Can we draw lessons from the equally soul destroying season of 2003/04?

[blue61]

We certainly wont finish 4th next season. The side that finished 4th under Moist was a 'team' that worked it's nuts off for each other. This rabble barely knows what work is.

 

[orly]

Without a shadow of a doubt, for me this season has cratered us as a football organisation. We may be 9th and not far off a 7th spot but the feeling of frustration and anger, turning now to the bitter acceptance of our fate as also rans in the grand scheme of things, are the dominant emotions. For different reasons I'd liken it to the mood of sullen resentment at the club when we finished 17th in 2003/04 - another season that had followed on the back of a reasonably hopeful one.

2003/04: the football had turned to the dire semi-agricultural football that was to become Moyes' stamp (after a first season which promised a bit more when he got a lot of industry from the team and married it to some exciting counter attacking through Radzinski and, of course, we had Rooney to get us to the edge of our seats). We absolutely stunk the place out and finished just short of relegation and out of the cups at the first round of entering. Off the field we were in turmoil: the Kings Dock stadium had been kicked into touch by Kenwright and Carter and a boardroom battle was in full swing. What had promised to be a new dawn under the post-Johnson regime had turned to ashes.

2017/18: similarly we see a club onfield that lost all discipline - and that has been mirrored in the number of managers we've used. The football quite frankly is the worst in most people's living memory. We have lost all identity as a football club and have become a bit of a joke as our credibility has ebbed away by spending huge amounts of cash to somehow become worse. The image of the club is in the gutter. We have a manager who most dont want and a squad almost all of us have lost faith in. Off the field we also have a crisis, as underperforming officials from a previous era remain in their posts and we have an owner who goes from one public relations calamity to another. Worst of all is the (very) uncertain situation concerning the proposed BMD.


Of course, 2003/04 proved to be something of a turning point: yes the football thereafter was dull and safe, but we reached some sort of stability by abandoning all pretence to being able to compete at the top of the PL and by focussing instead on becoming a tough team to beat; and off the pitch a situation was accepted that they couldn't or wouldn't shift the dial and that a policy of sell to buy and settling debt would and could be carried out for the foreseeable and a plate kept spinning until something better, more ambitious, came along...either a new stadium scheme or a buy-out.

Will 2017/18 prove to be a turning point for us? We're obviously in a different position than back in the early part of the millennium in terms of cash to spend, but like then we still find ourselves very much on the outside of things looking in and in need of a severe shift in policy. In that respect, two things need to happen in quick succession for us to avoid having to make the sordid compromise described above in the early part of this century. First, this summer a new managerial team needs to be brought in capable of exciting the support and who are given a job of using available cash, but also utilising and building a team around the younger players of our squad like Davies, Kenny, Dowell and hopefully Lookman. Attractive football and winning football should be the new manager's objective and he should be allowed to build (slowly and haltingly if need be) for the next five years - as long as we're in no imminent danger. Second, away from team coaching we need to see a start made on the stadium. At a minimum, funding needs to be acquired and planning permission needs to be secured before the year is out, along with squaring off any sort of opposition that could arise from building this stadium by other agencies. Construction has to have a firm date to start in 2019. If we cant get to that point by the end of this calendar year, not only is BMD dead but so too is the Moshiri era at the club. There'll be no toleration for anyone who cant deliver after being three years into a job here. We need these two shots in the arm desperately.

More precisely, I suppose, the years following the disastrous 2003/04 campaign were a line drawn in the sand which provided the basis to become a more credible (though not a really competitive) force rather than a watershed; what we need now are the building blocks to be put in place to allow us not only to consolidate in the short term, but to provide us with the means to push into the top five of this league in the way that Spurs have done under Pochettino-Levy/Lewis. It's a massive 11 months in front of us.


TLDR etc....

Different times though David, though I do get the point.

After 2003/2004 there was absolutely zero quality in the squad, there were rumours the adminstrators were on the verge of being called in, and our only sellable asset had just broken his foot, meaning we had to settle for a sub-par deal. It was all far, far darker than today - and that's why the conditions are still not yet ripe for the kind of massive change we got 04/05. There's just not the appetite for it (yet).

Think about it. Moyes was still young, inexperienced, we took a huge risk appointing him, let alone retaining him. The total polar opposite approach was taken appointing Allardyce, there was just no risk. He took on a squad with so much talent in it, vastly better than 03/04 end, and we've targetted some dull games for points and surrendered the rest.

In 03/04 we had reached the bottom everywhere, so we all-in gambled. There's not that level of desperation yet.

 

[Real_madras]

This is just a bad season, 2003/04 was nearly a Leeds like one. Credit to Moyes and yes Kenright to turn things around. Selling Rooney probably saved us, from what happened at Leeds.

This summer we need a clear out and carefully recruit players with a plan of what we are going to do and need. We basically need the spine of the team and a left back sorted. Hope Cenk will come good.

 

[davek]

Different times though David, though I do get the point.

After 2003/2004 there was absolutely zero quality in the squad, there were rumours the adminstrators were on the verge of being called in, and our only sellable asset had just broken his foot, meaning we had to settle for a sub-par deal. It was all far, far darker than today - and that's why the conditions are still not yet ripe for the kind of massive change we got 04/05. There's just not the appetite for it (yet).

Think about it. Moyes was still young, inexperienced, we took a huge risk appointing him, let alone retaining him. The total polar opposite approach was taken appointing Allardyce, there was just no risk. He took on a squad with so much talent in it, vastly better than 03/04 end, and we've targetted some dull games for points and surrendered the rest.

In 03/04 we had reached the bottom everywhere, so we all-in gambled. There's not that level of desperation yet.

I get that. As I said in the OP - it's an imperfect analogy. However, the point was that we need a MAJOR POLICY SHIFT. We got it in the aftermath of 2003/04 (a decision to become more conservative and hunker down) in order to fight sensibly until another day; we are a shambles now as an organisation and need a similar clear headed and decisive approach to what come next...this time on the basis of a less conservative settlement due to the factors you outline up there.

 

[davek]

This is just a bad season, 2003/04 was nearly a Leeds like one. Credit to Moyes and yes Kenright to turn things around. Selling Rooney probably saved us, from what happened at Leeds.

This summer we need a clear out and carefully recruit players with a plan of what we are going to do and need. We basically need the spine of the team and a left back sorted. Hope Cenk will come good.

We need a new and fundamental approach to team affairs and what goes on behind the scenes at admin level.

The appointment of an industry experienced CEO cant be emphasised enough, because we're floundering here rudderless as an organisation.

 

[Saint Domingo]

Different times though David, though I do get the point.

After 2003/2004 there was absolutely zero quality in the squad, there were rumours the adminstrators were on the verge of being called in, and our only sellable asset had just broken his foot, meaning we had to settle for a sub-par deal. It was all far, far darker than today - and that's why the conditions are still not yet ripe for the kind of massive change we got 04/05. There's just not the appetite for it (yet).

Think about it. Moyes was still young, inexperienced, we took a huge risk appointing him, let alone retaining him. The total polar opposite approach was taken appointing Allardyce, there was just no risk. He took on a squad with so much talent in it, vastly better than 03/04 end, and we've targetted some dull games for points and surrendered the rest.

In 03/04 we had reached the bottom everywhere, so we all-in gambled. There's not that level of desperation yet.

The key difference then was that regardless of what you thought of Moyes we had a manager who had something to prove and wanted to be here. We also had players with something to prove. Moyes was making his career, as was Cahill, it was the highlight of Bent’s career, Osman was establishing himself as a professional, Hibbert too, Martyn wanted to be first choice. All the players wanted to be here and didn’t have thoughts of being in the shop window or just picking up a wage. That’s why 04:05 was possible.

Now we have a manager completely unmotivated as he smugly sits back after another year’s work of the bare minimum, and players who don’t want to be here but are paid too much to leave. A nightmare combo.

 

[davek]

The key difference then was that regardless of what you thought of Moyes we had a manager who had something to prove and wanted to be here. We also had players with something to prove. Moyes was making his career, as was Cahill, it was the highlight of Bent’s career, Osman was establishing himself as a professional, Hibbert too, Martyn wanted to be first choice. All the players wanted to be here and didn’t have thoughts of being in the shop window or just picking up a wage. That’s why 04:05 was possible.

Now we have a manager completely unmotivated as he smugly sits back after another year’s work of the bare minimum, and players who don’t want to be here but are paid too much to leave. A nightmare combo.

Moyes, for all his endeavour and motivation, simply lacked nous. We knew it then by 2003/04: he just wasn't tactically at the races. He was a steady Eddie sort.

His players generally reflected that and did what they were supposed to do: finish ahead of the dross. Moyes' retention as manager was just a reflecton of who and where we were as a club: one keeping its head down and working hard until something better turned up from left field.

 

[degsy]

Ha Ha.

I answered the question in the title.

That is pretty much where we stand. This is Year Zero.

I fear you may be right, I don't think Moshiri has a clue on the football side of things...the fact that he seems to (Still) leave it to Bill and Bob...apart from waving his 49.9%/ I'm the boss now you know / card when panicing twice over managers.

Thinking about it; BPB, Sunbed Bob and Walsh only seem to call him in when they can't, won't or dont want the flak in making a decision. In the Koeman - Barkley incident, Ron went to his Boss and Ross went to the only Boss he'd ever known.
Moshiri needs to be told or find out for himself that he cant leave dumb and dumber in charge.
If he either cant or wont do it he needs to find - quickly - some people who can...Hint; they arent at the Club at present.
Rightly or wrongly the president has been set down the M6 at W Brom

 

[trueblue10]

That is pretty much where we stand. This is Year Zero.

Next season will be our 3rd year zero in four years.

If the board do the expected thing and relieve Sam of his duties in June, we face the prospect of yet another new manager coming in, with new ideas, wanting different players and a different playing style. To do this our new manager will have try and off load a number of players, players we tried and failed to shift in January.

Couple this with the possibility of the season starting early for us again ( if 7th gets us into Europe) and we could easily find ourselves back in the same position we where in November this season. Having said that, not many of our players will be going to Russia in the summer so at least they will have more recovery time than those in the so called " top 6".

I'm not advocating we stick with Sam, but if/when the change happens, we as fans should try and tempour our expectations for season 18/19.

 

[davek]

I answered the question in the title.

I fear you may be right, I don't think Moshiri has a clue on the football side of things...the fact that he seems to (Still) leave it to Bill and Bob...apart from waving his 49.9%/ I'm the boss now you know / card when panicing twice over managers.

Thinking about it; BPB, Sunbed Bob and Walsh only seem to call him in when they can't, won't or dont want the flak in making a decision. In the Koeman - Barkley incident, Ron went to his Boss and Ross went to the only Boss he'd ever known.
Moshiri needs to be told or find out for himself that he cant leave dumb and dumber in charge.
If he either cant or wont do it he needs to find - quickly - some people who can...Hint; they arent at the Club at present.
Rightly or wrongly the president has been set down the M6 at W Brom

Said earlier here that we need a CEO with industry experience. I hear talk of CEO's head hunted from BP or wherever but WTF use is that? We need a man to hit the ground running and be football matters-savvy.

 

[trueblue10]

We need a new and fundamental approach to team affairs and what goes on behind the scenes at admin level.

The appointment of an industry experienced CEO cant be emphasised enough, because we're floundering here rudderless as an organisation.

I agree.

 

[davek]

Next season will be our 3rd year zero in four years.

If the board do the expected thing and relieve Sam of his duties in June, we face the prospect of yet another new manager coming in, with new ideas, wanting different players and a different playing style. To do this our new manager will have try and off load a number of players, players we tried and failed to shift in January.

Couple this with the possibility of the season starting early for us again ( if 7th gets us into Europe) and we could easily find ourselves back in the same position we where in November this season. Having said that, not many of our players will be going to Russia in the summer so at least they will have more recovery time than those in the so called " top 6".

I'm not advocating we stick with Sam, but if/when the change happens, we as fans should try and tempour our expectations for season 18/19.

I disagree. When Martinez was fired we needed a man in who could build on the style we had installed throughout the club system but who could add much needed energy and defensive awareness. The cash Moshiri was apparently going to inject at that stage could have been wisely used, so there was no sense that a fundamental policy shift was required. It could have been turned around with a shrewd managerial appointment. Now we are no longer at that point, as a catastrophe has fallen on the club with the Koeman experiment which left us with no identity and filled the club with expensive and hard to shift rubbish. We need much more of a root and branch job done here - one that a new manager can help us with but cant solve all on his own.

 

[brieverton]

Without a shadow of a doubt, for me this season has cratered us as a football organisation. We may be 9th and not far off a 7th spot but the feeling of frustration and anger, turning now to the bitter acceptance of our fate as also rans in the grand scheme of things, are the dominant emotions. For different reasons I'd liken it to the mood of sullen resentment at the club when we finished 17th in 2003/04 - another season that had followed on the back of a reasonably hopeful one.

2003/04: the football had turned to the dire semi-agricultural football that was to become Moyes' stamp (after a first season which promised a bit more when he got a lot of industry from the team and married it to some exciting counter attacking through Radzinski and, of course, we had Rooney to get us to the edge of our seats). We absolutely stunk the place out and finished just short of relegation and out of the cups at the first round of entering. Off the field we were in turmoil: the Kings Dock stadium had been kicked into touch by Kenwright and Carter and a boardroom battle was in full swing. What had promised to be a new dawn under the post-Johnson regime had turned to ashes.

2017/18: similarly we see a club onfield that lost all discipline - and that has been mirrored in the number of managers we've used. The football quite frankly is the worst in most people's living memory. We have lost all identity as a football club and have become a bit of a joke as our credibility has ebbed away by spending huge amounts of cash to somehow become worse. The image of the club is in the gutter. We have a manager who most dont want and a squad almost all of us have lost faith in. Off the field we also have a crisis, as underperforming officials from a previous era remain in their posts and we have an owner who goes from one public relations calamity to another. Worst of all is the (very) uncertain situation concerning the proposed BMD.


Of course, 2003/04 proved to be something of a turning point: yes the football thereafter was dull and safe, but we reached some sort of stability by abandoning all pretence to being able to compete at the top of the PL and by focussing instead on becoming a tough team to beat; and off the pitch a situation was accepted that they couldn't or wouldn't shift the dial and that a policy of sell to buy and settling debt would and could be carried out for the foreseeable and a plate kept spinning until something better, more ambitious, came along...either a new stadium scheme or a buy-out.

Will 2017/18 prove to be a turning point for us? We're obviously in a different position than back in the early part of the millennium in terms of cash to spend, but like then we still find ourselves very much on the outside of things looking in and in need of a severe shift in policy. In that respect, two things need to happen in quick succession for us to avoid having to make the sordid compromise described above in the early part of this century. First, this summer a new managerial team needs to be brought in capable of exciting the support and who are given a job of using available cash, but also utilising and building a team around the younger players of our squad like Davies, Kenny, Dowell and hopefully Lookman. Attractive football and winning football should be the new manager's objective and he should be allowed to build (slowly and haltingly if need be) for the next five years - as long as we're in no imminent danger. Second, away from team coaching we need to see a start made on the stadium. At a minimum, funding needs to be acquired and planning permission needs to be secured before the year is out, along with squaring off any sort of opposition that could arise from building this stadium by other agencies. Construction has to have a firm date to start in 2019. If we cant get to that point by the end of this calendar year, not only is BMD dead but so too is the Moshiri era at the club. There'll be no toleration for anyone who cant deliver after being three years into a job here. We need these two shots in the arm desperately.

More precisely, I suppose, the years following the disastrous 2003/04 campaign were a line drawn in the sand which provided the basis to become a more credible (though not a really competitive) force rather than a watershed; what we need now are the building blocks to be put in place to allow us not only to consolidate in the short term, but to provide us with the means to push into the top five of this league in the way that Spurs have done under Pochettino-Levy/Lewis. It's a massive 11 months in front of us.


TLDR etc....

I believe you are fully correct which is an indictment of everyone in a leadership role at the club.

After unprecedented spending, we have an unbalanced squad and one that is skewed uncomfortably for my liking with players in the late 20s bracket, a product of the disastrous 3-year "project" that was accommodated to suit Koeman's eagerness to bin us off at the first opportunity. So much for that.

We have no obvious cash cows to generate a big sale either and whilst I am excited about Dowell in particular, we can't really be sure about our other prospects long-term.

The inertia at board level has been discussed to death on this forum. Recently there have been mutterings of Moshiri asserting more control, but this rings hollow with someone else's board and CEO in place as we enter year 3.

If I were a betting man I might have a flutter on BMD now simply because I'd get far better odds now than a few months ago. I like Meis' enthusiasm but just have the feeling that he is increasingly just on a PR retainer whilst the club consider contingency plans in the increasingly likely scenario of this hitting the buffers. What will they do then? How would Moshiri recover? Yes I am being morbid somewhat here and still hope but experience shouts very loudly not to hope when Everton are concerned.

We need another squad overhaul, a new manager, redefinition or abolition of the DOF role, a new CEO, directors and a chairman who have sectoral business expertise and who are appointed on merit, a commercial director, a comms director, and completion of BMD.

Above all we need leadership, vision, know-how, and positivity about where we are heading.

It IS year zero.

 

[davek]

I believe you are fully correct which is an indictment of everyone in a leadership role at the club.

After unprecedented spending, we have an unbalanced squad and one that is skewed uncomfortably for my liking with players in the late 20s bracket, a product of the disastrous 3-year "project" that was accommodated to suit Koeman's eagerness to bin us off at the first opportunity. So much for that.

We have no obvious cash cows to generate a big sale either and whilst I am excited about Dowell in particular, we can't really be sure about our other prospects long-term.

The inertia at board level has been discussed to death on this forum. Recently there have been mutterings of Moshiri asserting more control, but this rings hollow with someone else's board and CEO in place as we enter year 3.

If I were a betting man I might have a flutter on BMD now simply because I'd get far better odds now than a few months ago. I like Meis' enthusiasm but just have the feeling that he is increasingly just on a PR retainer whilst the club consider contingency plans in the increasingly likely scenario of this hitting the buffers. What will they do then? How would Moshiri recover? Yes I am being morbid somewhat here and still hope but experience shouts very loudly not to hope when Everton are concerned.

We need another squad overhaul, a new manager, redefinition or abolition of the DOF role, a new CEO, directors and a chairman who have sectoral business expertise and who are appointed on merit, a commercial director, a comms director, and completion of BMD.

Above all we need leadership, vision, know-how, and positivity about where we are heading.

It IS year zero.

Spot on mate. This is drift when we need at the very least strong leadership with some visionary moves at the season end and the period beyond.

I doubt we'll see it though, because fundamentally this has been a breakdown orchestrated by the man charged with the task of our resurrection.

I have hope still, but that is tempered by realism. I think we're in for more drift, and if the stadium plan goes bang we are in seriously choppy waters.

 

[Blues Harp]

How then do we as fans get rid of billy liar, suntan bob etc, walsh, et al. Do we seriously think that the people in charge give a flying duck about us as long as they have our cash for season tickets? Going to get worse before it gets better unless Moshiri grows some balls and makes decisions which will take us forward!!!