Summerskin
Player Valuation: £35m
Not this guy, the midfield general who's elegant grace on the ball matched anyone we've had tearing it up in the centre circle at Goodison since Bally all those years ago, not the guy who's pinpoint crosses were a perfect match for Timmys noggin, not even the guy who occasionally thought he was Juninho and pinged one in from 25 yards a few times a season.
Not even this guy, the bloke who fought back from an awful Anterior Cruciate injury to help our rise up the table in 2009/10, scoring 6 goals along the way and making us fall in love all over again with his superb understanding and ability on the ball.
Today i'm unfortunately talking about this guy, the horrible monster that took to the Goodison turf in 2010/11 completely devoid of everything we used to adore, the man we in retrospect call..."The Crab".
"IT BURNS! IT BURNS AHHHH!!"
I feel like a bit of a [Poor language removed] placing the words "Mikel Arteta" and "underwhelming" in the same sentence, but in many ways like Tim Cahill...his last 12 months as an Everton player were unfortunately complete pish.
After Real Madrid left a Thomas Gravesen shaped hole in our centre midfield in January 2005, Moyes moved quickly to secure the loan signing of a plucky young Spaniard named Mikel Arteta, a graduate of La Masia and good friend of Xabi Alonso (who really is a boss player, isn't he?).
The lad had played for Barcelona B, PSG & Rangers before "having a Pienaar" at Real Sociedad in the early part of the 2004 season, his footballing ability was never in question and despite struggling with the English game ever so briefly at first the lad soon flourished under Moyes loving guidance and smouldering ginger gaze.
Bought on a permanent for something like £2m the next season he'll always go down as one of Moyes' greatest ever buys, and for a period of 4 years from 2005/6 to 2009/10 he was without doubt our #1 guy. The 2006/7 season saw him win Merseyside footballer of the year award after bagging 9 goals and 12 assists and the following two seasons he was pivotal in everything we did, our European run in 2007/8 would have juttered at an earlier stage if it weren't for Mikel cooly slotting penos away like a boss, especially when the alternative was either Yakubu or Andy Johnson, who had the mispleasure of missing 2 penalties in one match once.
We all know what happened next so i'll glance over it, he got f*cking injured didn't he? We limped our way through two Wembley appearances, sold Lescott, rebuilt the squad kind of, played sh*t for 4 months and then he came back & played like we all knew he could in the brilliant back-to-back wins against Chelsea and United.
We finished the season in 8th and fell for that "optimism" thing that's been the scourge of Evertonians for God knows how long over the summer, Arteta was gonna have a great pre-season, come back into the fold fit and raring to go and then we were gonna smash every team left right & centre with Mikky at the helm...even Alex Ferguson thought we'd be in for a chance at that elusive "fourth spot".
The [Poor language removed] happened? We were awful...we were the last team that season in the entire footballing league system to win a game...it just didn't make sense, this was Moyes' best ever team; We had Baines, Pienaar, Jagielka, Fellaini, Cahill...Arteta.
Rumours had been rife all over the summer about Arsenal preparing a bid for Mikky, it's a massive cliché in football that players heads "aren't in the right place" upon hearing that another team are interested in them, it's been trotted out time after time whenever Jagielka has had a stinker, but I for one just don't buy that kind of excuse.
How can a man so elegant and composed on the ball turn into Vinny Samways overnight? It just didn't make sense; I believe this was the summer where Mikel got married and his first child was born, now call me crazy but I think this factored more in his downturn as an Everton player than any silly Arsenal bid...think about it, he'd be all up night feeding a crying child 7 days a week, not to mention the fact that his wifes titties weren't for playtime anymore, they were the source of mother natures Cow & Gate now.
Arteta was either paired with Fellaini or John Heitinga in central midfield that season and neither of them worked; A centre midfield two should have a destroyer and an artist, one of the ultimate examples being these two:
...of course anyone with two brain cells would see that Mikel would be the artist and Fellaini could break up anything that came our way, but with this midfield two neither of them did any job exclusively, for two brilliant players they must have been one of the worst pairings i've ever seen.
He was constantly going back to the centre halves, picking the ball up and playing a simple pass to the nearest man to start a move, ala Joe "Redondo" Allen, we'd then labour up the pitch until Cahill fell over or Saha drifted wide left and won a throw in or something...
Where was the directness? The throughballs? The beating of a man followed by an awesome cross? They'd all gone and all our creator in chief was doing was playing 5 yard passes here and there, for a team like Everton such minimal creativity coming from the centre was killing us, years ago you could rely on him to whip in a solid corner at least but this had also left his proverbial "locker", he had little about him anymore and calls for Moyes to bench him to regain his form were coming thick and fast.
Now, Arteta to me had always excelled out wide, he'd played there alot from 2006-2008 and had done brilliantly. He's never been blessed with terrific pace but the role suited him, especially on our right hand side where anything above a bowl of Angel Delight is seen as an improvement.
Saturday 5th March 2011 saw Arteta start at wide left against Newcastle, simply put he ran the f*cking show...laying on the assist for Ossies equalizer and winning the fowl which led to our eventual winner, if my memory serves me correct RFUS started a thread on here soon after the match and we all collectively played soggy biscuit over how good his performance was, he was back, wasn't he?
No, to put it bluntly, it was the only time that season we saw him out wide and he soon returned to stinking our centre midfield up like a Catalan Phil Neville.
We finished seventh after Beckford won the tango-dance off with Chelseas' defence but that season was a bag of sh*te really, although Mikel did manage to score a few corkers in it...the derby howitzer was a special moment and I still haven't gone as mad as when he smashed it past Van Der Sar in the 92nd minute.
On 31st August 2011 he finally left us, in retrospect it was a good move for all concerned and he's playing fantastically well in the deeper "pivot" role at Arsenal, thankfully Santi Cazorla has even taken over corner taking duties so the Emirates faithful can merely watch him spray the ball about in his sultry Spanish manner.
Mikel will go down as one of the best (and hunkiest, *swoon*) modern day Evertonians ever, such were the brilliance of his earlier performances, his goals against Fiorentina, Blackburn, Bolton & Hull are some of the best Goodison has seen in a long time aswell, it's just a shame it all went a bit tits up in the end, like all great relationships.
We'll meet again Mikel...on the 28th of this month.
