Like i say prespective lids:
EVERTON FC’S most ‘successful’ season in recent years was forged against the backdrop of one of the ‘worst’ in living memory.
Cast your minds back to the dark and dismal summer of 2004 (and that's not a metaphor by the way. I holidayed in Devon that summer – Boscastle was washed away).
Everton’s prospects appeared to mirror the weather.
At the tail end of 2003/04 the Blues managed to engineer a climax to the campaign so catastrophic that they ended with the lowest effective points tally in the club's history.
Then the most talented player produced by the club, possibly ever, was sold and replaced by a free transfer journeyman with eight clubs to his name.
Expectations were lower than Barry White’s bass note.
Yet Everton went and finished fourth.
I use that example because Evertonian expectation once again appears to be sliding.
Some fans have contacted this newspaper demanding ‘action’ – the basis of their argument being that because we helped force the Americans out of Anfield, we should do something similar with the current Goodison regime.
It’s a flawed argument.
Tom Hicks and George Gillett came close to bankrupting Liverpool Football Club with a phenomenal level of debt that was unsustainable, levied against the club for personal gain.
The current Blues board is refusing to spend money the club doesn’t have and doesn’t take a salary out of the club.
That may not be very exciting, but it’s prudent housekeeping which doesn't threaten the future existence of the club.
And until another investor offers to buy the shares of Bill Kenwright’s True Blue Holdings and pump more money into the club – and none has made any interest public since Paul Gregg seven years ago – Everton must cut their cloth accordingly.
With all lines of credit seemingly exhausted, the prospect of incoming transfers is dependent solely on departures and the only players David Moyes is actively seeking to offload are Joseph Yobo and Yakubu.
As a result Everton’s name is glaringly absent from any list of transfer tittle tattle.
Even Sky Sport News, that voracious gobbler and spouter of even the most inane piece of football talk, can only find a camouflaged goalkeeper's jersey to talk about.
But while great expectations sometimes lead to hard times (one for you Dickens fans out there), from little acorns giant oak trees can grow.
But should expectations really be so low around Goodison Park?
There were only six teams better than Everton in the Premier League last season – and that was despite a start slower than a weekend in jail.
They possess an outstanding manager in David Moyes.
And last season they achieved a seventh placed finish in a campaign which saw the supremely influential Marouane Fellaini injured for 16 games, the promising Jack Rodwell sidelined for much of the campaign and Louis Saha struggle with a combination of calf, ankle and hamstring problems.
It was a season when Tim Cahill was one of the Premier League’s leading marksmen with a strike rate bettered only by Carlos Tevez, until the Asia Cup took him away for a month. Then he came back with a foot injury.
And it was a campaign which saw a youngster recently described by Cahill as the best he’s ever seen, Ross Barkley, cruelly break his leg on international duty.
Tony Hibbert has been around Goodison for more than decade and in tonight’s paper he describes this current squad as “the best I've played with – if we can keep them all fit.”
Once again Everton could be hoping for a reasonable run free of injuries.
If that’s not exactly reasons to be cheerful, parts 1, 2, 3, neither is it time to call for revolution.
