Anyone seen Big Nev's
article about him?
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Ross Barkley has his first reunion with his old team,
Everton, this weekend and I’m sure there’ll be a few people in the away end at Stamford Bridge ready to remind him of some of his comments since he joined Chelsea.
If I was David Moyes I’d certainly have been taken aback by his comment that he wasn’t coached much in Everton’s first team, but maybe what he meant is he’s been nailed down to a specific role and specific duties at Chelsea – it’s a case of ‘This is what I’ve got to do to be in this team and there are no grey areas’.
I don’t think he’s miles better than he was at Everton but he has kept the ball better and they’ve made him more disciplined. I watched the match against Crystal Palace last weekend and he was almost trying to be too safe at times.
When I look at Ross, he’s a player who can unlock a defence in a second but it has to be spontaneous. If he was a boxer he’d just want to go in and punch somebody. He wouldn’t be able to box but he could punch. There’s nothing wrong in that because you need people with great brains but you also need people who can see things in a second that nobody else can see. That’s his strength. There’s nobody better than him around edge of the box for seeing things really early because he has got great vision and is really instinctive.
When it comes to making decisions – ‘Do I run with this fellow or do I pass him on to someone else?’ – maybe they’re the bits he wasn’t very good at for Everton. When you compare Ross with Wayne Rooney, as a youngster Wayne was better when he had time on the ball. Ross has learned to have time on the ball and that’s the difference between Ross now and at Everton. Before he’d take a touch, take a second touch, a third touch, and, ‘Oh [Poor language removed], it’s a tackle’. Now it’s two or three touches maximum, pass it and he’ll keep the ball moving. I wonder also if he trusts the Chelsea players more than he trusted team-mates at Everton. With some players, if they don’t trust other players they’ll keep hold of the ball and end up losing it as they’re trying to do too much.
It might also suit Ross that he’s away from Liverpool. In London you can get lost. If you’re a Scouser and playing for a Scouse team, you’re going to get more stick because people think you should understand how they feel more than any other player. I remember John Ebbrell, one of Everton’s ‘Dogs of War’ midfielders in the 90s, used to get slaughtered and I’ve never seen anybody try as hard as John or be as upset if he did something wrong as John. He knew what it meant. He even came off crutches to play in one game, which ruined his career.
The way Ross left Everton for a knockdown fee is probably held against him by some supporters. Let’s be honest, though – he is a piece of meat. It’s like taking a sheep down to the market and all of a sudden something happens and you don’t get the price you want for it. It’s not necessarily the sheep’s fault. Somebody is controlling the sheep. Also maybe the manager at the time, Ronald Koeman, wasn’t overly keen on keeping him so maybe he should have taken some blame for it. I was disappointed by Koeman. The Dutch are supposedly all about technique and flair and the one player who should have got better under him was Ross.
Would Ross be better under Marco Silva? I think he would. Would he get a game? That’s a different thing as Everton have got decent pace up front now. Moreover, they’re all grafting, all chasing lost causes, all flying about trying to make things happen. It’s a big difference from the end of Roberto Martínez’s time and Koeman’s reign. There’s been an injection of pace and enthusiasm. Roberto wanted to go forward but ended up playing 50-odd passes at the back. Koeman was quite boring at times. Now we break with pace and with quality and when I looked at the Chelsea-Palace game, Palace’s pace upset them. I was in the last Everton team to win at Chelsea, back in November 1994, so it’s a hurdle to overcome but if we can beat one of the top six teams, that will give people a lot more belief.
