Thoughts of an Anon Blue

One question: Why the need to be anonymous? We don't usually go for that, so this is something of an exception. I don't understand the need if you intend to publish more. At the very least you would have to have a pseudonym. Is your real name that recognizable?

With the new ownership coming in to place I would like to see the Everton Manager being held to account for performance.
... makes that results rather than performance. This isn't synchronised swimming - it's a results business going back to your 'Company' analogy.

I should say that I like Martinez as a man, I think he's an absolute gentleman of a bloke
... are you Sylvan Distin?

I keep returning to the fact that he didn't buy the club outright and decided to be a major shareholder with less than half of the shares. There may indeed be good reasons for this and in the fullness of time I may be proved wrong – I certainly hope so – but I see no real change in the way that Everton FC will operate in the near future. It was pretty convenient to have Mr Moshiri come on board when everybody believed the US guys were the front-runners to do so.

As usual the manager at Everton FC will be the person who makes or breaks us and we have to hope that Roberto or his successor finds a way of obtaining good results on a regular basis, because there doesn't appear to be any real appetite at board level to push the club forwards on the playing side.

I suppose by this time next year we will know more about Mr Moshiri and his ambitions for Everton FC but it might be a lot more of what we have already seen for the past decade and a half off the pitch and not quite what some fans had hoped for.

The sad irony is that it was Moyes himself who did the most to perpetuate this fantasy about England's fourth most successful club – no doubt as a strategy to boost his personal reputation and keep him in his very well paid job as "knife to a gunfight" exponent when performing so poorly against his peers in the Premier League.

I wouldn't sack Martinez while we're still In the FA Cup and I think even if we won it, it wouldn't be too much to ask to massively improve our home form in the league. I'd be quite happy with that after the season we've had. I can't remember a more frustrating one. Whether Bill and his buddies would agree with me, I don't know but I suspect they'd be quite happy too.

Having said that, if things stay the same, he's probably in shit street, and rightly so.

Success guaranteed I would imagine.

Customer: "Do you have any books by that feller..or possibly woman?"

Shopkeeper: "Which feller..or possibly woman?"

Customer: "I don't know, they don't put their name on their work."

Shopkeeper: "Yes we have a whole section of his or possibly her work"

Customer: "Really!?"

Shopkeeper: "Of course not you twat."

I think he did that quite well and can't seem to see how you can call him a 'Moyes fan boy' as he apportions blame for Moyes entrenching the small club mentality that is still endemic.

Still chuckling at that. Cheers.

Where the club is accepting mediocrity but the fans patently aren't is in having a very poor manager. The Company analogy is in this case perfect and whilst I generally support the board, it is unforgivable that we continue to employ our current manager. I'd gladly sacrifice a Cup win to see him sent packing.

Ah... I get it. Nice one.

Good luck with your future writing.

James, yea the business world vs the football world. I geddit, But we have hundreds of posts making that point and struggling to make sense of the comparisons ... and you know what. Football is still its own business, always has been, and it's probably getting more and more unique as the money continues to skyrocket.

Actually, I see the analogy as more focussed on Martinez's failed promises and declining performances. He's still enjoying the 'moment' because one man, Bill "What a Manager" Kenwright won't sack him, no matter how bad it gets (and the Arsenal game was the bottom of the barrel for many). That man is unique to EFC; I suspect most other ambitious football clubs would have sacked him by now.

Instead, it was just a gentle run-through of the club's current situation with a few (hardly libelous) little groans about the manager. Why would you feel the need to hide your identity before doing something so harmless and run of the mill? It's like putting on a boiler suit and a Michael Myers mask before popping to the shop to buy a bag of Minstrels.

No more anonymous articles, unless they're going to leave the reader mouth agog, and the author on the run from a squad of manhunters hired to track him down and say "bit fucking harsh that, mate", before severely reprimanding him and then getting back to their hunt for that bloke who wrote Beowulf.

Seamus Coleman
Tony Bellew
Duncan Ferguson
Amanda Holden
John Parrot
Jurgen Klopp
Eugene Ruane
Andy Crooks
Tony Hibbert
Joey Barton
Eddie Howe

So I've got very few leads. I have to wonder firstly if Richard Dodds is back and just shy or does anyone know what John Paul Kissock is doing these days?

Or maybe it's David Moyes and he's looked at the Villa job and got cold feet while undergoing a mid-life crisis and making out he's much younger.

Unless Anon is actually a name? And he just so happens to have a surname of Blue and we all misunderstood.

It's like putting on a boiler suit and a Michael Myers mask before popping to the shop to buy a bag of Minstrels.

Ha, ha, ha ... RM's comments often reduce me to tears but that's the best line I've read on here in ages.

That reminds me -– I must dig out my old Michael Myers mask from the garage tomorrow. It definitely livens up the morning dog walk and our Dixie couldn't care less as long as he gets out...

It is a kind of appeasement that has been our downfall for far too long. The absolute fury of the overwhelming majority has not been reflected in mealy-mouthed questions being directed toward the powers that be.

Unless Interviewers stop their sickening pussy-footing around Martinez and really put him to the sword, or there are mass crowd demos, things will not change.

My advice to Anon Blue is not to join the wailing subservient mob but to expose false gods and prophets.

Nevertheless it's a good article but with a slightly flawed opening analogy. The reason a football club, generally speaking, can rarely be compared to an efficiently run business is because (as in our case) it has thirty thousand odd loyal customers continuing to buy its wares, week after week, regardless of how good or bad they are.

This customer loyalty is, sadly, also the reason a club like ours can have a Chairman (nice guy he may be) to whom the business is a wonderful hobby which has allowed him to wallow in his boyhood nostalgia for much longer than he should have.

Unfortunately he has failed to show a necessary ruthless-minded business approach which might have afforded today's young supporters a taste of the same pleasures and successes he once had. On his watch, the club has coasted along in a lengthy spell of romantic mediocrity.

Despite declarations to the contrary, most clubs (and ours in particular) don't have to operate in a hard-nosed business environment except maybe during transfer windows. This is why someone as relatively inept as our current manager is allowed to remain in post while continuing to perform badly, and while spouting what amounts to utter shite, week after week.

However, there may be a glimmer of hope that we are beginning to see a hint of real-world business pressure beginning to be applied by Mr Moshiri.

It's surely no coincidence that, within a couple of weeks of him buying to the club, a normally soft-touch Roberto is warning the players that they're playing for their places. It seems like a bit of traditional management speak which would normally never pass through Martinez's lips.

At the same time, he's apparently telling John Stones that he'd better learn from his mistakes. This from the same manager who should, after a couple of repeats of deadly overplaying at the back by Stones, have told him that in times of danger his first priority is to defend and nothing else and that, the sooner he learned that lesson, the better.

We can only hope that Moshiri will ignore some of Bill's over-active sentimentality (which I'm sure he's sampled in bucketloads already) and look hard at our league position and results.

To continue in what might be our newly found clinical business approach he will, hopefully, also tune in to what the customers are saying about the product on sale – which has not looked to be of a consistent and saleable quality for some time!

I wouldn't want anonymous posts but I wouldn't be surprised if the way we respond to comments on threads often depends on the identity of those we're responding to (attacking the message because of who the messenger is).

If you mean it, feel it, stand by it. Any constructive criticism will make you a better writer anyway, so there's nothing to be feared publishing under your own name.

As for the meat of your article, you're voicing a lot of supporter frustrations and the hope that Moshiri will step in and change the aspirations of the club. We all hope that, mate, and a cursory glance at the postings even during the last two weeks will tell you that.

ToffeeWeb sets the bar for matters concerning Everton, take a leaf out of its book; don't just copy, find your own voice.

Go on – give us a clue.

ou need a name so you know who you are picking on.

Okay, use mine. I'm a big boy.

I really do feel sorry for these, what I call "in limbo fans". Fans who started watching us after our last golden age and have only seen us toiling for survival for too long. They deserve all our respect.

Colin, you're quite correct: I feel sorry for those fans (my son and daughter among them) who remain supporters but have never really seen the team win anything meaningful. They do deserve respect. But, then again, we all do.

We really need a new start under Moshiri and the first step would be to replace Roberto Softollies with someone with a track record.

Bill must be kept out of it because he will always take the easy option then play up as the correct and only logical choice!

I watched it all the way through for the umpteenth time, and was lucky enough to be there at Goodison for the game itself, as well as the first leg 0-0 draw in Germany. I then watched the highlights of the final.

After watching them and then having to return to the present and reality.... I felt fucking awful! That's it really.

My own take on this season is that it's just bonkers, not only Everton's enigmatic showings, but the startling metamorphosis of Leicester City, the implosion of Chelsea, and the emergence of a vibrant young Spurs side.

It sums it up that we could end up winning the FA Cup, and having a big say in who wins the Premier League or qualifies for Champions League, yet it might still seem like a big fucking deflated souffle of a season.

There haven't been 'bushels' for years.

Sadly.

A well structured article. However, if you are going to grab the attention of the reader, you have to write something which is more than regurgitating a subject which has been done to death on TW and will continue to be so until this manager is replaced or the penny drops that set pieces and defensive structures are all part of being a top manager worthy of EFC.

I suggest you tell us the future instead of something we already know!

Not sure if we will know if he is up to it this season and have a feeling the board will give him a couple of months next season to prove his worth. I would really like Martinez to get it right but there is a massive niggling doubt that he will.

Sure there are aspects of running a football club that need to be treated exactly as you would any other business, but to suggest that fashioning a winning team is just the same as making any other product is a gross simplification.

Even sticking to traditional manufacturing, making some products is a million miles away from making some others and quality can be a matter of perception as much as being tangibly demonstrable depending on how / if the industry is regulated.

Of course, Evertonians deserve to have a board who hold the manager accountable to the highest expectations (as well as his own promises) but I personally hope Roberto Martinez is judged by the results of his team(s) and not by his fashion sense, perverse optimism, over-use of superlatives in his second language, taste in music, reluctance to air his grievances in public – all of which are too eagerly seized upon in my opinion.

John Daley (#19) "...and then getting back to their hunt for that bloke who wrote Beowulf." – If you mean the stuff on ITV and not the original (they were anonymous weren't they?) then join the queue.

I couldn't agree more about the "mind-set" problem. This is surely a major priority for our next manager. Martinez has only succeeded in carrying on with Moyes's "little brother" attitude. It will probably be on show today at Old Trafford!

Everton as an organisation deeply frustrate me and have done increasingly so for a number of years. We weren't in a good place when last our captain held silver aloft and we hadn't been for a few years. But we had a fierce passion and were unafraid of any opposition.

I recall being on Wembley Way with my Dad the afternoon that we won the cup in '95, our fans had a fearsome "Braveheart" attitude which clearly terrified the "Almighty United".

Far too many years have passed since without success. I do blame the dithering Moyes for his deliberate tiny mindedness when glory beckoned. He bottled out and failed us. Despite his upbeat early years quotes, he ceased believing in us. He became tiresome, sedentary and utterly unimaginative.

Roberto Martinez arrived with his sunny, upbeat philosophy of encouragement and praise. And the football was (and still can be) interesting, fascinating and positive. Yet all too quickly this began to evaporate and it seems to me that if he were to stay (let's say for a decade), then he too would become tiresome, sedentary and utterly unimaginative.

Perhaps it isn't these managers who are turning from "young tigers" into lazy fireside cats?

Perhaps it's that they aren't required to be anything more?

There seems to be two issues here. First, the author's decision to post anonymously. And second, the actual content which Anon Blue invites others to critique and comment on.

On the first point, it seems a tad harsh and a wee bit of a contradiction for the editor to admit TW doesn't usually post 'anon' articles, but for no particular reason made an exception in this case, and then goes on to criticize the author for submitting anonymously and challenging his/her content.

On this point, all the more so given the author's stated ambitions to get his works published, surely a simple request from TW for him or her to put their name to the piece, or it would not get posted, would have resolved this.

The author him/herself if they truly do have ambitions to be published should have the courage of the conviction of their opinions and proudly lend their name to the piece.

As to the second point, I'm sorry Anon Blue as well written as your piece is, I found it rather bland and long on familiar rhetoric. It really isn't a particularly original or insightful piece.

As others in this thread have suggested, posted anonymously I anticipated an expose of some sort into the deeper workings or thoughts of the likes of Kenwright, Matinez or Mr Moshri.

It was nothing of the sort and certainly didn't merit the mystery of anonymity.

I'd just like to ask Anon about his admiration for Martinez in bringing on and developing 'serious talent'.

It begs the question as to why we are languishing in the bottom half of the Premier League.

Now, we are considered the under achievers. I still believe though. With the right leadership, from boardroom to management to the pitch, we can still be a force to be reckoned with. The supporters are immense and always will be, and they can drive this dream forward as much as anybody.

To be fair, our wonderful club has the best fans in the world. We've been through it all over the years and yet we can still have a laugh, we can still have the banter, and yes we don't agree with each other all the time over everything but that's life and Everton is a big part of that. Long may it continue... "COYB"

One observation – if contributors to the site are going to be insulted by the editors (anyone who has read this site even slightly will know that MK means "Moyes fanboy" as an insult) then the trend of anon submissions may well continue....