What Competitions should Everton prioritise?

[Ihaters]

This summer of spending was very much funded by the tv money. The new deal makes every league position valuable in a way it simply wasn't just a year ago.

The TV money doesn't effect the prize money, that is from a different source. Its still roughly a mil per place so we'll still get more from winning cups than dropping a few league positions.

 

[Ihaters]

i love everton and it makes me sad when we lose

I agree, it makes my eyes rain.

 

[witchdoc187]

League because it brings in most money - even if you finish fifth or sixth.

Ask Arsenal fans if they are happy 'winning' every season by finishing 4th. That is their aim - their goal. If they finish 4th its a success. Of course we need money but most of all we need a trophy. I suspect we will get one this season simply as i am leaving the country.

 

[Steve Wigan]

This.

With knobs on.

You would think we have been winning trophies for fun this last two decades the way some folk round these parts so flippantly dismiss this trophy or that one as if they are beneath us.

Of particular sadness is the labelling of the League Cup as the "Mickey Mouse Cup".

For those who don't know how that term originates, listen up a moment or two.

Back in '77 we played a series of games which have entered Everton folklore as the "Villa trilogy".

It was the drawn League Cup Final at Wembley followed by two replays, one at Hillsborough and one at Old Trafford.

On the Thursday or Friday before the game the team arrived at Lime Street to take the train to Euston.

On the platform a Kopite emerged, with a cameraman from that local rag which we all know to be the Cult Chronicle, and walked up to Mick Lyons, our skipper at the time and presented him with a statue of one Michael Mouse and a label attached saying "good luck in the Mickey Mouse Cup Final".

The Cult had yet to win that trophy....they had never even reached the final at that stage.

So in their eyes it wasn't worth winning.....it was the Mickey Mouse Cup.

The picture appeared in the Echo that night and it was a deliberate attempt at pouring cold water on the excitement which had gripped Evertonians in the weeks leading up to the League a Cup Final.

Because we were back on the trophy trail.....after a period in the wilderness.

A whole seven years.

To the 70s generation of Blues that was an awful long time to have gone since we won the Title in 1970.

Today it is twenty years almost since we won owt.

That is a generation of us who have never seen the magnificent sight of a Brian Labone, a Kevin Ratcliffe or a Wagga Watson hoist a trophy aloft at Wembley.

You need to see this sight lads.....you need to see a Phil Jagielka run round Wembley with a cup.

Then you will begin to understand why us arl blokes regard every competition we enter as being vital.

As being worth winning.

Chico is spot on.

Prioritise every one of those competitions and with a wee bit of the luck we so rarely get........well, who knows

Its the sight of Phil Jagielka running all the way around Wembly after playing a whole game that worries me....it would put him in bed for a month.....

 

[Allezfan]

The TV money doesn't effect the prize money, that is from a different source. Its still roughly a mil per place so we'll still get more from winning cups than dropping a few league positions.

But last year we had 16 games shown to Cardiff's 8 and so got an extra 23 million in tv money.

That 23 million is significant and is a direct result of being in the top 7 consistently.