319/365 : If Only...

The score would have stayed 0 - 0.

Today was the opening match of the season, Everton were home against Arsenal. For those of you in the US, as you can see ESPN have made there way across the pond. Setanta Sports which used to show quite a few of the football matches went out of business over the summer and ESPN rushed in to buy the rights to quite a few of the matches they had. So they have officially broken into the English Premiership Football market. This was their first televised match.

What can I say about today... It was raining cats and dogs when we left Andy's Nan's house to head over to Goodison Park. He wanted to drop me off outside the stadium so that I didn't have to walk a mile in the rain. It started to let up around the time he dropped me off but was still raining pretty heavy.

Now for those of you that remember this post back on Day 167 you have probably noticed that the above view does not look the same as the one I showed you when we ordered our Season Tickets. After the Season Tickets went on sale we started looking around at different seats and found two great seats over in the lower Gwladys Street Stand. So we switched to these and I am glad that we did. The atmosphere is great over here and we are a bit higher than we were before.

So the match started at 5:30pm and for the first 30 minutes or so we were playing well but then... Arsenal scored and we fell apart. I know those of you who are reading this are probably not that into English Football and have no idea what is going on. In short, we have a defender named Joleon Lescott. There is another team Manchester City that has a really rich owner and they are buying players hand over fist and spending a lot of money along the way. Well City are wanting Lescott to join their team but he still has like 4 years on his contract with us. They have made to official bids (one for £15 Million and one for £18 Million) but they have both been turned down. Then, because they are willing to double his wages, Lescott turned in an official written transfer request and again it was turned down.

As you can imagine this has not made the Everton supporters very happy. The only talk that has been in the papers and on the news is about how Lescott will continue to play because the supporters are mad at him for wanting to bugger off for more money. He clearly wants to go to City but he can't so where does that leave him?

When he came out a lot of supporters boo'd him, Andy and I did not. As long as he plays for Everton there will be no boo's from us but that didn't stop a lot of people.

Anyway... like I was saying they scored first and we fell apart. At the end of the match we had lost 1-6. Yes you read that correctly, they scored 6 goals and in the last minute of injury time Saha scored a goal for us.

It was not a good match. Tons of people left early but again that is something that Andy and I never do. We stayed, we clapped the players off the field and then we clapped the Arsenal players off the field. No booing no jeering... at the end of the day it just meant that Arsenal got 3 points and we got 0.

It doesn't mean that we are 'going down' this season and it is not the end of the World. But I do know that something needs to change. It was obvious that the atmosphere effected the players and it needs to be sorted. If Lescott stays then everybody needs to get behind him and grow up, there is no room for booing your own players... who of us in his place would not do the same thing? He is currently earning £45,000/week at Everton but City are wanting to pay him something like £100,000/week. Who wouldn't have their head turned by that?

Anyway... this is me off my soapbox. We lost now let's move on and focus on the next match.

High: 64°
Low: 50°
Forecast: Cloudy with Late Rain
Sunrise: 5:50 AM
Sunset: 8:39 PM