Neville Southall: ‘Just like Britain and the EU, Everton should stick with Marco Silva’

My old team-mate Gary Lineker will be at the New Den with the BBC TV cameras on Saturday evening, looking for an upset when Everton play Millwall in the FA Cup. I remember arriving late for a game at the original Den once – my missus at the time had chicken pox and so I travelled down later than the rest of the team, driven down by a friend of Colin Harvey, our manager.

I had a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea in a café next door and then went out and played and we won 2-1. People say it’s an intimidating place but I think they’re good football people there. I used to want to sample atmospheres like that – in fact, I didn’t find any ground intimidating. Why would I? Because people shout a lot? That’s what they’re there for. I’d rather have shouting and screaming than a ground full of people who just sit there and eat prawn sandwiches.

Time to stick with Silva

People might say it’ll increase the pressure on manager Marco Silva if Everton get knocked out of the cup and I know that the club’s owner, Farhad Moshiri, came out at the AGM earlier this month and said it’s not been good enough but I’d like him to stick with this guy. After all, they’ve had too many managers in the past few year so it’s not easy for whoever comes in.

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You can’t keep hiring and firing – just look at Man United. They’ve had too many managers, each with their own style of play, and while Ole Gunnar Solksjær has done fantastically well since he took over, he’ll run into problems too if it becomes his name on the door and he realises there are certain players he doesn’t want.

It’s like when your favourite uncle comes to stay with you: it’s great, but when they turn into your dad you don’t like it so much.

Everton need a focal point

For the first time since I left Everton, I actually think there’s a plan there and it’s to build a really good squad to take into the new stadium. The club is only going to get better but for any new manager, to get rid of players is hard and Silva’s problem is they’ve built up such a squad that the job is more about selling than signing. He needs to get rid of five and maybe buy a decent one. On the plus side, the players that have come in – Richarlison, Lucas Digne, Andre Gomes – haven’t done badly and the little Brazilian, Bernard, should be better next season when he’s got stronger.

Of course, I’d love to see a leader in there but how many other teams have an old-style leader? Vincent Kompany at Manchester City is one, but you’d struggle to name many others. Leaders have largely been bred out of football because now players get told by their coaches, ‘You do that and I’ll be happy’.

In Everton’s case, they miss a focal point in attack too, a natural scorer like Romelu Lukaku, and if the ball goes up there and isn’t sticking, people get fed up and don’t make runs. Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Richarlison have done it in patches but I’m not convinced they’re instinctive strikers, and that one position affects the rest of the team.

This team could certainly do with a Tim Cahill – or, from my era, an Andy Gray, Graeme Sharp or Gary Lineker … but Gary’s happier tweeting about Brexit these days and I can’t blame him.

People are sick of austerity

I work at a school in Ebbw Vale, where 62 per cent of voters chose Leave. It’s a place where there are not masses of jobs – the Tories have ripped the heart out of Wales anyway with the coal and the steelworks – and people there are fed up with austerity, and with governments that promise the earth and give them nothing. In this sense, I can understand why people chose Leave. I don’t think Ebbw Vale thought anybody would take them seriously, and lots of people voted thinking it would never happen but they wanted to make a point.

I don’t think they voted to leave on the full facts either, so if I lied to you and you made a decision about that, you wouldn’t be very happy – and that’s what is happening now. People voted out of Europe because they’d had enough of politics and they want to see somebody with a different approach and this is why I think Jeremy Corbyn has come to fore. People want a government that’ll care for everybody. I work in a school and I’ve seen the cuts in education and they’re savage. We need to look after our kids or we are going to have generation after generation of the haves and have nots.

We need to stick together

The irony with Ebbw Vale is that the main road in the Valleys – a new dual carriageway – has come from European money and we need European money to regenerate the area. It’s an EU tier 1 area and they’re trying to get TVR, the sports car company, to build a factory there and there’s been talk about a motor racing track – the Circuit of Wales – being built on the outskirts of the town.

But industry won’t come without the infrastructure and for us, we’ve only started getting the infrastructure because of European money. Once we do leave, I suspect investment will go down – the government aren’t going to give us even more money, are they?

My own view on Brexit is we were never going to get a good deal because what’s the point of having an exclusive club if in the end you can get a better deal on the outside? That’s not what the club is about – the club is about working together.

Is it easier to fight terrorists or find cures for cancer on your own or together? I’ve not always got on with the Welsh FA but I can probably get on better with them from the inside than when I’ve been outside it.