Blue watch: Questions soon to be answered as Goodison hierachy return

Jul 3 2008 Mark O'Brien

DAVID MOYES is apparently back at his desk this week, so once he’s cleared out a load of e-mails and watered his parched plants we might begin to get more of a definite idea of where his real targets lie in the transfer market.

Every summer is filled with rumours and whispers but this one seems to have been particularly bad, with the uncertainty fuelled by the fact that the manager himself hasn’t signed a new contract yet and the future of the proposed new ground seems to be somewhat in the balance.

With regards to the first point, Moyes’s contract, the fact that we appear to be on the verge of recruiting him a new assistant, in the shape of Newcastle United’s Steve Round, gives a fair indication that they are confident their man is going to be in situ for the start of the new season.

No club would be short- sighted enough to appoint a coach and then have to give him the bullet before the summer’s over when a new manager brings in his own people, surely?

One of football’s idiosyncrasies is that no one outside of the game ever really knows what these coaches and assistant managers actually do.

Sam Allardyce, for instance, had a bigger entourage than Sugar Ray Robinson when he first arrived at St James’ Park, and it’s apparently cost the Geordies a fortune to get rid of half of them. Apparently they had so many fitness coaches that at one point they could afford to send a couple of them down to work with Joey Barton when he was having his clearly-not-very- effective therapy in some clinic or other.

And staying up in the North East, what about Terry McDermott?