Everton v Chelsea – Grand Old Team

So it might be ok to talk about Everton again.

Been a while since I jotted stuff down but I hope (note that word) I’ve covered that below as part of my coping mechanisms for modern day Everton. It’s that time of year again of goodwill to all so I thought I’d give you something to read on the toilet.

I’m not sure how upwardly festive you can feel when your team are close to the relegation zone and in the midst of what some may consider Fixture Ebola, but out with the old and in with the new was confirmed a few days ago as the near nine year regime of Moshiri was brought to an end by some unscrupulous American capital venturers. And that feels like a win. Whereas Moshiri taking over was greeted with fanfare, this passing of the baton signalled just relief really.

With expectations perhaps lowered there should be a bedrock of pragmatism about the place and fan base to get Everton functioning as a respectable competitive business again and then just go from there. A dull civil service of a fifty point season would feel great really. Moving the conversation to what’s happening on the pitch would be real progress, so we can confine points deductions and social media accountants to the bin for a while. I just want to watch Everton on the weekend and occasionally in midweek, mate. That’s what I signed up for. If you can give me a cohesive aggressive team that plays some dashing stuff with players I don’t hate then sound. It’s been a while since I’ve seen an Everton captain lift something shiny above his head if we can spawn something like that again in the near future then I’ll be made up and never speak of the existential Everton anxiety we’ve carried these past three years, or so.

How the fuck Everton didn’t get relegated or go bust I’ll never know. And I don’t want to know, I just never ever want to dread weekends again like that. Over to you Danny Friedeggs chief.

That was the first bit of positive news this week, subsequently followed by the handing over of the new Bramley Moore stadium from the constructors to Everton. There’s still some wiring and varnishing to be done before it can be used but the financial risk that the stadium won’t get done has now passed. Those new owners have a brand new stadium on the banks of the royal blue Mersey to bolster the Make Everton Decent Again movement. As anyone familiar with the forest knows, sometimes you plant a cone and big things grow from them.

There’ll be a better time to discuss moving from Goodison to Bramley Moore with all that might involve and feel like so I’ll save it for some future words. In the immediate though it should hopefully provide some much needed feel good capital to play with, and even hope. Now hope is a most precious commodity. It can be fuel for endurance, a spark for ambition, a fulcrum to redetermine fate. Hope supercharges the now into the new. Hope can move entire armies, instigate great movements, be an all encompassing raison d’etre. And Everton may once again dare to hope.

The absence of hope can make the now quite bleak indeed. It its vacuum you’ll find various positioning and coping mechanisms, like the preferred methodology of Evertonians in handling tough times:fatalism. The a prevalence of “Everton, that” throughout the club and its fans is seeded by this very same fatalism. There’s nowhere quite as anxious as a late in the game Goodison Park holding a one goal advantage over the opposition. Now I’m not saying there’s a huge undetected supernatural determiner of fate that feeds off trepidation but there’s vital marginal gains in such a well resourced competitive market of billionaires and abound ego. Having the confidence, belief, hell even hope, to take a risk can turn knife edges into glory. The day we forget about “Everton, that” is the day Everton can start to banish three decade ghosts that we can’t seemingly exorcise, but can forget to tell that we’re moving house.

Suppose I should talk about the opposition them with this, you know, being a preview.

In addition to fatalism you can deploy additional coping methods as a sort of experimental prescription. Mine happens to be avoidance, so I can’t tell you much about this Chelsea team as I’ve cut myself off from wider football lest the urge to compare invoke further suffering. I can tell you they made a bold change of manager that’s yielding an impressive challenge at the top of the table but then this was the case four years ago with the same fixture and same week of the year, with one Frank Lampard at the reigns of the burgeoning Chelsea team that day, and Everton prevailed. Now watch me struggle to give you any value adding information about Chelsea.

Fan wise they’re subject to long standing stereotypes of being corgi molesting fucks who kneel for the national anthem and have an aversion to non natives from this green and fair land. As an avowed take people as you find them enthusiast I’ve got to known quite a lot of Chelsea fans over the years and found them all alright. Certainly no more deluded or intolerable than any other London club. I’ll revise that no doubt in the fourth minute when the feed the scousers tedium emits from the corner opposite the church.

As for players whenever I’ve seen them it’s been Cole Palmer who’s impressed and is really some player. Thick as shite but really some player. Like an adolescent extra from a Dickens enactment but some player indeed. The only man whose reflection looks more handsome in the back of a spoon but quite some player. Man City will long rue his sale. That Cucarella – he who looks like a Birkdale pirate – gets right on my wick with being an all round crying shithouse and eyes too close together snide. Really hope (that word again) one of ours twats him right into the sidelines in front of our over enthusiastic young baying ninjas. That aside though they’re a very expressively assembled mishmash of former manager fancies, and proving proof that even the most disjointed can be knitted together by skilled leadership. They’re gonna be a hard nut to crack and less than ideal opposition for promoting the end of a feel good week at Goodison, but that’s who stand before us. Just fucking hurt them then.

At this point I’d second guess the Everton team with unconvincing references to perceived tactics but we all know what it probably is gonna be and how they’ll play. The new ownership raises the bar on all and none more so than on the Manager. We’re in an age where everyone has their view and a platform to express it. And whilst I think pragmatism has served us if not well but ok in very uncertain times, you’ll never win over Evertonians with 30% possession most games. It’s a system which is designed to restrain and nick something marginal, it’s made for this exact type of fixture, so let’s see how that does. Dyche knows he needs wins and will probably be afforded a little help to do that in January, but equally he knows that pressure in on to deliver. And with less excuses. I’ll back any Everton Manager to get it right – except Rafa tent kecks – so opportunity knocks right now, unless he’s fatigued of the whole Everton soap opera in which case I don’t blame him. I am too.

The good news for him is that is a change of ownership and we’re not trying to bounce tennis balls on his head from the stands, yet, but the bad news is new owners often want their own man to realise their fancy PowerPoint strategy slides.

So that’s the your festive showdown before hopefully much more than that you’ve strategically booked a few days and can settle down to something far more important in abundant calories and the company of people you don’t hate over Christmas. For those celebrating it seems a good place for me to wish you and those you love a very merry Christmas indeed. A time of year when people are 20% nicer to each other yields a much more beautiful, kinder society and that’s something which really gives me hope.

Goodwill to all men, except Chelsea, just f*****g hurt them.

All the best. Nothing but the best.