Bloomfield Road

Unless he was just there for the uniquely English seaside experience, we got a good indication as to which pond Everton will be fishing in come January. David Moyes was at tonight's Blackpool vs Wolves Championship dust-up at Bloomfield Road in all it's 3-sided glory. If you believe the papers, he's been itching to sign Wayne Hennessey, the 21-year old Wolves 'keeper since he left school. But then we're not exactly short on keepers are we? Moyes has also been regularly linked to Ebanks-Blake, the nippy Wolves forward. However as the Mighty Wanderers are firmly in the hunt for promotion this season, you can't really believe they'd be willing to upset their squad at present and risk it affecting their campaign.

Maybe he just fancied a reminder of what life is like outside the cozy confines of the Premier League?

Everton in home win shock

Finally I see a home win for Everton this season. I missed the only previous one at home to Fulham, watching it in a Hong Kong darts bar with a Chinese gambling fanatic. Darts Bars are the new thing in Hong Kong - plastic arrows with those weird pre-holed boards and automatic scoring systems.

Anyway, not only did we comfortably dispatch a disappointing Sunderland 3-0, but we did it with some good football borne out of a recent run of decent displays. You could see a level of confidence returning once we went in front. The back line held firm with Jags marshaling the pacey threat of Cisse and Lescott 'managing' the strength of Kenwyne Jones. I liked Baines and Hibbert at full-back too. The middle partnership of Arteta and Phil worked as productively as it did against Chelsea on Monday night, but they didn't have much to challenge their dominance on the opposite side. Once again, Pienaar's invention was a real threat down the flanks and the two makeshift forwards ran themselves into the ground. If I was to be slightly critical, then I'd say Fellaini struggled until he was subbed, but at least he didn't get booked.

The introduction of youngster, Dan Gosling, was good to see. I read rave reviews of his play last season in the Championship for Plymouth and couldn't see why we hadn't blooded him sooner. According to the press, he was immense against Boro on Boxing Day so I was a bit perplexed to see him left out as Osman returned. Gosling's first act once on the pitch was to drive at pace straight at the Sunderland back line resulting in an inevitable foul. Now that was refreshing to see some direct play out wide. Minutes later Gosling capped a great cameo with a tap-in from Lescott's left-wing cross to seal the game at 3-0. A good introduction for the lad.

It was a timely win and a necessary one for a couple of reasons. We need to start winning at home and match our away performances this season. In addition, January is not pretty fixture wise, with Liverpool away, Arsenal at Goodison. United at Old Trafford is a nice way to start February. Realistically - you could of course argue that it's a good time to be playing Arsenal just now - Hull City on January 10th, is our best hope for a 3-point win. We need to keep in the mix as we go into February when the fixture list is kinder to our pursuit of a top 6 finish.

Ballack et al. Part 2

How good were Everton on Monday night? Even if it was against 10-men for a large part of the match. We've got no forwards and still managed to make a decent fist of it against one of the best sides in the Premier League. Obviously Chelsea held onto the ball better and put some good periods of possession together, but even when the Drog came on, they didn't give Everton a great deal to worry about. In the past, that would have ended in an annoying 1-0 defeat courtesy of Frank Lampard or Joe Cole, not this time. We pushed on, played some good football and the work that Cahill and Fellaini are putting in as makeshift forwards as present is excellent.

Fellaini has started to look like a very good player in the making. I was really sceptical at first. I think it's fair to say for the first 5 to 10 matches he tended to look bewildered, off the pace and totally lost at times. But in almost every game, we've had a glimpse of the potential and I think a year on, and a quality midfielder alongside him, and we'll see the value in the £15m investment.

Worth noting too that the fans were in fine form on Monday night. Very vocal, certainly from the point John Terry was carded, and right to the end of the game. Made for a great atmosphere. And well done referee Phil Dowd for having the guts to book some of the real whiners in the Chelsea ranks. The highlight being the carding of Ashley Cole after demonstrating the Everton wall was the correct 10 yards back.

Book For Christmas

The Everton Miscellany – Mark O’Brien

I’ve always been a fan of Mark O’Brien, initially through the When Skies Are Grey fanzine and now via the best Everton fan site out there with the online version of WSAG. It’s irreverent and doesn’t take all things Everton FC too seriously. After all, it is only a game. Crucially for me, it keeps the real whiners at bay.

The Everton Miscellany is part of a well-trodden football book formula, throwing in facts, trivia and short stories to create a perfect book for dipping in when you fancy it. All the main UK football clubs have one; Everton dragging along at the back, beaten to the publishers by Leicester City. The 148 pages is packed full of balanced bits of trivia and interesting text. The short, punchy paragraphs avoid getting too detailed and the entire book is nicely broken up by ‘player pics’, biographies of a handful of our greatest players, a few who also became managers. Legends one and all. It all starts with Dixie Dean as early as page four and quickly onto the second most prolific scorer in the club’s history, Graeme Sharp. No sign of Stuart Barlow.

There’s an account of Latchford’s 30-goal season, the ’64 betting scandal, Ball’s white boots and non-player related info on the origin of the Z-Cars theme tune and Eddie Kavanagh’s race across the pitch from Wembley ’66. We’re 9th on the all time Premier League table – somehow that doesn’t surprise me - and there is a nice bit on Poll’s bottling the Goodison derby result in 2000, disallowing Hutchison’s goal. A classic understated post-match quote from Walter Smith, manager at the time: “the referee took the easy way out”. You don’t say Walter.

The list of foreign players to have donned a royal blue jersey makes for painful reading in the chapter ‘Foreign Legion’. I know every club has a comparable list compiled over the last 15 years, but what a shower in the shape of Kroldrup, Nyarko, Bakayoko, Tal, Claus Thomsen, Rehn, Degn and Li Wei Feng. Incidentally, Sweden has provided the most imports down the years (totalling five) with Limpar being the only really good one.

It’s a nice piece of work and short on faults. OK, I don’t think David Johnson is listed in the section on players who had two spells with the club, and Bjarni Vidarsson is Icelandic, not Norwegian. The hand-drawn pictures that accompany the Goodison Legends biographies are, however, diabolical. Joe Royle looks like a cross between Desperate Dan and Alan Shearer and I couldn’t begin to guess who the drawing of Howard Kendall is actually based on. But in a way they add to the appeal in their awfulness.

So, to remind yourself of Peter Reid’s ‘just for men’ transformation, Fergie’s 8 dismissals for Everton and an account of our most recent, and maybe last title win from 1987, rush out tomorrow and treat yourself to this little blue book for £9.99. Or buy two and give the other to someone who needs reminding of the words of Alan Ball, “once Everton has touched you nothing will be the same”.

Ballack et al

Off to see Everton take on Chelsea tonight. Looking forward to seeing a few top class players in the flesh, and see how Chelsea cope with our new 4-6-0 formation. Chelsea are very competent away from home and Everton have been terrible at Goodison all season. In addition, Chelsea have the opportunity to take advantage of Liverpool's inability to beat 10-man Arsenal yesterday, and go top. Chelsea have some great players, proper ones. If you give it some thought, and escape from Sky's Orwellian-style promotion work that would have us believe every Premiership player is Pele in disguise for a moment, you can probably count the number of truly great footballers in England using just your fingers. OK, maybe the odd toe. I'll give you Ronaldo, Rooney and Rio at Manchester United; Torres and Gerrard at Liverpool; Cech, Terry, Carvalho, Ballack, Lampard and Drogba at Chelsea. Arsenal look like they've got some starlets in the making and they play some cracking, attractive football but would either Man Utd or Chelsea swap what they've got for Adebayor? Liverpool might. Fabregas will be a top class player in a couple of years.

And that's the lot. There are some good looking youngsters at Villa (as we found out), and Owen is still knocking about in the frozen tundra of the North East crying for an escape route to a 'big' club. City signed Robinho but is he really that good? Scores at Eastlands but is found out away at Hull as many predicted, so much that it now looks as if he just excludes himself from selection to avoid the coach trip.

Away from our match tonight, Manchester United won the World Club Cup or Club World Cup, in Tokyo. Is anyone really interested outside of United's financial controllers and their legion of TV-viewing fans in places like Singapore? Tim Vickery writes a great blog relating to how strong European football is compared to South America on the BBC site. United beat Liga of Quito, a team from Ecuador. Ecuador.

Pietersen's Hundred

I watched Kevin Pietersen's 15th Test Match century on Sky this morning. There aren't many players worth paying to watch play cricket for England, but KP is the genuine article. A sportsman with the talent to back up his arrogance and belief in his own ability. I can't think of many English sportsmen who can combine the two. Anyway, Pietersen's century threw up a raft of stats as ever, the most impressive being the sheer speed at which he's now scored 4000 test match runs. The quickest apparently in terms of days since his test debut, and joint 3rd on the list of English batsmen to reach 4000 run in fewest number of test. In Pietersen's case, that is just 45, matching Jack Hobbs. The two above Pietersen on the list are equally illustrious: Herbert Sutcliffe (43) and Len Hutton (44).

The other interesting fact handed out by the Sky commentary team was that Pietersen is the first England captain to score a test match hundred against India since Tony Greig in 1977. Before that, Tony Lewis did it in Kampur in 1973. Which in itself throws up another interesting fact - none of them were born in England. Pietersen is from Pietermaritzburg in the Natal region of South Africa; Greig is from the Eastern Cape and Lewis from the not-so-exotic Swansea, South Wales.

Carnaby Street, Saturday

I couldn't face a trip to the City of Manchester Stadium on Saturday opting instead for a day free of football, exchanging it for Xmas shopping. Given the Villa match and my reaction, a day in the West End surrounded by idiotic Italian tourists and Kentish chav schoolgirls seemed like my best bet for purging the soul. And it rained. All day.

Breaking loose at one stage and crossing through Carnaby Street, I came across the Soccer Scene shop. Amongst a ton of replica Arse, Chels, Manure, Milan, Brazil and Celtic tops were a handful of Arteta 10 jerseys. Better still, in the bargain bucket were a collection of ProStars (Bigheads) including what appeared to be a few hundred Andy Johnsons. Some could easily have been Tommy Gravesen. I grabbed myself one and then struck gold with a legend one which said it was Andy Gray. Make your own decision. Two pound each. A snip.

Villa Horror Show

I'm not sure, it could be one of those perception things, but Everton appear to get involved is silly games against Villa, usually coming off worst. I remember watching us get tanked at Villa Park in the late 80s / early 90s, losing 6-2 and I think one of our two was an own-goal. Mind you, Villa were an odd beast in those days, playing 3 hideous centre-backs, and David Platt. Kent Neilson anyone? Oh, and of course, one of my early introductions to Everton came as I ended up blubbing beside a radio listening to us lose the umpteenth replay in the '77 League Cup Final.

So Sunday saw us limp into a tough-looking fixture with just one recognisable forward on the books fit, play our best 90 minutes of the entire season, running Villa ragged for most of the first half and somehow managing to lose two goals in the 1st and 93rd minutes. In between, the team was mostly excellent apart from an aberration by Jags, and a crucial last 30 seconds when everyone collectively nodded off to allow Ashley Young to ruin our weekend. I still don't know how it happened and I cannot face watching it again, but it did seem to encapsulate Everton's entire season to date: we are seemingly unable to remain focused for the duration of the match. In addition, in every game, at least one player will stink the place out. Sunday was Jagielka's turn. After he played the best pass Ashley Young will get all season, he visibly went to pieces until the last 10 minutes of the game. Arteta seemed to be at fault for losing the ball for both Villa's first and final goal - he is having a nightmare season.

Dare I say it that we actually looked slightly better in the final 8 minutes or so after Shandy came on? I'm certain he delivered a number of more accurate passes into the box for our new front line of Fellaini and Lescott than Arteta had managed all game.

Surreal.

Credit Crunch Pies

On Monday I got news that Pimbletts, a St Helens bakery since 1921, had gone into administration. The shops had been sold to a Leigh-based bakers, but the original bakery in College Street, St Helens, would be closing for good with the loss of 80 jobs. Now, I'm not from St Helens but my parents are, and various members of the family were born and bred there. A trip to the City Road pie shop was part of my childhood routine as it was a regular weekly aspect for my grandparents dating back to pre-war days. Even in 2008, I would stop en route to Goodison to pick up a selection of pies, vanilla slices, egg custards and a fruit tart (for Mum) and I live 200 miles away.

The business had been in trouble for some time, amazingly still family-run. It's seen off many recessions, some worst than the '08 version, war and the blight that badly affected the North West in the 1980s. St Helens is known as the home of Pilkington glass and a top-class rugby league side. It can seem a dour and unimpressive place to an outsider and the loss of a local institution like Pimbletts will do the town no favours and will have left locals shocked. A good illustration of the impact of the closure comes from St Helens' expats. My mother rang me at work having received a call from her bewildered brother-in-law from Canada who subscribes to the online version of the St Helens Reporter. At about the same time, a work colleague from St Helens mailed me the text transcript on the story. He wonders how life will be without another Pimbletts steak pie.

The Steel City Tour, Brighton Centre

It’s a Friday night and about 3000 people are waiting for Heaven 17 to come on stage at the Brighton Centre. There’s a level of eager anticipation amongst the crowd as this is the first part of a trilogy of Sheffield’s finest pop bands that make up the touring Steel City Tour.

The band final emerge to a polite round of applause. A moments hush descends as the last of the crowd finish their mobile calls home giving promises to their teenage kids that they won’t be too late home, or similar homespun instructions to Friday’s babysitters. Glenn Gregory struts across the stage looking as debonair as I remembered, sporting a waistcoat and fedora hat. Only he and Martyn Ware remain. Ian Craig Marsh opted out of the tour, back at University or something. As youthful as Gregory is, Martyn Ware is not. He’s happy enough though tucked behind a bank of keyboards: a cross between your slightly seedy uncle and Roland Rivron. No matter, Gregory belts out a tune, the support band is professional – the drummer looks 16 - and the two backing girls hit every note. And Billie Godfrey is from Brighton too.

The great thing about music is its ability to pass through time. It’s emotive and provides us all with nostalgic moments. I can still recall hearing Heaven 17’s Penthouse & Pavement album for the first time. I was with a group of teenage friends having a picnic in a sunny Berkshire field. A new lad from Merseyside brought his tape deck and a copy of the album south. It was 1982, and Alex had an older sister who was already living the New Romantic dream in Reading. I was hooked.

The 17 tore through their 40-minute set. I fully expected them to end with Temptation and they did just that. It was fantastic and exactly what the audience wanted to hear. They kicked off the set with Fascist Groove Thing and got treated to Come Live With Me, and Penthouse. We learnt that Let Me Go is both Glenn and Martyn’s favourite H17 track and that we’d been the best audience so far on tour. And because we’re in Brighton, we got a special high-energy, techno version Geisha Boys. Well, I think that’s what Gregory meant.

Twenty minutes later, after a glass of water and a sit down, we’re back in for ABC. In reality it’s just Martin Fry. No matter. Can anybody remember the other three original members anyway? Fry looks now like a Tory MP from Norfolk, or Max Moseley. But like Gregory before him, Fry can still sing. A bigger band supports him, and you get the impression more instruments means more sound. H17 relied more on keyboards – not a great surprise – whereas the men no longer in gold lame suits have got a guitar, keyboard and a rather too lively girl accompanying on percussion. She came into her own whilst imitating a rodeo rider on ABC’s new track ‘Ride’. It struck me at this point that these guys are attempting to write pop songs for a generation who don’t want pop music anymore. Pop is a young person’s game and the mistake reforming pop acts make is mentally dropping back into the era that first made them famous. Ride sounded like a watered-down Prince. And he’s 50. Fry ran through a 40-minute set of classics, hitting the high notes on cue and completing the show with the classic ‘Look of Love’. The audience lapped it up.

Yet another intermission and another opportunity for a breather. The Human League topped the bill. Aside from being last on, you got the impression Phil Oakey was behind the whole thing. That could have explained his appearance for the opening track ‘Seconds’, impersonating Morpheus from the Matrix. Behind him the set was serious. You could have been in the Apple Store in Regents Street, enough for me to be checking around for a brochure to take away. Dry ice and a deliberate build-up with just 3 mics visible from the pit below. The emerging stage was a two-level affair with a trio of keyboard players motionless on the higher level. As we moved onto Mirror Man we got our first glimpse of Joanne and Susan. It was refreshing to see that even after close on 30 years the singing is hardly improved and the dance moves beggar belief. Joanne is inexplicably wearing a flapper dress for the first couple of numbers. I can’t stop staring as she mouths the words verbatim over the course of the next 45 minutes, as aside from walking backstage and forward a couple of times, I’m not sure she lifts her feet once. She could be any 40-something mother of two at a family wedding after two glasses of Pinot Grigio. The other one is robotically turning left and right with her arms above her head. Phil is singing Mirror Man; Susan is dancing to Hey Mickey.

Four songs in, including dragging Empire State Human back from 1979, Phil stopped for a breather. The hushed audience listened as Phil applauded H17 and ABC. A cry of “I love you Phil” from the bloke behind me drifted away amidst the smoke. The gals returned and we were off with The Lebanon, (Keep Feeling) Fascination, more costume changes before arriving at Don’t You Want Me (Baby). Susan is still flinging her arms around and slightly off the beat but she’s dragged the original white fur coat used for the Don’t You video out of the wardrobe. As with both ABC and H17, the best was saved for last. The audience sung along with every word. I wondered how many of these people had seen any or all of these groups in their 80s hey-day? I didn’t. Just like catching Prince at the o2 Arena last year, I did it to make up for missing him first time round. I was slightly disappointed at Phil’s need to thank everyone one final time in the middle of Don’t You Want Me, but he was seemingly as euphoric as the middle-aged crowd in front of him.

As people drifted out into the cold December night air, everyone had a favourite track that hadn’t been played. Hardly surprising when each act had barely 45 minutes per set. Minor detail. All said, it was a solid show and we’d all gorged ourselves for just less than 3 hours of great songs and great memories from a time when such events would end with a lift home from your Dad.

Berks

I forgot to say. Here's a perfect reason for avoiding the internet. A post on the caughtoffside site.

Jsug - December 4th, 2008 at 8:05 pm

everton dont av a say as u r 2 dreadful.

You just have to pray he's about 12.

Nonsense report on forums. Shock

A friend of mine reported today a list of utter nonsense appearing on the various forums found at Everton fansites on the web. Varying ideas on who we should be signing in January. I hope he wasn't having a go at me now I think about it. Anyway, three of his highlights were -

• Bring back Marcus Bent
• Sign David Nugent
• What about giving Castillo a game? He looked good in the matches I saw

In fact, these are probably some of the less ridiculous posts you could find if you looked hard enough. You can't argue with Nugent's goalscoring record at Pompey: doesn't play, doesn't score. Probably 100 per cent record.

Looks like Fowler is going to opt for Grimsby. Gutted.

Owen

Let's face it, the fact that we can all set up a website or start writing our own blogs doesn't mean any of it is any good. It's public time-wasting. And football rumours are the epitome of time-wasting on the internet. Even the BBC has a 'football gossip' bit.

Tribalfootball specialises in hashing, and re-hashing football nonsense. It's a reason why people call radio phone-in shows like 606 demanding manager of Club X be sacked after 3 games in charge, having never seen the team play except via the google-box. Today, I came across this pearl of wisdom from caughtoffside, working from a piece of rubbish from tribalfootball about Michael Owen possibly moving to Everton in January.

And another thing. Message to the England cricket team. Get a grip, get back to India and play the two tests. Either that or give back the money you're paid to play.

Super Swede

From hearing the news about Yak's injury and Saha's hammy last night, I put the stopwatch on how long it would be before I heard about Everton being linked with Emile Heskey and Henrik Larsson. It was about 9 hours. Officially like. Heskey will be sold in January, Larsson a likely loan option (stop me if you've heard this one before)... Oddly, Helsingborgs IF are not saying anything official on their official website like. Official. Not even in Swedish.

Over the next 48hrs, watch out for links to Riquelme, Michael Owen, Mido, Tony Blair, that bloke tearing it up at Leeds, the Hunt Bros at Reading, maybe even Robbie Fowler if the mighty Blackburn can spare him?