The toxic atmosphere at Goodison has started to garner media attention. What took you all so long? Phone-in enthusiast and one-time brilliant footballer Rio Ferdinand called out Evertonians, accusing them of stifling the side’s young players before keeping it real with some public gratitude for his West Ham education. Ferdinand has spoken several times on the development of John Stones for obvious reason; he possesses perhaps the most useful insight on this issue. But his criticism of Everton supporters lacked balance and a proper understanding of the facts.
The Everton fans have got their young players in a nervous state here!! Looks like they wont allow em time to make mistakes & learn….
— Rio Ferdinand (@rioferdy5) January 24, 2016
Makes me even more grateful that i was brought up at West Ham,where the fans & staff allowed for me to make mistakes while learning the game
— Rio Ferdinand (@rioferdy5) January 24, 2016
The comparison requires context. An academy graduate, Ferdinand progressed to West Ham’s first team in 1996, 18 months into Harry Redknapp’s reign, six years on from the Hammers’ seventh-place finish in Division Two (now League One). Despite originally fighting relegation, Redknapp had captivated supporters with attacking football, a bit like Roberto Martinez. Backing it up at the other end, Ferdinand was named Hammer of the Year in his first full season (1997/98) as Redknapp’s men improved from 14th to 8th.
The uplift continued as West Ham finished an impressive fifth in 1998/99, and offset the following season’s slip to ninth with a UEFA Cup place virtue of the Intertoto Cup. In short, this was a pretty decent time to play for West Ham. I don’t doubt the “fans & staff allowed [Ferdinand] to make mistakes while learning the game” during one of the best periods in their history. The Hammers won 13 of 19 home games in Ferdinand’s first season, including nine of the first 10. A solitary home defeat all season left very little opportunity for presumably jubilant supporters to fill the Boleyn Ground with angst.
Stones too experienced a successful first season though he played just 21 games to Ferdinand’s 35. Indeed, Everton’s home record was near identical to West Ham’s: the same amount of wins (13) but one more defeat (3). This is the where their experiences begin to differ. Over the next two seasons, West Ham won 24 of 38 home games and lost just eight. By contrast, since August 2014, Everton have won just 10 of 31 at Goodison and lost the same amount, conceding 43 goals in the process. This season, the Toffees have already equalled their number of home defeats (5) from last year, and surpassed the number of goals against (22). West Ham fans’ optimism was sustained with success, Evertonian joy has been annihilated through failure.
The definition of insanity
When Ferdinand called 5 Live to object to condemnation of Stones and call for patience with his error-prone ways, he hit the nail on the head, but not in the way he’d imagined. Ferdinand said: “When I come through, Harry Redknapp used to say to me ‘Make mistakes, don’t worry, but don’t make the same ones all the time'”. Well yes Rio, this is precisely the point. It’s not a creative young footballer’s fallible nature that concerns Evertonians, but rather the bewildering repetitiveness of his errors and his sustained failure to learn. We don’t just want to turn up to see Cruyff turns, we want to see them as showboat moments of dominant wins. We want first and foremost to see Stones defend well enough to ensure victory.
Criticism is more nuanced than external perceptions suggest. You can bemoan slowly keeping the ball near your own goal without fundamentally disagreeing with the notion of John Stones. An occasional clearance is not an ideological attack on possession football. Screaming at Stones can really be screaming at Martinez for failing to address weaknesses, keeping a struggling player in the side, or for defending his failing tactics in alienating post-match performances of superlatives and sports words. Fans may reasonably object to players handing in transfer requests then playing terribly. Simplifying all those opinions and more to Everton fans merely “not allowing them to play” is patronising and smacks of a pundit making a judgement from televised matches.
In contrast, Jamie Carragher’s well-researched Daily Mail piece on Stones was right on the money. Without downplaying Stones’ fine touch and calmness in possession, Carragher merely called for a more disciplined, aware approach to defending, to crave clean sheets as he did at Liverpool. In a sense, he eloquently expressed the underlying desire of Everton supporters. Stones can keep all the fancy stuff, of course he can – it’s why we think he’s brilliant, but a significant improvement in his defensive ability is a prerequisite if his great potential is to be realised. Like a naturally flashy batsman charged with keeping wicket, it is the disciplined dirty work that Stones must immerse himself in now. A modern centre-back’s role is two-fold; with Stones, there remains a costly imbalance.
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By Chris Smith
Follow me on Twitter @cdsmith789.
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