a media smoke bomb. Something to distract the press and our competitors whilst we pull off a completely different transfer coup. That may be clutching at straws but I like to be positive! If it was another signing, you'd have to think it was someone pretty sought after to justify going to these lengths. Someone other Landon Donovan who he also references in his interview. Hopefully it will be that top striker we've been missing all season. I guess i'm just gonna have to wait.....and hope my positivity is not unfounded!!