You, sir, are an idiot.

1. 1) Entering cups and winning cups are not quite the same thing. But you certainly can't win if you don't enter ? or at least give it a go! (nota bene, David Moyes!)
2. 2) "The Uefa Cup is the easiest trophy to win because we are the 6th best of the best" Oh, brother!!! So what went wrong exactly when we were 4th best of the best and bombed like a brick ballon???
3. 3) "Very few of the also-rans from across Europe who will face Everton in the Uefa Cup will be able to live with us" ? you are clearly certifiably insane!
4. 4) NO! Your 1 though 6 and the full colonic of Everton FC prove the fact of your insanity beyond all doubt.

Still, you and Richard Dodd should be very happy together in your blind stupid optimism. Just lay off the tequila!

Please , please , please.

Just read the final eight words of my piece again.

That was the clue to the entire rather obvious JOKE !

I readily confess to the views in that piece being very , very silly - to the point that I hope they bring a little smile to the faces of a few of our regular contributors who seem to feel that ambition amongst Everton supporters right now is justified /reasonable / necessary /not plain daft - IF THAT OPTIMISM IS ABOUT WINNING CUPS ETC.

Since satire clearly does not work for you , I have a confession to make..............WE CAN DISCUSS THIS AGAIN IN LATE MAY 2008 - but I agree with the more logical Blues supporters and will hope for much while expecting nothing at all in the way of Cups and prizes.

You can call yourself a prophet when you recall your points numbered 1 to 3 above after we have once again proved that ?Everton 2007 ? does not do Cup Ties and the complaints about that come rolling in to this website- but I suspect few readers will enjoy or indeed understand the ringing endorsement that you gave the present Goodison establishment.

I suspect from your tone that you , sir ,were actually being serious.

Billy K will be especially glad of your support in the next few weeks !

My more serious opinions were expressed in a piece titled ?We Don?t Do Cup Ties?.

Please read that to reach my true opinions and take a look at the reply in view of your own words.

Tequila ?.....never touch the stuff .....but tonight I will toast you and all my fellow Blues - even the ones with no sense of humour - with a nice bottle of dry red wine.

Maybe that is the only good ?red? thing on the whole damned planet !

Who is Richard Dodd anyway - not a Scouse tequila drinker surely ?

As for you , Sir..........shame on you for insulting a good Evertonian...........you , my dear fellow....seem to have NO SENSE OF HUMOUR at all !!!

How can you support Everton today under BK and Davie , without that vital attribute ???

Cheers !!!!!!

Come on Michael, his piece had nothing to do with Dodd. That piece was a joke, not a good joke or a good piece in my opinion, but it certainly did not justify your response. You spoke to me in a similar fashion earlier when I made a joke about W. Bush. Try smiling, and stop treating the people who visit this site and therefore give you something to do in the way that you have the past day. You really do need to try to get a better sense of humour. Glen, I didn’t like the piece at all but apologize for the treatment that you received and toast right back at you and all other Blues regardless of their opinions of the current state of the club. Cheers to you, Michael, Marsh, Dodd, and everyone esle. Can we please all start to have a sense of humor. I feel that we are all getting a bit too angry and ill tempered, myself included lately, and need to get back to more reasoned and, dare I said it, friendly conversation. We are all Blues first and foremost right, so lets all start acting like it, and again, myself included. So I apologize for some of my recent harsh words directed at others, it was not appropriate. When anyone devulges into this kind of talk any valid points are lost and good healthy discussion goes away.

Note to self: when the punters are writing stupid stuff, they are actually being humourous(!), so don?t be too hard on them. If it seems thay are trying to make some kind of pertinent point relative to the issues of the day, don?t be sucked in: they are just indulging in meaningless satire...

But don?t they know satire and sacrcasm are difficult to get across on the Internet?

Glenn, if that piece was "funny", then yes, I do need a break. Or a glass of rather nice Washington Syrah. Cheers! ;)

Thanks for your kind words David and to you too for your ?step back? Michael !

OK so we do not have a sense of humour in common but we do all want the best for our Blue boys.

I was there when we came back from 2 goals down against Sheffield at Wembley, when Bally finished off Liverpool etc, etc but the state of things at Goodison today just breaks my heart.

Under the present regime, I despair of winning another Championship or Cup in my life-time. The model used to make a point in the earlier piece was of course the same model that has taken Chelsea from lower half of the league to their present ?heights?. That investment in an English football team was a fluke and represented the whim of a man who had more money at his disposal than it is easy for the normal mortal to imagine. I cannot see that happen for us at Everton !

Uefa Cup... it would be nice to, at least, reach the group stage ... but I will believe that only when I see it happen!

I apologise for trying to introduce a note of humour to the site. It is embarrasing when that backfires. I will not attempt such a thing again.

You are dead right Michael... there is nothing at all funny about Everton Football Club these days.

At least your taste in wine is fine! All The Best

Hey Glen, can you please answer this off football query.
Is your surname pronounced Strakkan or Strawn?
PS. I too was at Oldham in 54 when we won 4-0 to gain promotion.
The relegation of Liverpool on the same day made my jubilation all the sweeter.
I sometimes wonder where we would be today had we not scraped a vital few points at the end of the previous 1953/4 season. Those lucky points saved us from relegation to the old 3rd Division North and possible oblivion.

I thought Everton had been in the top flight for the last gazillion years, the longest of any club. So what’s this stuff about promotion? Maybe flaunting my ignorance...

Good to hear from you , Dick and hey was that a day back in 1954 or what ?

I was just a young boy but I always remember people around us saying that this was like the Coronation (her?s was in 1953) for Evertonians.

The icing on the cake was Liverpool not only going down but being 22nd out of 22 teams in 1954.

They would have to stay in that second division for 7 years and when they eventually were promoted, in 1962, The Mighty Blues had a nice welcome back surprise for them: We won that First Division Championship in 1962/63.

We went down in 1951 and had spent one good season and one bad one in Div 2 before we came up along with Leicester on that glorious day in 1954.

That must seem like pre-history to some of our younger supporters but there are still some Evertonian veterans around who recall these times.

Men like Dick and I have seen an awful lot of good times at this club and I am sure, like me, he will be a Blue until he leaves this world.

I can understand the frustrations that caused Michael Kenrick?s bitter comments of late as it cannot be easy in the city at the moment watching the Red Shite getting set to break ground over in the park just next door to Goodison and wondering what it will be like for us as the Kirby debate trundles on while LFC goes from strength to strength with American money.

At least one consolation was that last season they won exactly the same number of trophies as Everton and even though I think they will be better this time with their new players and big money contracts, I still believe both of us will draw a blank on prizes this time round. The Shite may be closer to Man U and Chelsea than we are today but they too have a hell of a long way to go.

Ahh Mr Fearon .....remember these far off days when the Shite were the paupers and we were ?The Bank of England team? with our Moores?s money out there buying the cream of the crop while they played at Anfield which was a bit of a slum in these second division days. How proud we all were when that wonderful new Top Deck was added and our ground was second only to Wembley in its excellence. I still prefer these high seats to anywhere else in Goodison.

It is a shame for younger Blues like Mr Kenrick ? that they see such a different picture today and small wonder that they get a bit bitter and twisted about the fact that twelve long years have gone by since we won anything and it seems that we could quite easily go as long again unless radical changes are made to Everton?s structure and that simply means MAJOR INVESTMENT !

I don?t know if Michael was around while Liverpool were steam-rollering all before them in the 70s when that stupid big shit Evelyn Hughes was bawling that they were magic and Everton were tragic but that was hardly easy to take for a Scottish Blue like me when all around me in the Glasgow area were favouring our neighbours, the Shite, who, of course, had a huge Scottish star contingent then.

At least Mr Kenrick does not have that to put up with as there will be voters in the next English Election who were not even born last time the Red Shite were champions. We have both been pretty bad for a long, long time !

The big lesson here comes from loads of other clubs who suffered the kind of faded glory that were are going through today and we are far from alone there - but that lesson is surely clear for all Evertonians to see:

DON?T START FIGHTING AMONG OURSELVES - KEEP YOUR NAME-CALLING AND SPLEEN VENTING FOR THE SHITE OVER THE PARK! KEEP YOUR HEADS UP, BLUE BOYS!

Name question: I use STRAKKAN , rather than STRAWN but in Scotland we used the soft "ch" In Mexico it seems to be STRAK-HAN.

Good to hear from you, Dick and Michael and hopefully we will talk again one day in happier times when the doldrums of this new century are no more than a bad smell from the past and the Blues are making us proud again.. the sooner... the better !

Hey Bram, We have been the longest in the top flight. By top flight I mean the old Division 1 that gave birth to the current EPL.
Glen Strachan’s above letter fills in the details.
It is interesting to note that over half the clubs that formed the EPL are no longer in it.

Thanks Glen for your reply to my name query. It is good to know there are still some of us still desperately clinging to the branch.