Or is it? Read on, for one more time this season, to not find out anything particularly new.
The combined hair ruffling of Everton at both Leicester and Sunderland was the final act in a near three year reign of Roberto Martinez. No surprise in it coming, and a good argument to say it should have come a bit earlier when there was something left of the season but it happened eventually.
With one game left of the season to go it’s a clear message. A dressing down of an unsuccessful Everton Manager rather than let him sit out one more game and then golden handshake the way out of Finch Farm in the summer on a slow news day.
Hard to pinpoint where it all started to unravel for Martinez but it unravelled in brisk and painful fashion and the results, coupled with a dreadful home record, meant there was not too many left who had his back when the time came.
If you want goodwill then it’s a good idea to give the paying home fans something to get excited or proud about every couple of weeks. Instead it has been a lily livered Everton continually shitting their pants at the first sign of pressure.
Not all on the Manager like, and I hope there some incriminations for the shithouses who have been picking up tens of thousands of pounds to not serve their paymasters particularly well, but in reality they’ll probably get off scot free as that’s modern football. The players know they’re more important than the manager as they’re an asset with value attributed to them. Downing tools or “head not being in the right place” depreciates that asset and no one wants that.
So as the season ends it’s essentially a new era and already a few names being thrown around that I have no particular feeling towards as you just don’t know do you? It’s a internet culture to throw your name behind a manager or player that you’ve been personally scouting as just what your club needs. I’d rather not sweat it and see how it goes, but we’re overdue an Everton manager that wins something soon. I can’t celebrate the sacking of another Everton manager when all is symbolises is another three years without a trophy coming to Goodison Park.
There’s a damaging culture of everyone getting behind “their man” and then when ultimately many are disappointed then there’s knives out for the new man as soon as adversity takes stock. It’s like a weird creepy game of X Factor where everyone’s screaming and phone voting, and then being genuinely upset when they back the wrong horse.
Just let it be you bulbs. Martinez has gone. Relief? Yes. Celebration? Get your arse to outside St James Park for the Sky cameras you low grade DNA shitpipes. Joking lid, you do what you do. Just lay off the bashed beak as you’re acting on top over a long spoiled game, and there you are tweeting dead serious like it’s BBC Question Time.
Which leads me nicely onto Evertonians ripping into Evertonians. It’s a very fractured fan base we have at the moment and it’s not particularly nice when there’s plenty more deserving of our ire out there. My simple wish is that any new Manager can galvanise an often ace support and in quick time.
There’s a game going on so I best add some words to it. Possibly the most meaningless game we’ve played in some time as we play a relegated Norwich (thanks to us dipping midweek and sealing it).
Their Manager O’Neil is calling for his players to sign off with a win as they owe it to the fans when in reality any of the substandard narcissistic shithouses will be craving their agent to source and unlikely move back to a club in the Premier League for next season. Look at what you could have won Everton.
Not much thoughts on Norwich except it probably does the Premier League a favour in fashion and personality by having Norwich drop back down to the lower leagues. They didn’t bring too much, apart from dull fans who read the Independent and wear pumps with a full suit to a little English pub on a Saturday evening. Norwich is effortlessly hipster but in a Tory/UKIP manner.
Maybe it’s the canal air but there’s something resoundingly ‘Ormskirk” about their fans, with of course Ormskirk being a by word for semi affluent nondescript people who are dying inside of utter crushing boredom. As a result there’s a cultural and personality vacuum with everybody going about their business in a manner that screams Seahaven Island.
I hope at least one person got that reference.
The quiff haired zombies try too hard to assimilate popular culture such as football, but imagine how soul crushing that must be when a wine pumped Delia Smith makes you cringe as a self appointed spiritual leader.
What do you say when someone asks you where you’re from when you’re on holiday if you’re Norwich? London? East England? Nigel Farage’s colostomy bag?
So while they’re fans are not too cringey there’s just nothing about them to write home about and for that it’s probably for the better if they disappear for a while and then turn up a decade later when we’ve forgot how dull they are and it generates a little excitement of the days when Ruel Fox used to run dead fast down the wing and they were the only team to play in yellow, apart from us when we were in our away kit. Which is pretty much what Norwich has been doing for the past forty years.
The weird guy in the pub that no one notices and whose flat has to be kicked down, tragically, when the neighbours complain of the smell and they find six cats eating his face for survival as a long dead corpse festers in the reclining armchair. Goodbye Norwich, I’m not even going to reference any of your players except one, as they’re crap and you paid us nearly ten million for Steven Naismith. You maybe did have a purpose after all.
So onto Everton then.
It will be some of these players last game as there’ll be natural changes and movement with the advent of a new manager. Plus some of them will agitate for moves through their agent with the change being an exploited mechanism they can facilitate to earn more money/instagram followers.
We’d usually fret over losing good players but it’s been a long time since Martin Keown went to Arsenal for less than we wanted. There’s been some of them who believed theirs and the Manager’s hype a little too much and for them I’m not so arsed. I’d rather Everton had a bunch of players who realised the value of at least expending your available cardio on a weekly basis to earn a considerable wage. But obviously with some ace skillful players to make you coo on a regular basis.
Lukaku will probably start up front and penny for Niasse’s thoughts right now. Or that Swiss kid who’s joining us at the end of the season.
The last remnants of the failed total football project may be particularly evident in the midfield and defence. Although stand in Jimmy Gabriel, David Unsworth, has said he may play a youngster or two. Why not too? There’ll likely be a performance improvement if he does. We may even see an actual wide player playing out on the left too.
Can’t be arsed analysing a defence that shipped six goals to Leicester and Sunderland in the space of five days so you’ll have to forgive me there but I do look forward to an Everton defence that can defend some time soon. And if some think they’re above that then on their way.
It will be Tim Howard’s last game in goal for Everton in a career that’s spent ten years. Whether you never liked him or not any player serving Everton that long and playing over 400 games deserves a decent see off, and particularly one who ardently tells all and sundry he’s a passionate Evertonian and will be that way until the day he dies. A rich one too, I’m getting in the mood for a ripping apart of sentimentality that has maybe hindered us somewhat for the too recent past.
So we’re back to where it’s started, with a game against Norwich.
As always a small humble word to say a sincere thanks for anyone who’s read a word of these previews this season, or perhaps more wisely just looked at the arl photos. Nice one you.
And, by the grace of whatever God you pray to, we’ll see each other back in August for the next installment of St Domingo’s weekend club for boys and girls. And if we don’t then I’m made up that I support the same football club as you, man.
Here’s to a better chapter soon, the story’s a little predictable for the last twenty odd years.
Yet here we are.
What’s our name?