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

[davek]

Its a really interesting post Dave. Without going into reams, I think the situations are vastly different.

2004 was really the final year of what had been a decade of relegation struggles. There had been about 3 years in 11 where we were immersed in it. For those who lived through it, in spite of the final position 2004 was one of the more comfortable seasons. We had a poor squad, lacking in investment and it didn't come as any surprise. That being said, the manager and approach to recruitment were very much in keeping with where we were. The thinking was joined up.

Currently we have an expensively assembled squad, and something of an arrogance that we cannot be relegated. There have been no serious dogfights since 2004. We are underachieving and I'm not sure how exactly to reverse it and nor do those in charge. For all his faults Bill was a "football man" which I don't think Moshiri is and whereas Bill largely allowed people who knew the game to get on with things, I do worry Moshiri interferes too much.

If we got a proper DOF in, a proper coach, cleared out the old guard and continued the investment we will be ok. However it's looking increasingly unlikely unless this is done it becomes disjointed and we struggle.

Forget the league position and cash differentials of the two seasons in question. The similarity is that they each represent an abrupt checking of ambitions and a coming to terms with where we are as a club.

At the end of 2003/04 that realisation was met by a policy change that lasted until Martinez arrived. The deal was that Moyes would keep his job but the club would act conservatively on and off the field. It was a policy that gave us our identity as a team punching above its weight: keeping a balanced budget and looking for bargains on players who could keep us respectable. That was ditched only after Moyes left, and only partially, when Martinez arrived and we became less conservative on the pitch whilst maintaining financial conservatism; the whole policy was ditched when Koeman arrived.

We now have a sea change again. The last four seasons have brought us to a point where a new paradigm will have to be agreed on and stuck rigidly to in order to stop the rot. This time we dont need to completely pull in our horns financially but there must be a reaction to the laissez faire attitude that's gone through this club like a dose of salts.

We need a policy vision that includes the choice of a new manager, some quality control on transfers and a plan to grow the club commercially. A new identity can grow out of that.

 

[davek]

Anyone sensible would have seen the way to go. Get a Rangnick/PSV DOF in. Massively stick bend to young players with a young attacking coach, give them time. I know it's your hobby horse but for me we were hasty in getting rid of Martinez now, we have gone backwards since then and have no plan.

Instruct a coach he has to work with Dowell, Kenny, Beni, Davies, Lookman, DCL, Holgate, and add in lads like Bailey, Haller, Gray who we were linked with. Give it 2-3 years.

I think he had to go. But the baby was ridiculously thrown out with the bath water. We should have sought a Martinez type who had a defensive instinct. We went the other way and hired a pretty poor manager tactically speaking and we've gone from bad to worse since then.

It's just a mess. The club was set up a few years back to go another direction football wise and now we have no way at all.

 

[zzr45]

Go read Pochettinos book. Question why we can’t do the same. There’s some glaring issues that we all love to ignore..

 

[Nealroy]

The most relevant lesson should probably be drawn from the following season. We need to find a team ethic and a reliable system like we did in 04/05.

If we could find someone with an ounce of the competitive mentality of Tim Cahill that would help as well.

 

[degsy]

Go read Pochettinos book. Question why we can’t do the same. There’s some glaring issues that we all love to ignore..

Which are?
A bit of copy and paste Of pertinant parts?

 

[Llyrap]

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.

It is ironic that Martinez developed an ethos at Swansea that only achieved real success when he was replaced by tactically more adept managers who were less dogmatic in their approach.

Swansea advanced to the Premiership and had success in relative terms by adhering to the original ethos despite personnel changes. They slowly abandoned their ethos to the point where they have found themselves in difficulty.

Had we appointed the right manager following Martinez's dismissal we could have reaped some real benefit from the Martinez era, and not solely in terms of personnel.

I think you are right in that we are at year zero because we need a manager who will impose (hopefully by appreciating the clubs history) a style of play that can achieve long term success.

A DOF should be the one responsible for the club's footballing ethos by appointing suitable coaching and playing personnel. The difficulty is that Moshiri was blinded by Walsh's one season success. The real question is whether Walsh was lucky at Leicester. Is he possibly a a reasonable scout but no more. Can we really progress in the absence of both a commercial and footballing strategy.

 

[Blues Harp]

Trusting billy liar to make football decisions ?? Talk about being revisionist. He wanted Megson as manager before Smith reccomended Moyes, and would have hung on to Martinez had Moshiri not done the right thing and sacked him. Moshiri certainly needs to get his own act together I agree otherwise the consequences could be dire for the club.

 

[davek]

It is ironic that Martinez developed an ethos at Swansea that only achieved real success when he was replaced by tactically more adept managers who were less dogmatic in their approach.

Swansea advanced to the Premiership and had success in relative terms by adhering to the original ethos despite personnel changes. They slowly abandoned their ethos to the point where they have found themselves in difficulty.

Had we appointed the right manager following Martinez's dismissal we could have reaped some real benefit from the Martinez era, and not solely in terms of personnel.

I think you are right in that we are at year zero because we need a manager who will impose (hopefully by appreciating the clubs history) a style of play that can achieve long term success.

A DOF should be the one responsible for the club's footballing ethos by appointing suitable coaching and playing personnel. The difficulty is that Moshiri was blinded by Walsh's one season success. The real question is whether Walsh was lucky at Leicester. Is he possibly a a reasonable scout but no more. Can we really progress in the absence of both a commercial and footballing strategy.

We need some hugely important figures to come in soon or we are going to be a basket case of a club. A new manager and a CEO: one to build a team for the first time since Moyes was here; the other to take the controls out of the hands of an owner who is proving to be a wrecking ball with his decision making.

Make no mistake, this is as bad as it's been in terms of governance at this club in the last 20 years. Things are bad now but they actually could get a whole lot worse and will if we dont appoint the right people and adopt a new strategy and stick with it.

 

[Khalekan]

Our new big money centre forward should be up and down the sandhills in his kit to get used to he cold !

Instead he's sat off with Big Sam smashing room service all over the gaff.
Pay per view bluies, the lot.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/43092534


This is how the Baggies players behave whilst on a spot of “warm weather training”.

 

[electricblue]

03/04 was disappointing, but this season has been an utter car crash in comparison given the expectations caused by having actual money.

Not sure you can compare the two. We bounced back the next season finishing 4th. Can't see anything like that happening this time unless there is a root and branch clearout in the summer which is unlikely.

 

[Ihaters]

Quick get Alex Neil in.
I would love us to be knocking on the 4th place glass ceiling so many mocked last decade. Let's get the current PNE's manager in and hope we could get back there

In all seriousness and for what it's worth, I kind of agree with Dave.

I don't think I have ever seen us this bad, we have been clueless since Martinez second year and it's just continued downhill. I think it's more than just the manager though, changing to a new one may help a little, but certain players seem to be thinking they are above managers orders, or are incapable of following them, DOF is pointless, Kenrwight is still there, motivation is a problem throughout and the new chairman isn't really the new chairman with the old chairman still being in charge whilst the new one is sort of the new owner....

It's shambolic all round really and it's just compounded by not having the equivalent of a driven, freshly promoted Moyes to cover up all the problems at the club, so they have instead resorted to throwing money at the problem without any thought as to where that money's really going.

Because of the money, the problems facing the current/new manager are far less that Moyes had, but the expectation may be higher and the level of bad feeling around the club may run far deeper than during his time.

Regardless, this situation will take a lot of turning around... or maybe just some more pace in the team and a bit of football being played and we start winning games? Who knows.

Four or five wins in a row and you would see a different team... probably need to be a different team to get those wins sadly.

 

[Ihaters]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/43092534


This is how the Baggies players behave whilst on a spot of “warm weather training”.

Mental, 28 year old, 30 year old, 36 year old and 38 year old millionaire footballers that don't know better than breaking curfew and stealing someone's livelihood instead of waiting a few minutes for the taxi driver to return, what the hell is wrong with these people?

Should be done as anyone else would if they stole a taxi and went joyriding in it.

Pardew statement he felt a bit let down doesn't really cut it does it?

 

[brieverton]

The issue at the club is lack of governance and responsibility. We would all like a winning team playing great football. Getting it is one thing but sustaining it quite another.

Everything flows from a sound managerial appointment. Like it or not there is an element of both luck and good timing behind a decision to appoint the right man. When you get it wrong everything at the club is exposed. A good manager hides a multitude of sins and errors and a poor manager does the exact opposite.

It wasn't an issue under Moyes as we had virtually no transfer budget and he perfected the system to turn us into best of the rest.

I thought warnings about being careful what we wished for were patronising but to a certain extent they were right.

Organisations need to change if they are to grow and this is where we have been let down badly.

I can't for a second think Moshiri would have appointed Elstone and retained Kenwright on a meritocratic basis yet due to seemingly enforced compromise they are still in place. The longer this goes on the less chance of real progress there is.

Moshiri talks a good game about ambition but he goes along with and accepts a second rate senior management team none of whom have any track record in achieving success in football or business at the lofty level we aspire to. In the meantime it seems to me he has had to defer increasingly to his own flawed judgement on football matters rather than being able to rely on a competent management team.

I think his biggest error is that he didn't temper expectation until he can rid us of this shower. We are badly led on and off the pitch. A good manager can hide that for a period but there is no hiding from the outcome of a long sequence of poor decision making and poor execution.

 

[Khalekan]

Mental, 28 year old, 30 year old, 36 year old and 38 year old millionaire footballers that don't know better than breaking curfew and stealing someone's livelihood instead of waiting a few minutes for the taxi driver to return, what the hell is wrong with these people?

Should be done as anyone else would if they stole a taxi and went joyriding in it.

Pardew statement he felt a bit let down doesn't really cut it does it?

You imagine they had been drinking so the driver must be open to a drunk driving charge as well.

 

[4737carlin]

03/04 was disappointing, but this season has been an utter car crash in comparison given the expectations caused by having actual money.

Not sure you can compare the two. We bounced back the next season finishing 4th. Can't see anything like that happening this time unless there is a root and branch clearout in the summer which is unlikely.

This is what has bugged me the most, back then and earlier under Walter you went into the season looking over your shoulder, this time we went in thinking good things with expectation and it was smashed too bits, n over 30 years of watching Everton this has been the first season when ive ever gone to the match wishing we didnt have a game so i could do something else!!

The weekend that has just started is going to be great and nothing Everton can do will ruin it!!