Samual has the gaul to write this piece about another side that's going to win f*** all
Fat c***, choke on yer bargain bucket!
Why a club without a trophy for more than a decade are arguably the bestMartin Samuel, Sports Writer of the Year
The title of pound-for-pound champion is a peculiar thing. There is no belt or crown awarded to the holder, no tangible financial benefit. There are no bragging rights, either, considering all the experts in the world could never produce a standard formula for measuring who would come out on top if every boxer on the planet was shrunk or inflated to the same size and weight and then judged purely on ability.
Yet the designation of the pound-for-pound champion is taken seriously enough by The Ring, the respected boxing magazine, for there to be a permanent list in existence. The most recent, published on January 14, had Floyd Mayweather Jr, the welterweight conqueror of Ricky Hatton, at No 1, unsurprisingly considering his record of 39 undefeated contests and six world crowns at five weights.
Joe Calzaghe, Britain’s own super-middleweight, is fifth, his record of 44 unbeaten contests the most impressive of any boxer in the top ten. It could be argued that he deserved to be higher, which is perhaps the beauty of the pound-for-pound rankings. Because they are unquantifiable, all are subject to opinion. Nobody is right, nobody is wrong, but welcome to the debate nonetheless.
In reality, Mayweather would get his clock cleaned by Wladimir Klitschko, a heavyweight champion, because of his 100lb weight, 10.6inch height and 12.6inch reach advantage, but that is only an accident of birth. The Ring’s pound-for-pound table is there to give an idea of who would be best were boxing handicapped, like horse racing. There is no equivalent of this in football, but if there were the Mayweather position could well go to Everton.
Is there a better run, better managed, better value-for-money team in the Barclays Premier League? Is there a group of players giving more bang per buck, a team who could correlate their financial outlay and status with recent success and claim to be offering a superior return? Everton have not won anything of late, but who, beyond the elite four, has?
If David Moyes, the manager, can inspire a victory over Chelsea at Goodison Park this evening, the club will advance on Wembley for the first time since 1995, and that alone would be a huge achievement in the modern climate. Since 2000-01, when the Champions League expanded to include 32 teams and threw a VIP cordon across each leading European league, only nine teams from outside the elite quartet of Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool have reached the final of a domestic cup tournament (six in the League Cup, three in the FA Cup) and only two, Middlesbrough and Blackburn Rovers, have been victorious, both against teams outside the highest echelon.
These days it is a sad fact that achievement levels require adjustment. Just reaching a final is success, for it is generally presumed that if a big club are there and care to win, they will.
The same is true of league position. The days when Norwich City could sustain a place in the top three all season, as happened in 1992-93 when they went second in August, top in September and more or less remained there until dropping to third in February, where they finished, have gone.
Everton may have won nothing for more than 12 years, but to judge them on an absence of domestic or European trophies is akin to claiming that a failure to take on bouts in the heavyweight division is a mark against Mayweather. There are other means of assessing Everton’s progress and while it would be preposterous to attempt a definitive measurement, the present league position of fourth (above Liverpool by two points, although there is the matter of a game in hand) and final positions of fourth, eleventh and sixth since the 2004-05 season, represent sustained success at their level.
It could be argued that Arsenal’s resources when compared with those of United and Chelsea make the accomplishments under Arsène Wenger the best pound-for-pound return, and maybe that was once true. Certainly in the years immediately after his arrival in 1996, Wenger pulled off a small footballing miracle, rejuvenating an ageing defence and importing players such as Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit, who were turned into world-beaters by his methods.
Yet Wenger began with certain advantages, too, not least the presence of the brilliant Dennis Bergkamp, who was by then accustomed to English football, having played a first season at Highbury under Bruce Rioch. Arsenal’s status was another plus; they had a name and a reputation beyond these shores and were located in England’s capital city. The club were always going to find it easier to attract leading players from abroad than the majority of rivals located in the provincial North.
Indeed, within five years of Wenger’s appointment, only financial restrictions held him back. His team were established as title contenders and regulars in the Champions League and since 2006 have played at a 60,000-capacity stadium that has cemented Arsenal’s place as London’s premier club, however many millions Roman Abramovich throws at Chelsea. The Emirates Stadium is a place where good players want to appear, making Arsenal one of the most attractive propositions in club football with financial clout that will continue improving.
So while there was a time when Arsenal may have laid claim to the pound-for-pound title, right now the club perform precisely as they should. With a vast stadium, an outstanding manager, an established team and a sustained record of success, Arsenal should expect to be pushing United all the way, and are.
Everton enjoyed finite success, too, unfortunately at around the same time as other 1980s relics, including Bronski Beat, Five Star and Swing Out Sister, and much as for Jimmy Somerville, any kudos that may have accrued from the golden years between 1984 and 1987 has long since faded. Indeed, even at the apex of achievement, Everton did not enjoy the cachet of Arsenal or United, given a position as the second team on Merseyside and the third in the North West. Just as Manchester City’s last league title win was overshadowed by United’s triumph in the European Cup in 1968, so Everton’s hopes of European domination were brought to an end by the ban on English clubs that followed the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985.
In the period when Everton won the FA Cup, the Cup Winners’ Cup and two league titles, Liverpool reached two European Cup finals, winning one. Even when Everton were at their strongest, then, if there was a straight fight for a player in the transfer market they would have found it hard to see off Liverpool. And if that was the case 20 years ago, it is doubly true now.
Circumstances dictate that Moyes operates in the most volatile arena of all, the second tier of transfer opportunities, a place in which prices are relatively high but a return cannot be guaranteed. Pay £26.5 million for Fernando Torres, as Liverpool did, and the buyer knows what he is getting: one of the most consistent goalscorers in La Liga with a serious record in domestic and international football. That is not the case when Moyes spends £1.5 million on Tim Cahill from Millwall or £2 million on Mikel Arteta from Real Sociedad. Even some of his top-end signings such as Joleon Lescott, at £5 million from Wolverhampton Wanderers, or the hefty £11.25 million invested in bringing Yakubu Ayegbeni from Middlesbrough, qualify as huge gambles for a club with reduced resources.
As Kevin Keegan is surely about to discover at Newcastle United, it is hard for an ambitious club to make headway given the many disparities in the modern game. Between fourth and fifth place hides a glass ceiling. There was a time when a club of Everton’s standing might hope to hang on to a player such as Wayne Rooney long enough for him to make a difference; in the modern climate he was sold to Manchester United after two seasons at the age of 18.
From Tranmere Rovers, maybe, the haste would be understandable, but Everton? All the advantages are with the establishment now. In 2005, when Everton made it into the Champions League, the coefficient rankings ensured a difficult tie with Villarreal, of Spain, who went on to reach the last four.
The much-vaunted reforms of Michel Platini, the Uefa president, do fresh contenders from the leading leagues few favours, either, consigning them to play off against each other and making it even harder for an inexperienced club to gain entry to the competition. By keeping the coefficient system in place, however, Platini has further cemented the grip of the elite. No wonder the biggest of Uefa’s regulars did not complain about his proposals for long.
This evening, Everton will play Chelsea, a club who have the jump on them in every field imaginable, from geographical to financial. If Chelsea truly desire a place in the Carling Cup final it will be hard to stop them and another year will pass without a trophy at Goodison. That is the way it is these days. Some may say that Everton have failed, but in essence they have been let down by the system. Pound for pound, Moyes could have the best team in the country and it is to football’s shame that a fat lot of good it may do him.
