Boro away as Everton eras come to a close
Posted by Ian Marshall's Double in Everton, Middlesborough | 28 April 2006
An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted. Arthur Miller
So we are getting to towards the very end of Big Duncan’s Everton career. The term Everton legend seems wholly inappropriate in a week which has seen the death of Brian Labone, but Duncan will have a place in our hearts for a long time. A better tag for Dunc, for we must label people, would be ‘cult hero’. Over the next week we will look back at Big Dunc memories.
On the transfer market, it looks as though Everton will be signing Tim Howard or Chris Kirkland. It’s tough to know how to react to this but most would agree that we need reinforcements with Martyn’s fitness a doubt and the others Wright, Turner and Ruddy deemed too dodgy, young and young respectively. No-one likes to take a 2nd choice player (or in Kirkland’s case 4th) but the preferred option would have to be Howard. Kirkland has always seemed either prone to clangers or injured. The only way he appeared to work his way up the England pecking order was by being out of the side, which says more about the paucity of decent English keepers than anything else. We'll see, Howard (even if it is on a years loan) would seem to fit the bill better. And if he does occasionally lapse into spitting and swearing he’ll blend in nicely at the Park End anyway.
According to reports on the team for Boro, we seem to be fielding about 16 with Turner, Vidarrson, Valente, Anichebe, Arteta and Kilbane all supposedly coming in and Davies keeping his place. Moyes has 'bigged up' Davies' display and in fairness he showed a couple of glimpses against Birmingham, as he did in the early games against Villarreal and United, of what he can do. Let's hope we can see more and see the player Moyesy 'thought he'd signed'.
Whether Middlesboro's European 'heroics' will have an impact on the outcome of the game is tough to say. Watching last night's game, the turning point appeared to be when Steuea's Dica started crying when he got booked and found out he would miss the final. No 'face of savoury snacks' Lineker-type figure to mouth the immortal 'have a word with him' in Rumanian, and the Bucharestis folded like Ceausescu’s government.
Boro will no doubt 'flex their squad muscles' and make loads of changes and still put together a team that could beat us. It was particularly galling to see that even West Ham can make 5 changes and still put a presentable team out.
Hopefully we will end our winless run with a convincing victory against what is still a 'plastic Man United'. Up the blues.
