Where do you start with a weekend f**ker like Everton?
Our species like to place value in things it can trust, predictable behaviours, consistencies and themes, essentially stuff that can’t veer out of its usual orbit and cause us unnecessary revisions and anxiety. And then there’s Everton.
Not that Arsenal away wasn’t an expected loss, even if it smarted a little in its manner. It’s just that Everton sit in a position where if they really want it then a good season would be secured, and bestow continental challenges away season next. If Everton, well, Everton it, then summer whims will be over what could have been, before doing the slog all again next season in the hope we don’t Everton it. Which makes this weekend five thirty pm kick-off all the more important. While the fixture list to come isn’t too kind there is enough in this Everton squad, not team, that at least makes it competitive. And “competitive” isn’t a notion felt for quite some time at St Domingo’s weekend club for boys, girls, and whatever you fancy identifying as.
It’s hard to chart where Everton should be. With a summer of 13 contract expiries, new manager and ownership, new ground to move into, there was precarious risk to this season. Therefore with all that yet increased funds for spending actual money it was always going to be a season of flux. Progress is seldom linear and less so during periods of flux, so considering that it’s been alright really. The danger is that it’s tight in that middle pack with only four points separating Everton from their current perch of eighth to fourteenth place. A precarious fixture list enables a scenario where Everton could – but shouldn’t – drop to what is essentially purgatory in Premier League terms, and then summer musings would be a lot more disappointed with the trajectory of Everton’s journey.
Just a point on the Arsenal game, there was a point in the first half where I felt Everton were absolutely on the right path and that was a reassuring feeling. Then again it could be just trapped wind. Maybe the bar has been lowered considerably after the previous half-decade, but that in itself isn’t a bad thing as times before Everton have been hampered perhaps by pressures of in-house expectation. We want Mourinho, lad. And I get the impatience for Everton to do and win something tangible; it’s just that in this billionaire’s playground, most competitive market of them all, it’s going to be a long strategic slog to get Everton to a place of collective comfort, nothing but sustained success is good enough – to update a popular motto. Not flash in the pan, nick a cup, and then back in your box; the goal has to be years upon years of competitive Everton on and off the pitch. The stadium enables that considerably more than any other time in the past few decades of our lives.
So, Chelsea then. It’s loads easier to write previews when there’s strong emotions such as Everton being abjectly shite or a heinous opposition that one detests, but in the corporate hellhole of the current Premier League clubs have morphed into brands and are roundly represented by mercenaries who are so far isolated from the club and fans that it’s hard to project any sort of feral hate or rivalry onto them. Plus, Chelsea have been loads better than Everton for ages really.
There’s a bit of a prelude to this game after the Premier League’s decision to fine Chelsea some pocket money to blatantly taking the piss of the financial rules. Evertonians bristled at a punitive punishment remembering the points deducted for seemingly lesser charges, and the precarious existential threat it put Everton under at that time. At the time of pink protest placards Evertonians took some stick yet may feel somewhat endorsed at the two tier punishments they’ve exposed courtesy of this latest ruling. The “corrupt” text now looks more endorsed. Personally I’d go with “inept” or “corporate self serving charlatans damaging a game that doesn’t belong to them:” but we’d need considerably bigger placards for that. But anyway that wasn’t Chelsea’s fault they got off lightly, that was the decision of a Premier League which is now long past the point of parody. So no I can’t even be angry at Chelsea for that.
However, they’ve just appointed a new manager, and it’s a manager displaying all the behaviours and characteristics of managers and indeed leaders I detest across the board in any industry, so, well, jackpot. Let’s just start with the fact that it’s not a binary choice to be either a successful leader or a decent, normal human. That’s an empirical fact as anyone who is subject to leadership will know, which is pretty much everyone. What’s happened is that Silicon Valley, sadly, spewed a period of huge financial success and then used it as a lever to influence wider leadership culture around the world. And boy did Corporate America gobble it up and propagate it through its sphere of influence over spineless fucks whose ambition outstrips their decency or fortitude by a power of a thousand to one. In came open-necked suits, mission statements, staff town halls, company values, infinite jargon, and a whole host of superficial shite that weak, uncertain leadership merely copied and pasted to try and at best fit in, or more commonly: catapult themselves as being models of ultra-success. At its core is a huge problem: ego doesn’t belong in leadership. It’s something you learn and traverse in your own journey of leadership if that’s the path you choose to take. Criticism? Own it. Praise? Pass it onto others. But do it with authenticity that isn’t self-serving, but sincere. Liam Rosenior isn’t sincere; he’s a bellend. He’s got no fucking idea who he is or how to lead. He’s a copy-and-paste mask of all he THINKS he should be, but is terrified of not being. And when you’re managing potentially even bigger ego twats in modern top-flight footballers, that puts you on an uneasy path to conflict that neither is capable of resolving. Just be you, mate, just be alright. It will make you more relatable, build trust with your staff and stakeholders, and give you the base of humility on which you can forge hopefully a decent, rewarding career.
Try that fucking huddle round the centre circle on Bramley Moore Docks this Saturday evening, you bad fucking Texans. I double dare you. You’ll invoke a rage so infinite that it will make the world forget about the Middle East for the entire weekend. Everton don’t do blue sky workshops or superficial peacocking, no, just fuck right off. We’ll take the red card happily for the responding pain we will inflict on you if you try that shit on our patch, Everton doesn’t care for your precisely schemed mind games. You try doing that shit with boot up your arse and a multitude of frankly venomous fathers in close proximity calling you things only a therapist in years to come can unwrap. It’s a game of football, lads. Most in attendance have grafted their arse off all week to afford a bit of escapism in their preferred weekend pastime, and the very last thing they want is turning up to a replica of the dickhead who’s been giving them orders during that week. Put the ball on the grass and play ball, and while you’re at it, hurt each other for our entertainment and internalised feelings of disappointment and anger. We’ll two foot your ancestor Rosenior, you blazer-wearing flute, fuck off. Someone hurt him and do his future self a great lesson about making an unnecessary binary choices.
As for their players, who gives a fuck? Just get into them, play some front-foot soccer, play like you want it, and even if you get beat, then nearly fifty thousand souls will find their way home a little easier to enjoy the Sunday buffer before they have to endure another set of five in this soul-destroying existence called docile taxpayer. If there’s any chance of laying a late tackle on Cucarella, Garnacho, or that Cole Palmer, then even better. Absolute fucking snides, show them our unquenchable thirst for righteous pain infliction.
Onto Everton, and you can probably take a good guess at the team. There’s a veritable Hobson’s choice up front between Beto and Barry, with the latter’s ticket-gate at Arsenal probably confining him to the bench again for this one. Probably a good thing so the existential rage of those aforementioned feral fathers isn’t deflected from the opposition. That also probably means Dewsbury-Hall, Everton, Ndiaye, and McNeil behind the striker.
Midfield will be influenced by Moyes’ decision to bring one or both centre-backs in and shift O’Brien right, which in turn would mean England’s Jimmy Garner returning to the middle of the park— next to Gueye. Or would it be Iroegbunam there? He’s certainly done enough in recent times to merit a start. Mykolenko and a right back, Pickford in goal. And we’re good to go. But really, just make sure Branthwaite comes back in, as 1) he’s the best defender we got and makes the entire team play 10 yards higher and 2) looks like a large Wallace and Gromit character, a shadowy cheese shop bouncer.
There’s been a big hoo-har on social media about Hill Dickinson and if it’s as good as Goodison or not. No one can tell you how to feel about Everton or its ground, but that notion will linger about until Everton put forward a case for a new narrative at Hill Dickinson Stadium. Positive experiences invoke bonding with not just people but places. Just as you were said to leave Goodison because of all its personal associated memories, it’s vital that Everton create some new memories, and a promise of better times to come. For of all the currencies in football, none is more powerful to invest in than hope.
So it’s a five-thirty kick-off under a slightly warmer and lighter sky against a team we need to beat to prove something is a fertile setting for Everton to not fuck a weekend up. What’s our name?
