COLUMNIST KEN BUCKLEY

From my seat: Sunderland (h)

Another three points gained in fine fashion by an on-fire Blues side. Five minutes of sparing then the Blues seemed to sense they had the measure of the opposition and some joined-up football saw shots on target come and go from Valente and Cahill respectively then the old hoof upfield travelled into the opposition area and saw the Yak outmuscle the defender and his shot come off the foot of a last-ditch tackle and loop into the net, they all count and we were one up after ten.

We continued to play some good stuff and five minutes later saw Neville feed the ball across goal and Cahill struck with the precision and speed of a cobra. We then seemed to go into a comfort zone for a while and Leadbetter should have got one back when Howard could only palm a cross onto his head but thankfully his attempt was woeful.

After good build-up play again Ossie had a good shot well saved by the keeper which seemed to spur us on a bit and just before halftime a delightful move down the left featuring the excellent Valente and Pienaar saw them interchange positions and passes that saw Pienaar sidefoot a delightful goal into the far top corner that not even a six-foot twenty-nine inch keeper could get near. Oh joy, three-nil up at the break...

But hold on, we are Everton and when just seeing out first half overtime we get in a mess at the back, no-one seems to want to tackle and this affords the Sunderland man a free shot on goal which was well turned away by Howard but when the ball was returned Howard managed to push it on to a post which came back to Jones who set up Yorke to slot home. All that pinball and goal for the sake of a tackle.

The half-ime chat now was that we must not let them come bombing forward and get another back... of course we had no idea what was about to unfold in that second half. Sunderland did come out with intent if more in effort than skillI.

It took until the hour mark when an inch-perfect punt upfield from Yobo was brought down from the night sky and under control in an instant by Cahill, the hapless McShane fell over, Cahill took a couple of paces and the ball was nestling in the corner, party-time was here!

The Blues now played some of the best football I have seen for a long time, it was of a style often associated with Arsenal or Brazil. Our only scare was when Chopra missed an open goal and was promptly hauled off. The Blues continued to destroy any confidence that Sunderland had left and after a corner from their tormentor in chief Arteta which resulted in a blocked goalbound shot the Yak was first to respond, the net bulged, 5-1.

Yak and Cahill were replaced with AJ and Big Vic which was no consolation to our visitors at all. After all the sublime football our captain decided to mix it up a bit and launched one over the top from his own half which saw AJ easily outpace the visitors' rearguard and chip over the shellshocked keeper, 6-1.

We continued to knock it about in fine fashion and Jags (on for Yobo) found Osman on the half -way line, he set off on a run into the heart of the visiting defence in a manner that would have got many a slalom skier a gold medal, Sunderland stood off in awe, Ossie strode on, the net bulged 7-1. "We want eight!" chanted the gathered hoards but it wasn't to be.

The ref blew the final whistle,the scoreboard shone brightly Everton 7 Sunderland 1. It's a Grand Old Team blared from the speakers, the DJ turned the sound off to allow thirty odd thousand voices to roar "If yer know yer 'istory".

"Hell." I thought, "can we keep this stuff going?" Overall, an afternoon to remember, eleven years to the month I mused since we scored seven and that was against a team in red and white stripes. Some great football, some great goals, four from attractive build up and three from good old punts. If you took our few lapses in defence into account along with our superiority it could have ended 12-4.

Some great individual displays, none better than Cahill and Arteta, who really did look up there with the best but you know I am going to give my Man of the Match to Lee Carsley who I thought did all the ugly, dirty work in breaking up attacks and getting blocks and tackles in that allowed so many other players to bomb forward and strut their stuff.

After the joyful post-match meet-up in our pub we pulled the car out onto the mean, wet streets of North Liverpool and I swear I heard thirty odd thousand voices roaring "if ya know yer 'istory..." A great day that will live in the memory. UP THE BLUES

Reader Comments

Note: the following content is not moderated or vetted by the site owners at the time of submission. Comments are the responsibility of the poster. Disclaimer