Being an Everton fan has been a decidedly unpleasant experience in recent years.
Big name managers have either been lured away by more glamourous clubs or chased out of town after failing miserably. Their chairperson and diehard Everton fan Bill Kenwright passed away. The club had points deducted for failing to meet financial fair play rules, while player arrivals have been largely uninspiring. Fighting relegation, once an almost unthinkable possibility for the nine-time champions, has become a regular occurrence. And, right now, they are joint bottom of the league with one point from five games.
Of course, while it may be fun to blame the football gods for all this, the reality is that responsibility for most of the problems lays at the feet of the owner. And the fans are well aware of that reality, with regular protests against Farhad Moshiri.
At one point things became so grim that the police advised Moshiri and the rest of the board to stay away from the ground on match days for their own safety.
For his part, Moshiri, despite injecting hundreds of millions into Everton, did accept he wasn’t the right man for the job. But selling the club proved to be tricky, with debts and loans linked to their new stadium proving a difficult issue to overcome. Every time a takeover looked close, it would collapse at the 11th hour.
But last week a deal was finally done.
The Freidkin Group, which also owns Roma, announced they had agreed a deal to buy the struggling club from Moshiri, bringing an end to a saga that has run for so long it would probably make a decent soap opera.
The news will have come as a massive relief to the club’s fans who have been going through the wringer watching their club struggle while the boardroom shenanigans dragged on and relegation beckoned.
The deal still needs formal approval, but with Friedkin also owning the Italian Seria A club, that is likely to be little more than a formality.
At last, some light at the end of the tunnel for Toffee fans!
However, it hasn’t all been positive news for their supporters. The good news on the investment side was swiftly followed by a growing rumour that when the Americans complete their takeover, they will replace Sean Dyche... with Gareth Southgate.
I’m not saying Dyche should necessarily keep his job, although I do think he has been very dignified in horrendous circumstances. But Southgate? Really?
As it stands, Everton will probably end up moving into a new state-of-the-art stadium, with new state-of-the-art owners in place, some cash to spend on building a new team... and a manager who will bore them to death.
Can’t win them all, I suppose.
It’s just a game
What’s all this fuss about last weekend’s Manchester City vs Arsenal game?
Since the two title favourites clashed last Sunday, news sites, social media and water coolers around the world have been awash with arguments, complaints and general whining about everything from Arsenal’s time wasting to Haaland’s petulance.
All we’ve heard is people on both sides – and a few in the middle as well – saying this was wrong, that was wrong and the other just shouldn’t have happened.
Since when did everybody get so woke and sensitive?
This was two big-ass teams fighting it out at the very pinnacle of the English game. Was there going to be shenanigans and skulduggery? Of course there was! But that is all part and parcel of highest-level football and always has been.
Shenanigans and skulduggery is all part and parcel of highest-level football
It was a great match, packed with incident and excitement that ended in a relatively fair, and extremely dramatic, draw. That’s it! Nothing else to see here, everybody. Get over yourselves!
Life after Moyes
When I think of West Ham United fans right now, the phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ springs instantly to mind.
Despite David Moyes leading them to repeated top-half-of-the-table finishes, despite him taking them into Europe a couple of times, and despite him winning their first trophy in forever, Hammer supporters spent most of his reign at the club dreaming of replacing him.
Well, this season they got their wish, with the club appointing a more flamboyant and sexier manager, and they sat back waiting for the good times to roll.
Hasn’t exactly panned out that way, has it lads?
Admittedly, it is still early days, but Julen Lopetegui has not exactly set the world alight with his Hammers revolution. Performances have been extremely patchy as the club has laboured to just one league win out of five at the time of writing.
And last week, to cap off a rather miserable start to his Hammer’s career, Lopetegui took his team to Anfield full of hope but left with 5-1 spanking in the League Cup.
As I said, it’s way too early in the post-Moyes era for any sort of definitive conclusions to be drawn. But this could well be a classic case of the grass not always being greener on the other side...
Solving the puzzle
Meanwhile, in totally unrelated board game news, the World Jigsaw Puzzle championships has just come to its climax over in Spain.
Yes, that’s right chaps, there exists a competitive international tournament specifically for people who are fast at doing jigsaws – or speedpuzzling as they like to call it.
When I heard about this, my first thought was that it sounds a bit niche. Very niche! Probably a competition for a couple of dozen people held in a tent in the middle of a muddy field.
Er, not exactly.
This year’s championships were held in the Millenium Dome in Valladolid, Spain, and brought together a staggering 3,500 competitors from almost 70 countries.
Over the five-day event these puzzlers competed in a variety of team and individual events, with Norwegian Kristin Thuv eventually crowned world champion after completing a 500-piece jigsaw in just under 38 minutes.
Interesting stuff, Calvert, but where are you going with this?
Well, here’s the thing: it’s a stretch I know, but I think it’s high time we saw a ‘board game sport’ included in the Olympics.
Just a single game every four years as a one-off, to bring it to a wider audience and give these people a moment in the spotlight that their determination and dedication deserves.
Jigsaws, Scrabble, chess, Rubik cubes – the people that play these games practise for thousands of hours to be the very best, so why shouldn’t they have their five minutes of global fame?
Are they sports? Maybe not in the strict sense of the word.
But I tell you what, I think I would rather see one of those board games in the next Olympics in place of the walking race or breakdancing...
Just saying.
E-mail: James.calvert@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade