Swansea City v Everton

Just how nasty are Everton? I mean we could spend the next few minutes of your reading life previewing the tactical danger points with our next opposition but right now I just want to talk about how downright nasty Everton are to opposition teams.

They come to play us with good intentions of smothering our aceness and taking their chances but then they present themselves and we just go all nasty on their ass. Its absolute assault.

I mean take Fulham – there they are congratulating themselves on going into the break only one goal down and they mistake our amicability for weakness and only go and score a moody penalty. Erm? Who do you think you are Tarquin and your 200 followers? Anyway that nasty nasty Everton just start going through the gears as though they´re accelerating on an empty East Lancs Road between Kirkby and St Helens at 07.16 unopposed on a Sunday morning. Its fluid and there’s nothing that can done to stop it. There’s even nonchalance between the gear change upwards – a not needed but thoroughly enjoyable pause between one gear and the next. The clutch is getting rode to death such is our momentum. Christ, can someone just stop that car? It’s downright nasty.

While Everton are doing their very own Pipe Down Project on any team that is foolish enough to step onto a piece of grass with us its been a weird season for Swansea. Winners of the League Cup last season it rounded off another good season of rather nice football and generally attacking the opposition. Hurrah for the Wales! Obviously we all realise now that everything they´ve ever achieved ever is due to Martinez managing them, even stuff that happened seventy years ago that’s just how Roberto rolls. With his textbook Next coat and tan shoes combination he’s capable to transcending normal scientific rules and rumour has it he even cast all the snakes out of Wales itself once upon a time.

I can’t rip the South Welsh as there’s a huge soft spot there for them. It’s a bit of mental place, which only adds to its allure. Wide valleys with little dingy council villages clinging to the hill face with nothing to do on the weekend but fight and interbreed, but with a refreshing honesty about it.

Obviously there’s plenty of headers (lunatics in Wales speak) – truck loads of them in fact. And fellas drinking in stonewashed jeans at 12.30pm on a Wednesday afternoon. There’s big stories and sexually open girls. There’s rissoles and laverbread and fiercely contested local pie preferences. You´ll find pervy arl fellas with sideburns resembling a disused railway line´s grass verge. Youths with ear rings smoking weed defiantly on the street wearing dirty trabs with the sole hanging off when they walk. Crap graffiti. Rugby club bars with the smelliest furniture and beer lines that have never been cleaned. Rain. Meaningless inter family feuds spreading back four generations. Misplaced civic pride in the murkiest of wee towns. And huge Everton support.

Wales is the biggest and longest soap opera that’s ever existed on any channel ever. There’s a cast of 2.9m and its airs daily. Tune right in. Get yer dar in the loft twiddling the aerial about in different directions while yer mar shouts up the stairs at every change in picture clarity. “No, no that’s not it there’s too much snow love, WAIT WAIT HANG ON YOU….just had it but its back to a crap picture again” while Pops breathes in pure asbestos for 45 minutes.

Not only does Wales have a current fine rugby team but they also have two football teams in the top division of English football which is no easy feat. It was a long path to getting them there but I’m pleased for them even if that is tinged with sadness as seeing the young lids wearing Premier League tops and the local rugby scene suffering for it.

Swansea is the more established in the top flight and they’ve handled it more than well, even picking up a trophy last season in the League Cup. Due to this they’re playing in Europe this season and although they’re adept at playing in a foreign country most weeks they are seemingly struggling with balancing it all resulting in a league position under what they anticipated.

Michael Laudrup was one of the acest footballers of my childhood, there in that boss two tone Danish Hummell kit. I spent a couple of years wishing he’d be added to our mid eighties team – he’d have been perfect. Instead we got Stefan Rehn eventually. Laudrup now manages Swansea in the most transparent stepping-stone since our very own Amanda Holden shacked up with Les Dennis. Yes I so would.

Who will these strange hordes play? Well its going to be on, the other or indeed both of Michu and Bony up front of which promised yet have delivered so little this season. Michu in particular looks to have contracted acute Jelavicitis looking flabbergasted as the lack of service received rather than his own personal brand of tosh on the pitch. Bony they screamed. Get Bony! He will score the goals Everton. Put FM2014 down lids and leave it to Martinez – Lukaku is everything he wishes he could be.

The St Johns Market version of Theo Walcott – Nathan Dyer – is out injured so the average speed of their midfield has dropped by eleven kph an hour. You´re still going to find Jon Jo Shelvey in there of which its far too easy to make a cheap jibe so he gets a pity pass and if you really study their midfield and by that I mean google BBC Swansea City and then click on their last three match reports and try to aggregate their starting team then you´ll see they have a load of Spanish sounding names like the result of a poorly scouted transfer deadline window in FIFA 14. Perhaps they can play some football, perhaps they can’t.

Ashley Williams needs to be told he’s in South Wales not walking round in a 1991 John Singleton directed movie and he doesn’t have Ice Cube, Cuba Gooding Jr and Larry Fishburne on speed dial. Instead he plays central defence for Swansea and does a good job evidentally by some of the clubs and fees linked with him in the summer whereas every time he plays Everton he tends to get meekly done over. Angel Rangel is out so were missing out on the most popular rhyme of English football commentators. Want to know who replaces him? Me too. But I can tell you their truly super keeper Michael Vorm is also out. Defo a loss.

So that Everton then. Lukaka – he’s your man. He gonna start up front and hopefully have one of his games where he all sorts of wrong to their defence. Even if he doesn’t reach them heights he’s still liable to score a goal or two so no sweat ok?

The Catalan wonderkid who has more than a touch of Get Off My Train from the 1988 hit VHS title Ghost is going to be out anywhere from five weeks on the super-positive-Martinez-scale or two months on the don’t-you-dare-rush-him-back-he’s-still-our-player-Barcelona-scale. Naismith’s Chrimbo prezzie just came a bit early. Again no sweat though as Mirallas seems to got his intent back and Pienaar has gone under the radar a bit but is playing quite superbly.

The midfield three of succinct aceness are reunited, with Barkley playing in front of Barry and McCarthy who’s back from suspension. I’m quite sure of the exact science of how they dominate the opposition so splendidly but then in some way its quite similar to hand making a boss curry, I mean there’s coconut in there right? How? Does it taste good? Hell yeah! Then just leave it be man and enjoy.

Baines is due back soon but you can be sure he won’t get back in until that bone is really healed. Make sure its just poifect. In his absence the Costa Rican yin to Paolo Wanchope’s Costa Rican yan is doing just fine and gaining valuable confidence that he belongs. Coleman is a one man terror tale waiting to happen for naïve defences that think they can push on against him or have the audacity to try and take him on. Scores like a mad man too. Distin and Jagielka are playing well and America, America’s number 1 is between the sticks.

Were in the midst of a supposed easier run and there’s a weird calmness amongst blues. No one is really expecting much or glorious runs to fashioning a crack at the title. Sack that – were just enchanted with all the top togger served up in royal blue most weeks. When it falls apart it falls apart. In the mean time Swansea are getting it. Those weekends just cant come quickly enough.

It’s the season of goodwill so stop being so nasty Everton. Oh ok, you go right ahead.

If you have read this or any part of any preview on this more deserving site then I’d like to wish you – yes you – personally a very Merry Christmas. I hope you get everything you dreamed of even if that happens to be a three pack of black Next socks (got to match them up so the logo is always on the outside compulsive types) or the most thoughtless of all Christmas gifts – the Lynx Africa box-set.

Santa came early for me this year in June. He delivered exactly the present what I wanted, and it wears brown shoes.

Onwards Evertonians.