|
The Nick Armitage Column
Chill Out
One thing that has typified
the Moyes era at Goodison so far are extended periods of dreadful form which are
broken by spells of play that are as hot as anything that Amsterdam has to
offer. No prizes for guessing what kind of spell we are going through now and
before everyone starts screaming knee-jerk take a look at some simple stats. In
the last 20 league games we have amassed 21 points. To put that into
perspective if you extrapolate that kind of return over a full season you get
relegated. During that period we have crashed out of the FA and League Cup as
well as witnessing an early exit from the Champions League. The dickhead
pundits call this a transitional period, that basically means we are
shit. And right now we are shit, that cannot be disputed. Route one hasn’t
worked even when Ferguson was a player and it is a sure fire way of spotting
that the team is short of confidence. Midfielders are hiding and defenders
won’t take responsibility so they hump it into the ‘danger’ area. Unfortunately
this type of play is about as dangerous as a blind kitten and that is
demonstrated by looking at the games won column. For the second half of last
season we were in freefall. We hung on and limped home in our fourth place,
which was undeniably fully deserved, but in the end it was close – and a lot
closer than it ever should have been. Fourth was a stunning achievement but it
was achieved as a direct consequence of the form in the first half of the
season. What is worrying now is that, in this new campaign, we have reverted to
the form that followed after Gravesen departed and that form is inconsistent,
with an absence of any creativity. This has happened before and it took a whole
season to wake up from the stupor we were in. We finished seventeenth that
time… The failure to capture a striker over the summer is coming back to haunt
us even earlier than anyone had thought possible. I’ve listened to the radio
calls-ins, especially Barry Horne on City, and his response to the striker
situation is, “who could we have signed?” How about Dean Ashton? How about
listening to Joe Royle’s endless hints and signing Darren Bent? The whole
league outside of the top three are looking for that 20-goal-a-season man but
when your attack won’t be mustering twenty goals a season between them, the need
for a bit of guile and penetration becomes all the more pressing. Moyes is a
man who has made do with the hand that has been dealt to him; he was in the
market for a top class forward but he couldn’t sign one, so he should have made
do with what else was available in the transfer market. A striker that is 70%
of what you wanted in an ideal world is surely better than nothing. I agree
with Moyes in his desire to sign players for the long-term but I think that
short-term stopgaps are necessary on occasion to fill in. Other Premiership
teams have signed forwards who will get into double figures this season and
there is no doubt in my mind that we should have. This situation simply must be
rectified in January; another period of procrastination by Moyes will be
unforgivable but addressing the state of the team’s play at this moment in time
must rank higher on Moyes’s current list of must-do jobs. The reign of Moyes
has been stop-start and this has rightly led to frustration from the fans; how
can a team play quick tempo incisive football one week then resemble Wimbledon
dosed up on Valium a month later? All of this frustration is manifesting itself
in a sizeable chunk of the Goodison faithful questioning whether Moyes is the
right man for the job. Like everyone on the face of this planet (except for
me!) he has faults, but his positive attributes far outweigh his negative
ones. Let me just clear one thing up — he is the right man for the job;
end of conversation. Over the summer the squad has been undeniably
strengthened in both depth and quality. At the risk of sounding like a kopite
during the Houllier years, I do genuinely believe we are a couple of signings
away from something a bit special at Goodison. The form right now is concerning
but, after a few arses have been kicked, we should have enough in reserve to
turn it around. Rome wasn’t built in a day and we’ve all sat through a lot
worse than this in recent years. Believe it or not, although we appear to have
taken a detour, we are still heading in the right direction.
Nick Armitage
|
