Mar 27

David Moyes and Everton expose shortcomings of Manchester City excess | Paul Wilson

Everton, the best-run club outside the top four, offer lessons that could be heeded at Eastlands

Just like every Manchester City supporter canvassed on the subject by Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour on Friday, this column was unaware the club enjoys the distinction of being the only one in the Premier League with a female founder. The daughter of a Gorton vicar, Anna Connell, was so distressed at the amount of time and money young men of the parish were wasting in the pub that in 1880 she formed a sports club to provide a healthier and more constructive alternative.

City’s present owners doubtless have some empathy with those wholesome Victorian values, yet on Wednesday against Everton it looked as though the club’s 130-year history had turned full circle. City are now driving their supporters to drink, arguably more so than ever because the stakes are so high. Judging by the rapidity with which the Eastlands stadium began to empty when Mikel Arteta scored a second goal for the club that began life as St

No Comments | Tags: , , , , , , ,
Feb 15

Football transfer rumours: Everton to sign Cardozo and Pinola? | Rob Smyth

Today’s nuggets go out alone, if they go out at all

You don’t understand the sacrifices the Mill makes to bring you your daily bread. All you see are words on a page, a bon mot every year or two. What you don’t see is the work that goes into compiling the rumours. You don’t see us infiltrating the inner circle of the notorious Hainault Crew, risking life, limb and swingers just in case they have a snout who knows about a reserve full-back who might be going to League Two. You don’t see us leering our way out of bed at 5.19 on a Monday morning, leaving our beautiful imaginary girlfriend behind, before injecting caffeine in an attempt to wake ourselves up.

You don’t see us heading to a service station in the mezzanine hours, handing over our last monkey to a grizzled, pencil-thin septuagenarian in a fedora in exchange for an envelope full of priceless information, only to later find a single note inside which reads: Up yours, four eyes. You don’t see us, worst of all, reading the Daily Star.

Some days are good. Some days the rumours justify the means. But we can’t tell you all days are good days. Life’s not like that. And today is not a good day. After at least two minutes’ intense scrutiny of our various sources, the best we can offer is that David Moyes wants to sign two South Americans. They’re not even Brazilians. We can’t even type ‘David Moyes is going for a Brazilian’ with a little smirk on our face, before high-fiving our proud colleagues in celebration of the peerless delivery of an entirely original pun.

The two men Moyes wants to sign are Oscar Cardozo, a striker who plays for Paraguay and Benfica, and Javire Pinola, a left-back who plays for Nuremberg and Argentina. Pinola has one international cap but has not been picked under Diego Maradona. Given that Maradona has awarded caps to 74% of the country, and put Eva Perón, Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriella Sabatini up front the last time he submitted a team sheet, this might be seen as a concern.

Not for Tony Pulis: he wants to add Pinola to the conveyor belt that is Stoke’s defence – and, by the way, if Arsenal or Barcelona had as fluid a defence, we’d be hailing it as the latest manifestation of Total Football, wouldn’t we?

Moyes also has competition for Cardozo, from Spurs, Aston Villa and Blackburn. Harry Redknapp, keen to sign the man described as the “new Sandra Redknapp”, is gathering testimonies from the likes of Darren Bent, Roman Pavlyuchenko and Florin Raducioiu to demonstrate how he really looks after centre-forwards; Martin O’Neill is pointing out that Emile Heskey averages a league goal every 481.5 minutes this season. And Sam Allardyce still bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Dame Edna Everage, at least to our caffeine-fuelled eyes.

Redknapp, that renowned Croatphile, also wants to sign Spartak Moscow’s goalkeeper Stipe Pletikosa, place him in a line-up alongside Vedran Corluka, Luka Modric and Nico Kranjcar, and shake his head in bewilderment as he marvels at how far the world has advanced since the days when the players he ever bought were dangerously hirsute Anglo-Saxons.

Hirsute Celts are just as good, and Birmingham’s strawberry-blond Alex McLeish is after a couple in Aiden McGeady and Kris Boyd. While McGeady has approximately 100% chance of being exposed as a showpony by most Premier League defenders, Boyd’s case is an interesting one. He scores goals in industrial quantities, yet nobody seems to take him seriously because he a) offers little to his team apart from goals, and b) he plays in Scotland. This despite the fact that most of the old school still cling to the delusion that Michael Owen should be at the World Cup even though he a) offers little to his team apart from missed chances, and b) doesn’t play at all.

Another man who hasn’t been playing much of late is Burnley’s Ecuador winger Fernando Guerrero. Their manager, Brian Laws, in no way dealing in stereotypes, has apparently decided that Guerrero is not suited to a relegation battle and has decided to release him. Maybe Guerrero doesn’t look like the kind of man who would get sufficiently passionate about the cause to throw a plate of chicken wings at a colleague’s face. Those are the people you want in the trenches.

Finally, there’s a rumour going round that everyone’s favourite former Watford fan, Tim Lovejoy, did the FA Cup draw yesterday. This one can’t be true, because there is no way ITV would allow him to hammer the last nail into the FA Cup’s coffin. No way would they do that.

EvertonTottenham HotspurRob Smythguardian.co.uk

No Comments | Tags: , , ,
Dec 18

Are Everton the one to crack the big four? | Barney Ronay

Like an episode of X Factor, Aston Villa, Manchester City, Spurs and Everton are vying for the public vote

Who do we back to crack the Big Four? This week it has been even harder than usual to avoid talking, or hearing other people talk, about the Premier League “Big Four”. The reason for the excitement has been the ongoing fascination that a club from outside Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal might finally “crack the Big Four”. So entrenched has this obsession become that the pack of chasing big-four-crackers has already taken on an exclusive, clubby feel of its own, and is, in turn, being pursued by a further select pack of clubs desperate to “crack” the select pack of clubs trying to crack the Big Four.

This is a strange period in the Premier League’s fevered, but oddly stagnant history. It’s also no doubt all for the best, even if no matter how much you might loathe, or simply be crushingly bored by, the idea of an overclass gorged on a self-perpetuating generational supremacy, it is by now quite hard to feel consistently hostile towards the Big Four, who have been there long enough to seem sinister, but also secretly reassuring, like America, or Sky Sports, or bickering quietly with your wife in the car.

Who are we supposed to back, anyway, in the bid for Big Four office? Aston Villa are the current favourites and under Martin O’Neill they seem eager and well-drilled, like a crack scout troupe led by a charismatic schoolteacher with an allotment. We hear talk about them “gatecrashing” the Big Four, which sounds fun and vaguely zany, as though Villa gate crashing the Big Four would be a bit like the Spice Girls gatecrashing a really stuffy party and backflipping across the sausage rolls. Plus Villa are owned by an American who seems non-embarrassing, like one of those robust, tweed-jacketed, self-consciously dignified Americans who collect calfskin-bound first edition novels and have a vast country estate that they call “the cabin”, and who spend pretty much all their time looking grave and virtuous at a huge oak desk.

But football is a conservative business and we’re not always quite so accommodating. When Tottenham beat Manchester City this week they were described as trying to “break into” the Big Four: not as much fun as gatecrashing, and carrying with it a troubling sense of actually wanting to squat there and become a fixture. City are mainly out to “upset” or even “smash” the Big Four and have yet to make many friends, inducing in some a fearful nostalgia for the old Big Four certainties, like East German pensioners confronted by The Colonel’s Boneless Zinger Banquet and gripped suddenly by a passionate yearning for Stalin.

It’s a bit late now, but my vote would go to Everton, who, like Villa, were also once billed as “gatecrashers”. If the battle to “break” the Big Four was an episode of the X Factor Everton would have already won it: of all recent contenders they have the greatest sense of pluck in adversity, of a poignant journey, one that could be compressed into an inspiring montage set to a ballad about people being lifted up and flying again, with close-ups of David Moyes’s frightening, red-rimmed eyes, Mikel Arteta’s knee being prodded and a shot of a snot-drenched Tony Hibbert weeping inconsolably while wearing a poppy. It might have been fun for a bit and – at least before the Big Four makeover took hold – unusually brief and precarious.

Premier LeagueAston VillaMartin O’NeillEvertonBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk

No Comments | Tags: , , , , , ,
« Previous Page