The Mail Bag
Pre-season
Comments (29)
Well the time has come to addess our pre-season ritual (to the States and beyond). Now it appears to work well for Chelsea, The Scum, Arsenal, Tottenham, Man City and even the Red Shite! They all get to go abroad (or stay at home) and play in tournaments with worthwhile teams (earning millions) while we get to play in the States against, erm, er, is it Salt Lake City?
Answers on a post card please as to why we're so poor at pre-season! Gotta be some benefit to hitting the season running!
Jimmy Saville, Posted 01/06/2010 at 20:08:08
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I think the emphasis in our preseason is marketing the club more so than getting ready for the regular season. That's why we go to the US and Australia and play Everton Chile. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just an observation.
I have the distinct advantage of seeing thee of Everton's four competitors play (the fourth are a new club) and considering:
1. CD Everton are OK, but I saw them get hammered a few years ago in Viña del Mar and probably will struggle with the pace;
2. Brisbane Roar are rubbish;
3. Melbourne Heart are a new team who haven't even completed filling their squad let alone played;
4. Sydney FC is probably the best of the bunch, but considering they have signed a marque player (supposedly their best player) who couldn't break into the Crystal Palace first team, they aren't that great.
It's going to be 4 wins from 4.
I fail to see how games against Coventry, Preston and Clyde will help us hit the ground running in the new season. The club needs to find some bigger opposition to help the players find their sharpness.
We cannot be ready for any Top 6!! side in August if our pre-season games are against Conference (Aussie at best), Div 1 and Championship teams.
Why oh why can't we take part in the better pre-season tournaments, using Goodison to play the games? Income in, and at least better games.
Surely there's nobody left who thinks it's only a coincidence that we start just about every season left in the traps whilst other teams quickly steal 5 or 10 points on us. Moyes must be party to this and it's just fucking unacceptable.
Does it really take a fucking genius to work out that a team who plays Ajax, Valencia, Schalke etc enters the season with extra sharpness and technical readiness than a team who plays Rochdale, Preston and travels 10,000 miles to play FC Salt Lake City?
This has gone on far too long. Fucking ridiculous. Get it sorted.
One thing's for certain though, after such a season-wrecking start last year: we have GOT to hit the ground running when the new season starts.
No more playing catch-up. Time to believe and leave that to everyone else...
You wouldn't get this by staying at home for a four-team tourney at Goodison. Which would not be great as it's usually two games over two days — not the best preparation before the start of a season. It's only a money-making excercise for most or part of a sponsorship deal.
I would much rather do a tour of the Benelux countries or Germany, Spain, Portugal etc. I think this would benefit us much better than having 11 jet-lagged, dehydrated players on the pitch. I'm of the opinion that this is a contributory factor to our usual early season injury list.
I don't think the Forfar match is an issue because that is an Everton XI playing that, which will basically mean 11 reserve-team players trying to get noticed by Moyes and pushing for first team inclusion.
We could kill two birds with one stone (revenue and high-standard opposition) by offering to meet Liverpool in a pre-season match abroad; some countries would pay handsomely to host that match. Rangers and Celtic were offered (I think) £1 million each to play each other in America this pre-season.
On second thoughts, we should maybe be aiming to play teams of a better standard than Liverpool.... ;)
We start the season awful so the pre-season obviously is real hard work for them. You only get better by playing a better opponent. This bonding exercise is nonsense as we usually don't have any new players in the squad during pre- season... don't they have enough time to bond?
Australia is just a nice holiday for them to put their feet up and get a few Fosters down their necks by the beach. Going to Australia makes no difference, like say Manchester United going to the Far East, as I think 1 million Koreans have Manchester United Credit cards. It isn't taken seriously by the players and there's never any thought for the fans and their opinions.
Wouldn't anybody else prefer a trip to Ajax or Hamburg? It would give countless supporters a chance to go abroad and watch Everton for a reasonable price. Look at West Ham v Napoli last season — about 2,000 Napoli supporters travelled over to watch the game.
Everton stopped their trips to interesting places because, when Everton took a group of about 2,500 to Anderlecht, a minority of supporters caused trouble. These games were always great but, as I've said before, Everton will always do something to annoy us fans.
Now this was before arguably the club's most important set of games in recent history, the CL qualifers vs Villarreal (probably more important than the FA Cup semi and final in 2009, due to the 'club-changing money' involved in reaching the CL group stage) and you'd have to say, didn't exactly set us up in the most desired way for the season. We then had the worst start to a season in years, out of three cup competitions by October.
Clearly, Moyes has learnt from this, given the 6th, 5th and 5th seasons we've had since then, following the tried and trusted 'USA' tour, followed by local lower league friendly or two, followed by a Championship test and a home friendly against mid-ranking Euro opposition to finish. Swap Australia for USA this summer, and Norwich for Coventry, and we're basically replicating last summer.
By the way, I hugely disagree with Alan Clarke over his blaming last year's pre-season arrangements for the defeat against Arsenal and slow start. The Lescott debacle was hugely disruptive, as was the delay in his departure having a knock-on effect on players being signed, as the club clearly didn't have the money without Lescott being sold. Missing injured players like Arteta and Jagielka, integral to our first choice eleven, also had a massive effect. Essentiality, pre-season is just about fitness — the summer 2004 pre-season was unremarkable and featured defeat against Crewe and draws vs Burnley and Real Sociedad, yet we had a cracking start to the season and finished 4th.
We've had more relative league success in recent years by following the 'summer 2004 pre-season' type schedule than we've had in following the oft-desired by fans 'summer 2005 pre-season' type schedule, as described above. I doesn't matter what other managers do, if something works for Moyes, that's what is most important.
Plus, involvement in some of these other 'high profile' pre-season tournaments is often at the whim of a TV company or sponsor, which is exactly what you don't want disrupting your pre-season.
People suggest it will put us in good stead for the start of the season by playing top European sides... why? Did the team suddenly forget how to play Premier League football in the 6 or so weeks they have on holiday?
Pre-season is all about fitness, that is all.
Many posters last season wrote it off before it started suggesting that, until we got our better players back from injury, we wouldn't do anything... you know what? they were right. (Not the nuggets who were suggesting we were in for a relegation battle.)
When players get fully fit, they will play better, it's simple... and whether you are playing against Barcelona or Accrington Stanley, it's to get your sharpness back to prepare you.
Jags was out for how many months? The same with Arteta... but they didn't have/need games against the best in Europe to get ready for the Premier League, they just needed to get fit.
I'll let the club have what pre-season they want, just as long we don't start the season in late November, having wasted the first 3 months bedding in new players that were signed at 11:59 pm on 31 August with the funds from the sale of Steven Pienaar.
Pre-season is about fitness and team-bonding, as we saw in the 2004-05 season. The reason there was no team bonding at the start of last season was because there was a renegade in the pack. It's not about the opposition.
On the travel... it's such an insular approach that you hear from people who never moved from England. It takes 24 hours of rest in relative comfort to get from Liverpool to Melbourne. I'd kill for that relaxing flight right now — even without the standard of food and service they will receive on the flight. Unneccesary energy my arse!
It's a combination of a team bonding exercise and a marketing venture (not to mention what the club's coaches and staff could learn about sports science at one of the most advanced sports science nations in the world). This site is always full of complaints about Everton being behind the rest when it comes to marketing — well, here is a great example of them capitalising on the success of one player at a time when a traditionally non-football nation is about to get it's second boost due to the World Cup. There are millions of Evertonians here just waiting to be indoctrinated. Of course some people will take any opportunity to piss and moan at the club.
On the standard of teams, I will agree with the majority on here. We should play someone a bit more challenging... not that I think that was the reason for our slow start last year.
Playing at the top level is as much in the head as physical and you do not get mental alertness and sharpness by playing unimaginative opponents. It doesn't matter how fit you are, you cannot start off with say Arsenal or Chelsea if you have been concentrating on playing teams of dubious quality in pre-season friendlies.
In my opinion, that lack of mental readiness was more to blame for the debacle against Arsenal than the Lescott effect.
Signing Donovan had a million times more of an impact on the US market than any pre-season tour ever will.
Am I right in thinking Timmy or any world cup squad members won't even be on the Oz trip? If this is true, I can't see us creating much of a stir in Oz either. Waste of time in my opinion in a marketing sense. If it is for team building as some have suggested — I don't think we have a problem in this department.
Why not get Sydney, LA Galaxy and some Chinese outfit over to Goodison for one of those pre-season tournaments... Make them come to us. It will still create interest in the respective countries (three in one hit rather than one per season). Sell tv rights for the games. Got to be worth trying something different like that?
It places us well for the future too. What if TV deals get negotiated individually in the future? I'd rather Everton had the bigger brand in emerging footy markets like the States and the Asia Pacific region.
Cahill has confirmed that he will play — obviously unless he's injured.
The other World Cup players probably won't but we're not overly well represented there anyway.
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1 Posted 02/06/2010 at 04:45:16
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Q: Where will Everton be going on tour this pre-season?
A: (a) Greenland? (b) USA?? (c) Australia???
Take your time now...