Once more, an Everton season splutters as it nears the finishing line. In a gutless, effortless defeat in South Wales, the memories of Leicester or Sunderland away last season came all too clearly to mindFrankly, I find it hard to muster up the strength to write much after that debacle, for two reasons:
I'm jet-lagged having just got off the plane from Canada (very nice thank you)
I'm struggling to remember much to write about in the first place
So I won't bore you with any attempt at an in-depth analysis of our failings, which mainly centred on whether they should be applying Factor 50 or Factor 30 or go straight to the chip oil, or any kind of sour grapes at a ref seemingly intent on penalising Everton for breathing on a Swansea player, or whether Player A or Player B was trying, or whether Player C should have been on the bench. And why didn't Player D get more time on the pitch.
Fill in the gaps yourselves, it's not a stern test.
We could chat about whether Goalkeeper E is a pile of poo and resembled Timbo at his star-burst-worst, or whether blah, blah blah. But frankly, CBA. It all seems rather pointless, as indeed were Everton, and if I can't find the motivation even to be angry, then it's probably no surprise that the Players can't get any either. Mind you. I'm not on their salaries.
So instead, I dwell more and more about how supporting Everton is a tale of 'Almost But Not Quite', but then it has been all my life, and I clock up 50 years as a Blue in June.
Whether it be nearly beating WBA at Wembley in 1968 when we should have battered them; or whether we should have gone on to glory in the European Cup had it not been for Heysel; or we could have been relegated but for the generosities of both Coventry and Hans Segers; or we could have been the Glory Boys on Merseyside for finishing 4th only to get hammered by Arsenal and that other lot come back from the dead in Istanbul, making Lazarus (biblical character, not the former QPR player) look like a rank amateur; or even how we can't even win an U23 PL2 Trophy without the gloss being taken off it by a home defeat to the RS in front of 18,000 fans.
We need to snap out of this 'victim' mode, and try to be more upbeat about life following the Blue half of Merseyside. New(ish) Manager who's changed fortunes and set us on a road to redemption, though not there yet; Moneybags Moshiri about to sanction the purchase of Messi who's refused his latest Barca contract*; a new stadium at BMD; a new sponsorship deal for USM Finch Farm and now possibly a 'well known' African betting company on the shirts; new contracts on the table for certain key players, and hopefully a raft of new targets lined up.
Things are bright, and are going to get brighter. But not in Swansea.
Ross Crombie