FTY
Player Valuation: £80m
We’ve, come too far, to give up, who we are.
It’s back to writing words about forthcoming Everton games which is a bit like having one of them long summer holidays in school and then trying to figure out how to tie your tie ace after an absence of so long without it. Appreciate your patience like.
Hope you all had a nice summer, which as far as summers go wasn’t bad at all was it? Glorious weather should at this point be leaving you with tanned legs like a boss pre season Gary Lineker, a mantle now taken up by new club captain Phil Jagielka who sports a tremendous even tan. A good sporting summer too with the Lions turning over Australia, England & Wales retaining the Ashes and British winners in both Wimbledon and the US Open. Take some of that reflected glory and feel good about yourselves you bad international kopites.
In all reality though as good as those wins were it’s like methadone to the heroin of Everton. You’re sharing that feel-good factor with the likes of Baz from Market Drayton and Terry from Dagenham, whereas all the boss things Everton does are la cosa nostra.
There have been some changes too since we last done the Everton thing. Gone are the previous manager and his backroom team and in are the new. How it will work out we don’t know but will find out. We played some really decent togger during the last few seasons under Moyes so the bedrock is there to take that on. I would imagine the drone flying above Goodison will be somewhat safer this season apart from when Stoke come to town. Sorry that was trite, like a spurned lover there.
For some against the traditional Everton background of stoic and pessimism there’s a bit of an air of buoyancy and confidence. Like sprouting bonafide pubes over the summer holidays and wanting to get back in the changes and stride into them showers sans towel. You’ve f*cking made it lad. Next stop, sidies, blue Thunderbird and fingering birds all over the show.
Ok maybe were not going to reach such holy grails but it’s something different and a change is as good as a rest even though it’s likely to not feel like that when our centre halves gift a goal to a crap team on a Monday night in November by overpassing the ball across the 18 yard box.
It’s going to be a bit weird. Like going from a PC to a Mac for the first time, everyone tells you the Mac is boss and works better but you knew what you got with the PC. And a good PC it was at that, loads of RAM. Yes the Mac looks prettier and those gestures it does are sound but in the back of your mind you have compatibility concerns. OK, I’m talking about me here as I’m typing this on a Mac for the first time and I’m wondering if the hype is really all that while my bank balance is shot and me mar is buzzing off the arl PC.
Everything to Martinez is phenomenal whereas to Evertonians everything is sh*te. That may take some working. It’s easy though to notice the things that are different and the anxieties to change that naturally occur. It’s been refreshing to see someone generally happy and enjoying themselves managing this club and giving young lids a tangible chance in pre season. I’m gonna swerve any predictions of what may come as others are seemingly adept at that: the truth is we just don’t know, so the least we can do is to give the new lid and systems a chance. The manager isn’t the biggest problem we have, that’s the lack of money we have to spend making Everton better. So lets hope for some ace togger and better times for Blue Star Walton.
Due to these changes there’s been a keen interest in pre season to see early indications of how it’s going to roll for us, but it’s been one of understandable experimentation as Martinez has a good look at his squad of players. With this in mind it’s been one of our better pre seasons as we’ve faced some very good opposition and more than held our own. The five at the back thing will obviously get used this season and for many of us it creates a jolt of bad electricity at the back of our brains in the lizard part as were dragged back to Walter Smith teams with similar formations and seven defenders on the pitch but I think the new set up will have a wee bit more panache to it. Whether it will work or not we’ll see, but it took Moyes a couple of seasons to stumble upon the 4-5-1 which ultimately became his successful comfort blanket at Everton for the next decade.
As for the players its difficult as they’ve had time off to trip the light fantastic and group rape tattooed girls in a sleazy Mediterranean resorts. Its also a problem for natural bad scavs like Darron Gibson who utilises the downtime to double his calorific content before causing raised eyebrows presumably with the club fitness coaches on his return. Does pre season form manifest itself in transferring to the start of the season? If so then Jelavic and Naismith are gonna be sound, get Fellaini and Kone sold ASAP.
We’ve got some opposition to consider anyway so we best briefly touch on them, well not so much touch on them but stroke them like a pervy uncle. Which leads us perfectly onto Norwich, the weird bunch of smelly beauts.
Norwich are living the pre season dream. Relatively stabilised in the top flight under the simple faced features of Chris Hughton they have spunked some of Delia’s egg making money on a collection of footballers causing envious tweets of “he’s boss him you know” from lids who spend far too much time on FIFA/Football Manager 2013.
Van Wolfswinkel, Javier Garrido, Nathan Redmond and one time Everton medical man Leroy Fer are all in but what lids are overlooking is the balance brought by some of their other moves. They have also signed 47 year old one time Queer As Folk extra Carlo Nash and sold perpetual yard dog Everton terrifier Grant Holt. Relax, these are still sh*te.
It will be a packed Carrow Road drunk on over optimism so all we need to do is to turn up, not do anything stupid and let soccer be the winner. Not the tiki taka guff but the sound togger that these Everton players are used to doing, as were miles better than Norwich aren’t we?
There’ll be a sizeable amount of blues making one of the most awkward away trips there is to the Clark wearing shoe capital of Northern Europe. If there were an OFFSTED for hairdressers then you’d sincerely fear for Norwich as the en vogue hairstyle seems to be a mix between Prince Harry and the Incredible Hulk when he’s took a maddy and lost it a la Lou Ferringo. The scruffy same DNA’d beauts. Leave these bells to fester in their homemade sloe gin, get in and out there with the three points Everton. They’re nothing to worry about.
Second guessing the Everton team and potential line up isn’t easy for someone as unobservant and tactically unaware as me, even more so when it’s a new manager’s first game. So I’ll go with what I think should happen rather than what may.
Jelavic needs to start as he’s been slotting like the Jelavic v1 we fell in love with. Sure, we have a shiny new striker that cost actual money and a massive backed striker boss at holding the ball up but goals win games. If we are going to do two up front then Kone is all Ramadammed out and needs another week of vanilla milkshakes from McDonalds before he’s ready but I wouldn’t rule out seeing Barkley start this behind our main striker and I’m looking forward to what he can do, as he’s looked sound in pre season.
Our biggest goal threat is gonna be from Mirallas who’s had an eye transplant as a kid as the set he has now don’t belong in his head. He’s got them pervy/serial killer eyes prevalent in Balkans people when they’re drank half a bottle of vodka in pace with your two pints. Probably Pienaar will start on the other side.
Gibson is still the fusballer that makes it all tick for Everton so he'll be a loss as he's ruled out with some sort of grade 1 strain/tear. Fellaini who’s sauntered through pre season with the ability he has to saunter through one too many games. That same sauntering that won’t see too many tears shed if we get a bucketful of money for him, or it could just be that Evertonians are playing a hypothetical scenario in their heads where they have to sacrifice one of him and Baines; and well he just doesn’t score them free kicks, like boss music and come from Kirkby does he?
I really don’t have a clue who’ll play at centre back and how many we’ll have but I’ll happily ask you how ace our full backs are? They could be technically wingbacks or something this season but it in no way takes away from how many rapings they’re gonna carry out on opposition fullbacks if indeed they both stay. Probably Howard in goal as Martinez won’t want to rock the boat too early and start hushed whispers in the changes that he well prefers the latins. “Wonder what he’s saying to Robles there? Bet he’s calling you a bad tit there Tim, wouldn’t be having that.”.
Whoever starts it’s going to be a two way learning process for the foreseeable future. The players learning the new ways of Roberto and Roberto learning about them. It could be a decent ride so like many others of you I’m prepared to be patient, well I haven’t got much choice in fairness, we could be relegated two divisions and hire Tony Pullis and I’d still obsess over them. I just want to see a couple of things but one of them is an Everton team truly going after the opposition, not content with a one nil lead. Giving their defence and keeper terrors for a long time. It may take some time for that, or it may never come but were about to find out.
It’s a new era and the first game will be keen viewing, thanks to David Moyes and his team this first game of our new manager is a lot less desperate than his so it’s up to this lot to push on more. A first game with lots of eyes on it, one where there will be far too much read into it as ominous signs of either spectacular success or horrid failure. It will in reality tell us very little, but it’s the first game of the season so mine is but a simple wish: get the [Poor language removed] right into these blues.
Were up all night to get lucky.
Haven't read it all yet but I have an uncle Baz from Market Drayton.
