Phil Neville: We’re not fearful of European quest

Sep 20 2007 by Ian Doyle, Liverpool Daily Post

MENTION their team’s last sojourn into Europe two years ago, and most Evertonians will quickly look to change the subject.

Having famously beaten Liverpool to fourth place in the previous season’s Premier League, David Moyes’s side were handed the chance to once again rub shoulders with the continent’s elite.

Matters, though, soon began to unravel. Unfortunate to be drawn against and then beaten by a classy Villarreal side that would go on to reach the semi-finals, the residual shock led to a 5-1 hammering against Dinamo Bucharest that put paid to any hopes of redemption in the UEFA Cup.

Earlier that summer, Phil Neville had been persuaded to swap Old Trafford for Goodison by the promise of European football following a decade of regular exposure at that exalted level.

And it makes the 30-year-old the ideal man to place his finger on what went wrong in 2005 – and why he’s convinced there will be no repeat when he leads Everton out for their return into Europe this evening with a UEFA Cup first round first leg tie against Ukrainian unknowns Metalist Kharkiv at Goodison Park.

“I joined two years ago because I wanted to play European football,” says Neville. “We were in the Champions League then and we didn’t have a good campaign. It was disappointing really, but I knew this club wanted European football.

“We got the hardest possible draw when we got Villarreal and the shock of going out meant we started the league season poorly and went to Bucharest with a large injury list and to a country where no-one had any experience of playing there.

“It was a real eye opener and I think a lot of lessons were learned.

“Maybe when we finished fourth we probably didn’t believe that we should have finished there or believe that we should have been in the Champions League.”

Neville reckons that nagging suspicion among the squad they had over-achieved the previous season coupled with a fear factor of stepping into largely unchartered territory contributed to Everton’s desperately disappointing downfall.

Since then, the subsequent arrivals of players such as Tim Howard, Yakubu, Stefan Wessels and Steven Pienaar have bolstered the European know-how available to Moyes.

And Neville says: “There has been a turnaround of players, a more positive outlook, a freshness about the squad. I don’t think there is a fear about the place that there was two years ago.”

Neville acknowledges Everton’s high tempo pressing game, so crucial to their sixth-placed finish, will have to be tweaked accordingly if they are to ensure an extended run in Europe this season.

“The UEFA Cup is not as good as the Champions League, but it is the next best thing,” says the England international. “We need to get through the qualifying round and into the group stage.

“But in Europe we are going to have to improve the technical part of our play.”

Leon Osman reckons the steep learning curve of two years ago and the strength of Moyes’s new-look squad will stand Everton in good stead this evening for what is the club’s 50th European match.

“I think we all now understand some of the things that happen in European football,” says the midfielder. “Referees make different decisions than they do in domestic games and players maybe go down a bit easier and it’s something that if you’re not used to it can take you a game or two to understand.

“We’re all aware of that this time out and I think we’ve strengthened as a squad and we’ve got depth now.

“We’ve talked about the prospect of Europe a lot over the past couple of days. We take everything on a game-to-game basis so we’d not really mentioned it until after the Manchester United match was out of the way but we hope it goes well.”

Osman adds: “It feels great to be back playing in Europe, it was disappointing that we went out so early last time but it’s something that we all wanted to achieve again.

“We worked really hard last season to make that the case so we’re going into this game to enjoy it and savour the atmosphere, but definitely to make this a decent run.

“Personally I was disappointed with last time but it whets your appetite to make you think you want more of that. As a team that’s how we felt.

“It was a long, hard season last year but we achieved what we set out to do.”

Certainly, the memory of what transpired in Romania two seasons ago will prove a spur for any of the Everton players present that evening.

“It was terrible in the dressing room after the 5-1 defeat in Bucharest,” recalls Osman. “Nobody really spoke to anyone else, we were beyond shouting.

“Bucharest was difficult to take, we went there wanting a victory. It is difficult to take when you put the effort in, work really hard and the result doesn’t go for you but sometimes that’s football.

“But we’re all going to pull together this time to make sure that’s not the case again.”