Everton Soapbox: Goodison gets no better

Is there a cushier tie in the Everton fixture list than Sunderland at home? Will Jermaine Beckford score two against anyone else at this level? How worried should we be after a gutless surrender bringing the losing streak to four, with three tough games to come? Pete Sixsmith joins up the dots to offer some thoughts …


My first visit
to Goodison Park was in January 1966 for a Fourth Round FA Cup tie (which kicked off at 3pm along with the other 15 games that day).

I travelled on a coach from Shildon with, if memory serves me correctly, Phil Younghusband and Robert Newton. It was an uncomfortable day in the footballing cathedral that housed England’s then finest team as we lost 3-0 mostly due to turning in a performance that I would have described as supine had I known that word then.

Forty five years on, some things have changed and some haven’t. Phil and Robert have long departed the North East, Everton are no longer among England’s elite and to describe Goodison as a cathedral would be akin to saying that North Africa is a haven of peace and political stability.

I am, however, still travelling by coach and, more relevantly, witnessing performances that make me continue to use the word supine and question why on earth I part with hard earned money to watch utter dross like this.

Read more

Everton 2 Sunderland 0: headlong into a slump

Whether Sunderland deserve a quick post-match report is frankly in doubt.

But one exchange from BBC Radio Newcastle’s live coverage seemed to sum it up rather well. It went a little like this:

Gary Bennett: “How could Ferdinand be muscled off the ball like that by Arteta?’

Nicky Barnes: “I don’t know what he thought he was doing there.”

Bennett: “I don’t know what he thinks he’s been doing all afternoon.”

Read more

The Everton ‘Who are You?’: praying for a billionaire

When you’ve worked with singers from Mary Black to Charlotte Church, and been in charge of the music at George Best’s funeral, the phrase “I’m a musician” seems a touch inadequate. Frank Gallagher*, a man who therefore seems to add modesty to his boundless charisma, energy and talent, is our Evertonian ‘Who are You?’ previewer. Frank has a great turn of phrase which, judging by her description of Billy Hughes on FA Cup Final night, he may have inherited from his mother …

Salut! Sunderland: Deep in debt, back in the shadows of your neighbours and struggling to hang on to key players: is this Everton for the foreseeable future or will a sheikh or Russian billionaire ride to the rescue?

It’s clear the only way to compete significantly in the Premiership is with a mega-wallet so I fear a billionaire might be our only hope…Russian, American, Libyan…we’ll not be fussy just as long as he’s loaded. The irony is that we were the original tycoon team, when John Moores of the Littlewoods Pools dynasty looked after us in the 60s and 70s.

Read more

Everton v SAFC: musician digs the Blues

Since M Salut is on the road in France, there isn’t time for much posting of new material before this week’s Who are You? feature which will run tomorrow as we approach the resumption, for Sunderland, of the football season.

But here is a sneak preview of that feature.

Our Evertonian is a pal, Frank Gallagher, known through his forays as a musician into the folkie territory of M Salut’s acquaintance.

Read more

Luke’s World: an Everton postscript

In which Luke Harvey sticks up for his fellow youngster Jordan Henderson, whose performance against Everton has been sharply criticised by a number of longer-in-the-tooth supporters. But then Luke still cannot quite get Chelsea out of his mind …

Monday night’s match against Everton showed that you don’t have to be the best teams in the league to produce football of high entertainment value.

Nor do you need the best players in the world, for they are all dodging high tax bands and competing in that duopoly that is La Liga. While Real and Barcelona thump even the better teams in the league by four or five goals, it’s a continuous battle here in England.

Read more

Everton Soapbox: the absolute certainties of taxes, death and Cahill


Pete Sixsmith
offers his measured assessment of a game that Sunderland might have won, but will feel satisfied not to have lost – and also remembers a true Stadium of Light character, one year on from his untimely death …

The 18th century American polymath Ben Franklin is widely accepted as being the man who said that there are “only two things certain in life and that’s death and taxes”. Were Mr Franklin still on this mortal coil, he could add: “And Tim Cahill will score against Sunderland.”

When he headed home in the sixth minute of this frenetic but not particularly skillful game, I feared the worst. Fortunately, Everton had an attack that was even more toothless than Old Mother Riley after a visit to the dentist, with Louis Saha doing a very passable impersonation of Jonathan Stead.

Read more

SAFC (1) 2 Everton (1) 2: so nearly third top

Danny Welbeck might have had three and sent Sunderland third. Beckford had a last-ditch chance to break our hearts. It ended a fair 2-2. …

The first half was a story of several great crosses and two great goals.

The excellence of the crossing continued after the break, one from Kieran Richardson producing what might have been Sunderland’s winner and confirming Danny Welbeck’s emergence as a strong, dangerous striker.

Read more

HT: Sunderland 1 Everton 1: crossing class


This half-time report has been superseded – click here

Two great moves, two great goals. Sadly the first was Everton’s, Leighton Baines’s fabulous cross from the left being met by a header that was just too powerful for Craig Gordon.

The head, inevitably, belonged to Cahill. Bloody Tim Cahill as the first text put it, f***ing Tim Cahill as far as the second texter was concerned. Steve Bruce will want to know where the Ferdinand/Turner centre back pairing were at the time, but let us not pretend it was other than a splendid goal.

Read more