THE draw for the UEFA Cup, due tomorrow, should be an event that Evertonians await with a great deal of excitement.
It’s become a tradition now, clearing your diary for the hour of the draw, sitting with the Easyjet website loaded on your computer and your bank details to hand, then ringing around to all and sundry asking something along the lines of "Who on earth are Metalist Kharkiv?"
After Saturday’s disjointed display at Goodison though, and the club’s continued struggles to bring in any players whatsoever, Blues will have their radios tuned into FiveLive or their web browsers pointed at the UEFA website more in fear than anything else.
Everton only scraped past Kharkiv last time, remember, and now they’ve has lost two key men from that tie, in the shape of Andy Johnson and James McFadden, and replaced neither. There’s no two ways about it – as things stand this is a far weaker Everton team at the moment than the one that travelled out to the Ukraine 12 months ago.
Whether that will still be the case when the first European game takes place on September 18 is the 20 million Euro question.
Depending on who you believe, Everton’s crack team of negotiators are either on the verge of signing Tiago Mendes, Joao Moutinho, Stephane M’Bia and Alan Smith, or we’re miles away on all of them and we’ll be lucky to get Jimmy Bullard.
It really is mystifying to the layman, just what goes on between clubs and agents at a time like this, when the transfer deadline is approaching and the pressure is on to get business done.
With Moutinho, for instance, Everton made their interest known straight after the European Championships.
Why has the deal not been completed or else killed stone dead in that time? Indeed, why can’t it be done in one day? Sporting Lisbon say what they are after, Everton say what they are willing to offer, and then everyone sees whether they can reach an acceptable compromise. If they can’t, everyone shakes hands and moves on.
Presumably what needs to be factored into that whole process is the player’s willingness to exert pressure on his present club to let him go, something that becomes more effective the closer we get to the transfer deadline.
How fair you think that is usually depends on whether you are the club trying to prise the player away or the one trying to hang on to him.
If David Moyes ends up getting his first choice targets – top quality players who will move the club forward for the next two or three seasons – then a ropey start to the 2008/09 season will eventually be forgiven.
It’s becoming a high stakes game now though, because if these deals fall through then he is going to have a desperate time trying to reinforce a squad that is so weak that three defenders, including one17-year-old, started in midfield against Blackburn.
And while it was an offside goal that gave Paul Ince’s men all three points on the opening day, you didn’t need your UEFA A badge to see that the Blues were outmanoeuvred for most of the match by a side that are merely competent.
A collective effort and the odd flash of brilliance from Mikel Arteta were enough to see the sides level until the very death, but if that’s what we continue to rely on then it’s a going to feel like a very long season in the league.
And a very short one in Europe.
