SOCCER:DAVID MOYES marks his 400th game as Everton's manager this afternoon in no mood for celebration, and not because the anniversary coincides with a trip to Stamford Bridge. His ire has been stoked by the attitude of players squandering the club's best chance of Champions League qualification for years and he is demanding evidence they are hurting as badly as himself.
Last Saturday’s 4-1 home defeat by West Bromwich Albion may have turned on a series of unfortunate events in Moyes’s eyes – a Jermaine Beckford miss at 2-1, a referee’s decision not to penalise an elbow on Leighton Baines by Gonzalo Jara and Mikel Arteta’s stamp on the same player, all within the space of a few seconds – but he does not dispute that the outcome, along with Everton’s miserable campaign, was self-inflicted. There are no excuses when a side who lost only two of their final 24 matches last season languish fifth from bottom of the Premier League and two points above the relegation zone.
Moyes looked deflated at Goodison Park last weekend and his assistant, Steve Round, took over touchline duties. It invited the question of whether a close-knit squad has become stale and whether the third manager in the club’s history to reach 400 games (Harry Catterick on 594 and Howard Kendall with 542 are the others) is still getting his message across. “That’s something I have had to work at this week,” Moyes said. “Maybe the players think, ‘This is fine, I’m at Everton, it doesn’t look as though there is much pressure or competition’. I thought bits of their all-round attitude on Saturday were not what I expected. The person who has to change it is the manager. I would like it to be the players, but if they don’t do it it has to come from the manager . . . I won’t be accepting what they have been giving me.
“We will only know at the end of the season if they have heard enough of David Moyes. But I don’t think that’s the case. They are looking for direction and I will continue to give that.
“I said to them before the game last weekend: ‘We haven’t got (the captain) Phil Neville in the team so who is going to take the real responsibility? Who wants it?’ But nobody took responsibility last week. That was one of my disappointments.”
Weakness in front of goal has been a failing, with the contributions of Louis Saha, Yakubu Ayegbeni and Beckford ranging from uninterested to woeful. Moyes identified the fault before the season but did not have the money to correct it and has confirmed that will again be the case in January.“I started this season thinking this was my best ever chance . . . to get into the top four, so you can imagine how disappointed I feel. I thought this was the one. I want the players to take a bit more responsibility and show how disappointed they are in the coming games. I want them to show it’s hurting them as much as it’s hurting me.” Guardian Service
2009/10 Premier League season
Everton 2 Chelsea 1
Chelsea 3 Everton 3
2008/09 Premier League season
Chelsea 0 Everton 0
Everton 0 Chelsea 0
