One of the problems with writing about Everton’s malaise, other than how damn miserable it makes you feel, is knowing what to leave out. Someone on Merseyside is currently keeping a notebook full for the eventual book of this sorry tale. “How to lose football matches and alienate people”, perhaps. Or “Blue murder”, if the publisher demands something a little more punchy. “Fury across the Mersey” is my favourite, but it’s not my book.
Still, as you grasp in the dark for a barometer of Everton’s misery, Cenk Tosun reaches out to offer his sorry hand. There have been many more mistakes other than him, but Tosun’s signing, existence at Everton and eventual departure is the perfect indictment of how a fine family club went off for a walk and may well be gone for some time.
Tosun was signed for a reported fee of £27m on reported wages of £110,000 a week in January 2018. With Everton struggling for goals (25 in their first 21 league games of that season, although they were ninth), then-manager Sam Allardyce saw Tosun as the perfect solution. Due diligence had been done: “We looked at the qualities of the player, his talent and goal-scoring, and his resilience, too. I do not think you can look any more than we have done and, for the price, he is the best in Europe at the moment.” A bold claim indeed.
A month later, when Tosun had started two games, failed to score and then been dropped for Oumar Niasse, it’s fair to say that Allardyce had slightly changed his tune to shift expectations: “He is struggling with the pace of the Premier League… You have to have the capabilities to get in those positions to score those goals and that is the hard bit.”
Tosun started 24 league games in total for Everton, was eventually loaned to Besiktas (who Everton had signed him from) and then joined the same club on a free transfer.
More from Football
5 Everton candidates after Frank Lampard is sacked, from Wayne Rooney to David Moyes23 January, 2023
Why Wayne Rooney is the man to save Everton but is not the bookmakers’ favourite23 January, 2023
Everton sack Frank Lampard after West Ham defeat with Wayne Rooney among favourites to take job23 January, 2023“Dear Blue Family, I had a great four and a half years as a member of your family with ups and downs and now unfortunately it is time to say goodbye,” Tosun wrote. “I loved it to be an Evertonian and I will always be an Evertonian. This club has so much potential and I am sure soon Everton will have better days and when the day comes I will be celebrating as well.”
Tosun played under five different managers at Everton and with a vast, dispiriting array of strike partners and midfielders. All the time he stayed, doing next to nothing, everything else gargled and spluttered and changed without anything actually changing. That parting message, bleak in the context of his struggle and the great lament at lost chances, caught me a little off guard. Nobody escapes the ennui.
There are a lot of Cenk Tosuns; this is not all – or even mostly – on him. Like Jean-Philippe Gbamin, who cost £25m on a five-year contract and has been loaned to CSKA Moscow and Trabzonspor; he has started two league games and is still under Everton contract. Like Allan, who was signed for £21m and joined Al Wahda in the UAE Pro League on a free transfer two years later. Like the aforementioned Niasse, who cost £16m and whose first league goal in England did come against Liverpool. Unfortunately, that was after he’d been loaned out to Hull City after 142 league minutes at Everton.
The lofty ambition, the insistence due diligence had been done, the quick evidence to the contrary and the maelstrom into which every expensive signing is plunged from day one. You may have seen the graphic by now, the failures and the fallen angels signed at exorbitant cost. Are we to assume that they were all bad, or that this club has simply become a drain on those who come into contact with it? Welcome to Goodison – it’ll probably go downhill from here.
“Never again,” the club vowed in May, when Everton confirmed their safety with one game to spare. But progress is not something you can simply will upon yourself or another. It is defined by what you do and how you behave. Simply declare that a repeat will never occur without insuring against it and all you will attract are accusations of arrogance or ignorance.
The wastage is the most galling. This is not a Mike Ashley at Newcastle situation, a club suffocated by a lack of care and proper investment to allow its potential to glint in the sun. This club is not being forced into liquidation by the breaking of a thousand promises, as at Bury or Macclesfield down the M62. Money makes the world in which Everton live go round, but the shambolic spending of revenues has been appalling.
The ultimate damnation is that more money, usually the easy shortcut, makes no sense here. You could change all the parts and the machine would still be broken because the fabric of the club is split in two and nobody is taking responsibility. Everton supporters are being deafened by the sound of silence.
In these circumstances, communication is the only effective bandage. Explain why you believe things went wrong and how you intend to change it (not just that you will change it) and you buy yourself some goodwill even when faith is running dry. That is probably why Frank Lampard retained some support despite Everton losing eight of his last nine matches and barely looking capable of mounting an attack or thwarting one: he tried to discuss what was going wrong. If it’s the lowest bar you can imagine, welcome to the natural home of UK limbo.
Without that communication, from Farhad Moshiri, Kevin Thelwell, Denise Barrett-Baxendale or Graeme Sharp, the emotional distance between supporters and their clubs increases because the connections are lost. Although some of it evidently went too far, those persons of responsibility should probably be relieved that fans are still angry; apathy and atrophy comes next and that is far harder to cure. The club talked up the impact of supporters towards the end of last season, but they are tired of the cart leading the horse. At what point does the team make them feel better?
All the while, Everton no longer feels like Everton. The name is the same, but that’s it. The old ground is preparing for its long goodbye. The players switch in and out to inherit and bequeath despair to whoever replaces them. The division might change in May, otherwise another new manager will be along soon and may well get a boost that makes survival likely again. “Never again”, the club would presumably promise themselves, as the same playlist lines up on repeat.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/TiWDnJC
Post a Comment