Can We Try and Be Positive?

I’ve gone into my bunker of late. I find media coverage of Everton— well football as an overall — just exhaustive. Everything is micro-reported. The slight mishap or slip of the tongue by a player in an interview or a pundit leaves them widely mocked and ridiculed. Anything that’s said or done sends people into a spin on X and is then shared amongst WhatsApp groups the world over for more private ridicule. I’ve gone "cold turkey" and find myself distancing from the football social media world.

Take this Deadline Day as an example. In years gone by I’d have been there in the evening desperately and repeatedly refreshing my X feed in the hope of some positive Everton news. This week I found myself doing that for a few minutes and thought to myself “why is this so important I need to know this right now? Just find out in the morning.” And so I put my phone down, read a book and went to sleep.

Which brings us nicely — or not so nicely — on to Everton. When I awoke, the Everton WhatsApp groups that I’m in were full of messages; the first few words of the most recent ones didn’t look good, and so I went on X and scrolled back from the top. Messages like “Heads must roll for this” and “total incompetence” dominated the timeline for the Everton accounts I do still follow, until I finally got to the news that Folarin Balogun had walked away from Everton, declining to sign his contract.

So a player walked away from us at the final hour leaving us a striker short having let one go. Other things, too, were handled badly in the window which have been done to death by others and don’t need to be regurgitated. But is it life and death? Is it worth getting so upset about?

I’m not a young man; maybe it’s a change in outlook from me, but I find it all so tiresome. I love Everton. I love going to the game, I’ll keep on going home and away, but I just can’t get worked up about these things anymore. If we win, I’m stoked. If we lose, OK, it sucks but it doesn’t ruin my day… well maybe it does against certain opponents but generally it doesn’t, and it shouldn’t.

I’m actually quite positive about how we will do this season now the transfer window has “slammed shut”.

Do you remember when Mikel Arteta was sold to Arsenal on deadline day with no replacement brought in, just a couple of lads on loan in Denis Stracqualursi and Royston Drenthe? Well, David Moyes had to find a way with what he had, and I back him to do it again. He’s been mopey at best, disillusioned at worst, but I feel that David is actually at his best when he has to find a way with what he’s got. He’ll rally his troops and hopefully gather a siege mentality once the dust settles on our transfer window.

What makes me more positive is that we’ll now surely get to see a bit more of some of the talented fringe players we have at our disposal. We’ll get to see more of Tyler Dibling, Merlin Röhl and Charlie Alcaraz. Brennan Johnson will get games and minutes up front. Thierno Barry has a great opportunity to carry on his decent start to the season. Yes, we will miss Iliman Ndiaye, a great player, but we all knew he was leaving.

Really, we knew we were going to get Jack Grealish one way or the other. If he can stay fit we know what we’re getting there. We also have real quality in James Garner, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Tyrique George, Jarred Branthwaite, Jake O’Brien, Hayden Hackney, Harrison Armstrong, Jordan Pickford and, of course, Christan Norgaard is still to come in. We’ve enough adaptability in our attacking players to get by, until January at least.

I’m concerned about full-back, I’ll give you that. Ainsley Maitland-Niles is a good signing for my money, but only if we’d got a bona fide right back also. As that way Ainsley could provide cover and competition on both full back positions and even cover in midfield should we need it. But without said right back we are very short on cover. Expect ongoing square pegs in round holes there, unfortunately.

I’m not saying it’s the transfer window anybody wanted because it clearly isn’t, but it’s not worth losing our minds over either. Demanding people lose their jobs isn’t really nice. They may have got it wrong. They may be out of their depth, I don’t know, but I can’t imagine they aren’t trying their best.

And as for Folarin Balogun: Having sold Beto, obviously having his replacement walking out on us last-minute isn’t ideal and leaving things so late in the day is one of football’s great mysteries I’ll never understand. We weren’t the only ones; far from it in fact. Though if a player doesn’t want to play for us, we’re better not having that player than having him here and unhappy and wanting out in a year’s time anyway. A bad signing is worse than no signing; we haven’t forgotten Neal Maupay already, have we?

If the owners and the board have anything about them they’ll lick their wounds and already be working on supporting David and the team in the next window. And a riled David is an angry one. He’ll be working them players relentlessly and planning diligently for each game. He’ll have that fire back in his eyes and the team scrapping for every ball.

You’ll see.