Hmmm, Arteta drops his captain for indiscipline. Big crisis? No. It is normal practice when employees go against their bosses. Arteta showed admirable managerial qualities telling the prying media scumbags to go away and invent their own stories. Of course here at Everton, or I should say here on this Everton fans forum we have a few with an agenda which steers them toward inventing a crisis, any crisis to get at the manager. Their new hero and victim, Digne serves their agenda. How dare the manager exclude him.
The really fascinating thing about this is, by now, other than Kenwright and Moshiri, the common denominator in our abject failure over the last five years has been a select group of these players. They have failed manager after manager. Now that we have a manager who if he is going to go down will go down on his own merits, it is clear that people either shape up or ship out. The simple unpalatable fact is that none of our players are indispensable. None of them so outstanding as to be irreplaceable. Most of them have, essentially, failed. This is all part of a long process. The Raxative will go through this squad like a dose over the coming six months. He's simply picking on the sacred cows at first (Brands, James, Digne), but I have no doubt the Holgates and Iwobis are for the door when the opportunity arises.
The other thing to remember is that when people say we shouldn't be putting the future of the club in the hands of one pig-headed man, the response to that is we shouldn't be putting the future of the club in the hands of any player ever. These guys will walk out of our club one day. It makes no sense to back a Digne or a Richarlison when they will bid farewell to us just as swiftly as Rooney did, or Arteta did, or Lescott did. Or, dare I say it, as Carlo did. The Raxative is probably a different case. Everything about this job suits him. He wants it so badly he has no compunction in alienating all that needs to be alienated. We're in for a strife-heavy next six months, that's for sure. But any manager will be judged on his own decisions. Whatever the rights and wrongs of each individual case, Benitez will stand or fall on his own decisions without concerning himself about noses being put out of joint. At a club where NOBODY from the owner down to the academy has covered themselves in glory, this is precisely the type of dose that the body politic of this decrepit club must endure.
2-0 to Palace today, by the way.
