Baggies

Moyesy says:"I'm happy with the result, but not happy with the performance. I have to give a lot of credit to West Brom today, they passed it well and made it difficult for us, and we were just a little bit behind it as well. m I think there was maybe a little bit of tired minds, but I needed to see that myself in the first game without Mikel. I know what I've got to try and do to sort it and make it much better.

If there was one thing I do take positively from it was certainly my goalkeeper, and Phil Jagielka and Joe Yobo and the boys at the back. I thought they were immense. It's a good record and we know we're going to have to keep a few more clean sheets if we're going to keep pushing up the league.I'm delighted because you're not going to win all games as well as you'd like to play and today was a game we won without playing as well as we should have done, but nevertheless it's three points hopefully towards a good total come the end of the season."

Super Tim Cahill says: "We had a big loss with Mikel Arteta; we were down in the week but we've picked ourselves up now and we did really well out there. The main aim for us is to take it a game at a time. We've got such a small squad. It's a credit to the players and the manger for the passion they show on the pitch. We knew West Brom are a great passing team and they don't deserve to be at the bottom. We knew today was going to be one of the hardest games of the season. (28/02/09)

* Phil Neville taking a throw in by The Bullens Road, asking the fans if anyone had any water. Cue, bottles of water lashed at him, which he drank from one, then lashed back, quality.

* At half time one of the younger groundsman tending the Street end goal area. Shandy threw a cross in, which the groundsman nonchalantly side footed into the back of the net, then carried on tended his lawn, quality again.

IF ANY EVERTON FAN WANTS TO WRITE A REPORT OF ANY OF THIS SEASON'S GAMES, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO DO SO. JUST E-MAIL IT TO info@bluekipper.com AND WE WILL PUT IT HERE.

Tony’s unperfidious Albion – pretty, but porous as old lace.
By
Mickey Blue Eyes.

During the week I watched the Middlesbrough V West Ham Cup replay from a sense of Evertonian duty. It had no real appeal other than the obvious one that we are due to play the winners. Who, as it turned out, unsurprisingly, were The Smoggies. They will be a lot more difficult to beat than some think, particularly if our midfield can’t get its act together.. Also, I was drawn like a moth to a flame to see if we got that old Lahndan media saw from the commentator that, “West Ham always try to play attractive football.” Now, everyone except cockney media nuggets knows the claim is the biggest load of hirsute gonads since the Bush family dynasty and other Texas crackpots set out to trash the planet, rob billions and cause genocide. Fact is, the Hammers play like a collection of spaced-out East End hoodies hired by la cosa nostra via a money laundering front in Reyjkavik. The truth is they are hopeless and have been for something like a generation. It all traces back to the immortal trio of Bobby Moore-Geoff Hurst-Martin Peters in the 1960s. But even then they got malleted so regularly it found its way into a tedious terrace song, “.......like West Ham, they fade and die.” Which they almost always did and do while spraying passes all over the family enclosure before falling to the ground in a feminine faint. ‘Boro duly brushed them aside like they weren’t there, two up after twenty minutes, shots in afterwards, and the hapless jellied eel crew tripping over each other’s hankies every time they sneezed. All this in front of a dispiritingly low gate.

Don’t laugh at the latter attendance observation, people. It isn’t just ‘Boro’s problem. We have too many similar examples of our own this season and so do other clubs. Not as bad as theirs, perhaps, but enough of a warning rocket to anybody who wants to look up. The long term implications must be dealt with NOW or matters will simply get worse as unemployment gathers pace. Reduced ticket prices are only one way – strictly accountancy-based, and one-dimensional – of dealing with the looming pratfall. Getting rid of the Premier League and the so-called European Champions League would be a good start, along with part-restoration of the former unified administrative and playing formats for both. The appeal is football, not the artificial “brand” attached to it by bought-and-paid-for journos. Ultimately the fans make the professional game what it is, nobody else. It will die without them. Sales to foreign TV stations will decline too if games are played out to a backdrop of empty seats – you have only to see the average broadcast from Serie A for an example. If the present global economic debacle and rancid stench of capitalism has only one good point it is that sooner or later economic propaganda comes face to face with reality, unfortunately always at your expense. Then the bubble bursts, like West Ham.

And talk of bubbles and reality brings us to our league game with West Bromwich Albion...........

I like Tony Mowbray, and not just because his Albion team is bottom of the league and we’re not. Relief has only limited compensation. No, it’s because he reminds me of the retired military avuncular side of my family, right down to those fifties-style pullovers he wears at TV interviews, and that stoic kipper as he seeks to explain their most recent playing disaster. As bad results pile up his stoicism is as consistent as a Second World War veteran who has seen his ship torpedoed out from under him during a mid-Atlantic January, or an infantry corporal who has just had to unstick the remains of his best friend from a road somewhere in Italy after their column was strafed by a Messerschmitt. He keeps going. We British like to kid ourselves it’s what we alone do at such times. It’s beside the point that every world-weary military man worth his training and experience will advise you patiently that most humans act that way in similar circumstances. Moreover, a few wrong decisions by us five or six years ago and we could very easily be Albion today. Let nobody fool themselves. I doubt if old pros like Tony Mowbray do.

Yes, he’s an old soldier alright. Even his rich provincial accent fits. He looks and sounds like one of the actors playing a low rank in a 1950s Rule Britannia! war film, a sort of Geordie Dickey Attenborough or John Gregson. Without the Tonys of this world, no professional footy. I also like the rare knockabout style of Albion fan Adrian Childs on BBC 2 Match of the Day 2 on Sunday evenings. Somehow, Adrian manages to keep a sense of proportion and humour while his team has disaster in its shinpads in every game. All of which makes it more puzzling why Albion – like other Brummy clubs – has more than its fair share of whoppers amongst its fans. If you can analyse why Birmingham’s football has acquired a nutjob psyche you might get yourself a research scholarship at Reinhard Heydrich University. Meanwhile, Tony does his best against seemingly-insuperable odds. You imagine him straight-backed at Rorke’s Drift calmly explaining the mechanism of a Martini-Henry carbine to a quivering young private while the latest impi wave is banging its shields, impatient to get on with the job and wash the spears. Or in the Senior Service on HMS Hood shaking a Jolly Jack Tar fist at a distant Bismarck while shouting defiantly, “You’ll never hit us from there, you bastards!” I’ll miss him when Albion gets relegated.

On the face of it, our injuries notwithstanding, it looked a sure-fire home win. Albion are rock bottom and have been for months. The table showed their sixteen losses and a goal difference of minus twenty-five. There are times when you can’t ignore statistics. Mathematically, Albion can still survive but nobody really believes they will. They look as certain-doomed as Pickett’s division at Gettysburg or the gallant Brits defending Dunkirk. All of which sounded muffled warnings. Sure enough, they ran rings around us for much of the match.........but it amounted to fuck all. Tony (“Town-ay” if you insist on that peculiar Black Country accent) needs to make the transition from ballet de coeur to ballet d’action, or he will disappear into the hole occupied by Lahndan knobheads like Brian Sewell. It reminded me very much of George Burley’s fine Ipswich team some years ago when they played some excellent footy but went down like the Titanic, or, if you like, down the Lewis Carroll rabbit hole. Don’t ask me what the ideal formula is because I don’t know – I only know it when I see it. And Albion haven’t got it. Meanwhile, gobshite journos will do a number on “Townay” until he leaves.

Anyway, paradoxically, we won comfortably enough. Tony is right about their standard of individual technique and the way they play it around..........but so what? In footy, at any level, the only thing that matters is achieving a win, odd exception apart. We’ve heard all this stuff before, usually to excuse failure. This doesn’t apply just to footy. It applies to any athletic endeavour – how many losing semi-finalists or runners-up do you remember? Win first, analyse afterwards, Jean Paul Sartre in action. The truth is, Albion patted it around as long as it made them feel narcisstically okay. When things went wrong – apparently almost all this season – they had no response. Which makes them not an effective footy team. Therefore, much as I like both Tony Mowbray and the way Albion play, they can have small complaint. In fact, for all Albion’s admirable fancy geometry they never really looked like they would do some damage. La ballance mes amis, la balance.

For the first quarter of the game we were spectators. Outfield, Albion were much better than us. Unfortunately for them they spent far too much time staring at their navel. Later, they hit the bar and had a few near misses. None of it looked convincing, not even to the Albion team. They never looked hungry enough. And therein lies their problem. You have to really WANT it and go for the jugular. All the rest is fanciful cockamamie. As Nye Bevan once said, stand in the middle of the road and don’t be surprised if you get run over. Our Boys wanted it more than they did. Simple as. Ergo proctor sum, We won by two goals and deserved to because we were more effective than they were. There was nothing flattering about it, except to say we could have had a couple more.

The first one came in the Street End ten minutes before half time. A cross from the left from Leighton Baines (now he’s had a run it will be difficult to replace him) and three Blue Boys waited in a queue to put it in before Tim Cahill – who else – got ahead of everybody and butted it in. As the hapless ex-pinky fished it from the net you imagined the knobhead media pundits saying things like, “Why didn’t they pick him up?” whereas if it had been somebody like a Ferguson or Wenger player nodding it away it would have been, “What a magnificent piece of opportunism! See how he read that magnificently before everybody else!” But such is the one-eyed, hyped-up media corruption that rules the modern game. The only mystery is how the journo gobshites think they fool anybody.

The second came twenty minutes from the end in the Park End, a magnificent piece of opportunism from Louis Saha, back to goal, right of the D, through ball form Pienaar, edge of the box, defender in his kecks, swivel on his right foot, clip with his left, ground shot swerve out and in, low down, keeper’s right, no chance. It all happened quick as a flash. Shit, it was sweet. Game shot. When he does stuff like this you understand why everybody in the game says what a quality player he is. Apparently at Finch Farm he does this kind of thing almost as a matter of routine.

In between, Our Boys performed spasmodically, but when they did, Albion leaked like an old colander. Had we had a full team I have no doubt we would have won this by four or five. Still, you don’t want to take anything away from Albion. You had the feeling that one good striker and midfield player and they might be a match for anybody. Meantime, Marouane Fellaini looked much more settled at centre mid than anywhere else I have seen him – though he was still edgy and uncertain enough to get an inevitable booking. The midfield was erratic despite Steven Pienaar’s best game in some time, possibly Man of the Match. No Joleon, but the centre of the team was once again brilliant, particularly Phil Jagielka, who begins to have the same aura the great Des Walker once had at Nottingham Forest. Joey Yobo hardly put a foot wrong. Phil Neville, Mister Dependable, missed Mikky badly and it showed occasionally when his passing went to someone who wasn’t there. Nobody played particularly badly, it was just that the shape of the team was distorted by injuries. But they still looked remarkably determined and united even when Albion were passing it around them and through them.

All in all, Our Boys shaped well in the circumstances. But it’s going to be much harder against Tuncay and Co................ Brace yourselves, comrades.

* Tiny to comeback in style, scoring a brace in a comfortable 2-0 win. Grego. Isle Of Man.

* Everton 5 – 0 Baggies. I keep getting this wrong, but it’s about time we gave someone a good thumping. J Ashley.

* 2-0, Cahill back with a bang and Jo getting another. Baz

* A scrappy 2-0 win. Bainsey free-kick and Tony Hibbert thunderball. Knocker

Tim Cahill says: "West Brom's position doesn't reflect the way they play. Everytime I've seen them they have passed teams off the park. Unfortunatly they leak goals. I was in tears when I found out Mikky had such a bad injury. He's going to be a massive loss, but this is were we have to grow as a team and stand up and take your opportunities. Mikel is very positive for the team to do well. The team were without Mikel for the Derby. I've been missing, the Yak has been missing, but we need to stand up and be countered. The best thing about this team is we are a team."

Rock bottom West Brom are without victory in 10 away games and have not won at Goodison for 30 years. Ooops! West Brom boss Tony Mobray may have midfielder Filipe Teixeira available despite suffering a broken toe in last weekend's 2-0 defeat at Fulham, but out are Youssuf Mulumbu, Jonas Olsson and skipper Jonathan Greening.

Mobray says: "We are going away to the team who are sixth and then meet the team who are fifth over the space of a few day. So we have a big, big ask coming up in the next few days and we will have to see whether we are up to the challenge which is in front of us. There is pressure on us to win but if don't win let us move on to the next match.

We have shown against Everton already this season that we can give them more than a tough game. That was a match at The Hawthorns which slipped away from us after we had played enough good football to have won the game. The players understand that every game is tough and that there is no point in moping around in the aftermath of defeat. If players need motivating they are in the wrong business. Motivation comes from within. That is why great players can do it week in and week out because they have great self-motivation.

I have team which is a footballing team. It is an easy cop-out to say they are not fighting. This team scored 100 goals last season and the success it has had so far is by playing a certain way and following a certain philosophy. You do not need to go around kicking people and getting booked. You do not have to be over-aggressive to be a good team. In my first season here I was up before the FA for the indiscipline of the team. I think we had the most bookings in the league. Why? I don't know. I have disciplined team and I do not accept there is a lack of aggression in the team. Nothing has changed in the team from last season. We won a league which is notoriously hard, abrasive and aggressive to get out of. Our playing quality won the league."

West Brom (from): Carson, Kiely, Zuiverloon, Hoefkens, Donk, Pele, Meite, Robinson, Cech, Koren, Teixeira, Kim, Valero, Brunt, Simpson, Fortune, Bednar, Moore, Martis, Menseguez.