Everton's Ginger Braveheart chases this excellent signing.

Jesper Blomqvist, Rodrigo, Andy Van Der Meyde - Davie Moyes hasn't had the best of luck with wingers but he remains undeterred in nabbing a decent wide boy and is currently having a sniff around Valencia's Joaquin. Not only is Joaquin a cracking player, but he could be a "friend" for Our 'Tater and may also draw more attention to Arteta's Goodison performances from the Iberian peninsula. A cavalcade of press hounds have been on the scent of this story, and this Sky link is one of the best.

The Guardian's Spanish football guru Sid Lowe proclaimed on the Football Weekly Podcast that

"Everton have looked at him and would be very keen on signing him."

but he cautions that

"Joaquin, in principle doesn't like the idea of going to England. But, if the money is there - which of course it will be in England compared to Spain - and if the buyer is there, and there isn't a better option in Spain, he would take that..."

So it looks like if we play our cards right, we could bag ourselves two quality players from the Mestalla in Manuel Fernandes and Joaquin.

Light the blue touch-paper; we are going to the stars!

TOFFEES 2 - LA VIOLA 0 [aet]
Aggregate score 2-2

Tie decided on penalties: Everton 2 - Fiorentina 4

Sport has been defined as "a pleasant pastime; amusement; diversion" and professional sport clearly extends into the entertainment industry. Few inside Goodison last night could desribe events as 'pleasant' but for the millions of neutrals watching on TV this match was entertainment of the highest quality. Exciting, dramatic, climactic, and cruel, this game had it all; the sort of content that makes media executives drool.
For the committed Evertonian it was heartbreaking, but to be part of it, to be at Goodison last night was uplifting. Make no mistake this team are the 'real deal'. Moyes is sculpting a wonderful squad who will ultimately be capable of fullfilling all our dreams, and I mean ALL! They are already the finest Everton team since the mid-80s so just imagine where the additions which Moyes will add in the summer will take us.
Fiorentia were completely outclassed, and at times reduced to a bickering, dishevelled unit until rescued from the requirement to play as a team by a penalty shoot-out, a creation which is to a football match what Katie Price is to literature - unconnected. Ah the tyranny of the shoot-out; individuals plucked from the team, and a contest between 11 men playing as 1 suddenly becomes like, well, darts. All the continentals on show scored including Gravesen - trundled out for the occasion - and Arteta....you know the rest!
One question gnaws at me: Up until now I have been 100% behind the move to Kirby, the financial arguments are as obvious as Katie Price's assets [apologies for that]. Could any new stadium, however cleverly designed, replicate the atmosphere that was Goodison Park last night?

Everton's Leon Osman For England?

A jealous look over Stanley Park reveals that Liverpool have been spending a lot more money than us – an oft-cited fact that adds yet another veneer of brilliance to David Moyes’ tenure at the top of the Everton tree.

In under four years, manager Rafa Benitez has frittered away £146m (and recouped £70m) – all of which has had his side frantically pedalling for the parity of fourth place in the Premier League, whilst enjoying some admitted European success.

Ask Rio Ferdinand and he’ll say that Liverpool are getting ahead of themselves, that Europe is merely a placebo trying to supplant domestic league trophies, a far more reliable gauge of a healthy club.

Before Rafa came Gérard Houllier, who in a similar amount of time spent £119m, whilst bringing back £57m. In six whole years prudent Moyes has blown just £79.1m and brought back £51.9m. He is also changing the face of Everton, formerly pockmarked with relegation worries, into the proud People’s Club – jostling with the big spenders for fourth place, all on a budget of under £5m a year.

Sunday’s Premier League bout between Everton and Portsmouth has a lot to do with this prudent spending, slowly adding to the squad and developing a galvanised unit. That Liverpool played directly before them, beating Bolton 3-1, put a certain amount of pressure on Everton’s band of brothers – replicating Liverpool’s 3-1 scoreline merely shone the light back into the Anfield outfit’s faces.

One of the key figures for Everton was little Leon Osman, a lightweight balsa-wood player, so small in fact that he has found it hard to initially be taken seriously by Moyes. Only constant knocking on the first team door with a barrage of goals for the reserves got him noticed.

Tragically the same thing is happening with the press. Although Osman was the man of the match in many fans' eyes, The Sun's 'Goals' supplement – not the best barometer of footballing judgement, granted – gave our intrepid hero a measly six out of 10.

Hopefully new England boss Fabio Capello won’t continue this scandalous cycle of abuse, as Osman is an FDR of a player – refusing to let you dwell too long on his physical ailments and forcing you to respect his talents.

Osman oils the cogs in Everton’s midfield, and is as unsung a presence there as gravity.

The simple fact that this post will either prompt a flood of incredulous emails, or a couple of tepid responses, also shows how ignored this man has been.

Against Portsmouth, a side that is the embodiment of everything that Osman is not in terms size and physicality – Leon again showed his credentials, with a performance of wonderful technique and forensic touch.

When he was loaned out to Derby four years ago as a 22-year-old, they fell in love with him, and Rams fans still sing his praises. Little Leon could do a job for England, but his biggest challenge won’t be his perceived problem of being shrugged off the ball, it will be trying to shed false press opinions about him.

Everton to swoop for Lorik Cana 'le destucteur'.

This news isn't exactly hot off the press but I thought that after our dismal midfield performance against Fiorentina I'd take a look at the Albanian midfielder that we are supposedly after, Lorik Cana.
The good news is that he is young (24), he is already the captain of Marseilles, and he plays like the bastard lovechild of Roy Keane and Vinnie Jones. His You Tube entry is , somewhat predictably, 5 minutes of crunching tackles - and he definitely looks like he could fit in well at Everton.



The bad news? We'll have to fight both Bayern Munich and Roma for his signature, oh and he's under contract to Marseilles until 2012 - so if we did sign him we would have to hand over a large slice of our summer transfer kitty (although the Daily Mail reckons we could nab him for a mere £5m).
Interestingly, Marseilles are also in the UEFA Cup - and played Zenit St Petersburg last week - beating them 3-1 with Arshavin scoring the only goal for the Russians (yet another player we've had a sniff around).

Everton's Vaughan injured again...will we ever see his best?

The BBC is today reporting that our young striking genius James Vaughan is to fly to the US to have yet another knee operation, truly gutting news. Vaughan has been dogged by injuries throughout his fledgling career, a major one to his knee, (the same one that will be operated on this time round) a severed artery in his foot, and a dislocated shoulder too.
Moyes said:

"The knee just locked a couple of times in training and it is terrible luck.

"We don't know yet whether it is the same problem as before but it is the same knee.

"We decided he should have the operation now rather than wait until the end of the season and he has to be a doubt for the rest of the campaign. He is going to go out to Dr. Steadman to have a bit of cartilage trimmed.

"I don't know how long he is going to be out for but he is a doubt for the rest of the season, I would have to say.

"It's a blow to us and to him. We knew that there was something bothering him. We had a look at the knee and we thought it was getting better but then his knee locked again.

"We have decided that we need to have him operated on now. We were hoping that he could get through to the end of the season."

Horrific news for such a great hope, but the positives are that he is young, and he will be operated on by the world's best - Dr Richard Steadman. Get well soon James!

Why Tim Cahill Is The Undeserved Victim Of Press Bile

The reaction from most of the press was overwhelmingly against Tim Cahill's mock manacle tribute after scoring against Portsmouth. The Australian midfielder, visibly on the brink of full blown tears, said he did it as a message to his incarcerated brother, to show that he was thinking of him. Sean Cahill was jailed for for six years in January over an assault which left his victim partially blind. The incident happened after Cahill left Delanos nightclub in Bromley and headed towards a nearby taxi rank.
Unfortunately, celeb press goons like David Mellor, eager to bash a quick one out (article that is) leapt on this story. In Mellor's column for the Evening Standard, the famous Chelsea fan claimed that:

"Football can't be turned into a propoganda platform for a ruthless yob like Sean Cahill"

The tragic thing about David Mellor is that he is very hard to take seriously. It is sorely tempting to mention as an opening gambit that he briefly worked under Jeffry Archer (what a nice way to start in politics) and to allude to that sex scandal (to borrow from Morrissey, "Caligula would have blushed") with Antonia de Sancha where he had to resign as Heritage Minister.
Interestingly Mellor had previously claimed that PM John Major, and not the tabloid press, should decide his fate after his affair with de Sancha was discovered . And yet on the matter of Cahill and his brother, Mellor's clamour was a part of the hysterical tide of opprobrium. I don't condone what Sean Cahill did, but to say that he launched "an unprovoked attack" is clearly not telling the whole tale. I think Mr Mellor wanted an early night, and wrote a weak and easy piece without thinking.

Anthony Gardner: An inspired Moyes signing?

One of the quietest of the January deadline-day transfers was the loan acquisition by Everton of Spurs defender Antony Gardner.

Gardner, just recovered from a broken ankle sustained in Tottenham’s encounter with Getafe, has completed a reserve run out with his new surrogate club, and most of the noises coming out of White Hart Lane are of the "good riddance" variety.

So why did David Moyes sign the much-maligned Gardner, whose prime position is centre-back – one of Everton’s strongest areas with Phil Jagielka, Joleon Lescott and Joseph Yobo all vieing for contention?

The primary reason has to be back-up – with 36-year-old Alan Stubbs leaving for Derby County we looked a tad short at the back if hit by injuries, and Gardner could be a useful 'body' and adds some depth to our usually emaciated squad, especially on a low-risk loan.

From the moment Moyes arrived at Everton, he worked his magic on two fronts. Firstly he realised that funds were finite at Everton, and looked to bring players in on loan, a 'try-before-you-buy' policy, perfectly tailored for Everton and an excellent way to gauge a player and good insurance against any flops.

If a player isn't good enough, then ship him off, if he does make the grade then we can splurge – usually for a pre-agreed price; this policy has worked best with Yobo, Steven Pienaar and even Tim Howard. The consensus amongst Spurs fans is that Gardner is a barrel-scrapingly bad player – described by some at the Lane as "the Heskey of defence". They claim he has no pace, bad control, poor composure, sloppy passing, heading, strength...you name it, he hasn't got it.

Gardner was a focal boo point at Spurs and in that respect he is similar to Kevin Kilbane, a player tossed aside by Sunderland like an underrated Superted. In 1999 Peter Reid paid a whopping £2.5m to bring 'Killer' to Sunderland, making him the third most expensive club signing at the time and setting him up for a huge fall.

Although Kilbane’s start for Sunderland was perfect – he came off the subs' bench on his debut against Southampton and instantly set up Kevin Phillips to score the winning goal, this was to prove a cruelly unique game as the Black Cats nosedived thereafter, something the fans called "The Curse of Kilbane".

Once the boos start, they rarely stop – and scapegoat status was something that Kilbane couldn’t shrug off – relegation followed, and the boos increased. Kilbane had had enough, and in the summer of 2003, on a tour of France, he aimed a two-fingered salute at the Sunderland support, a King Canute sticking his fingers up at the waves of abuse.

Moyes took this apparently useless player to Everton at the beginning of the 2003-04 season for just under £1m, and mild-mannered, gaffe-prone Kilbane became superhero Zinedine Kilbane – a barnstorming player happy to help out in numerous positions on the pitch.

Kilbane has been rejuvenated by Moyes, who sold him on to Wigan for the tidy sum of £2m. Disregard the boos and the opprobrium levelled at Gardner, and his signing makes sense. Like Kilbane, he can play in a number of positions, and after Gardner’s impressive start to the 2003-04 season he got a call-up from Sven-Goran Eriksson to the England side.

Moyes has also been adamant that more height needs to be brought into the squad and at 6ft 5in, Gardner can help us out there, too. Moyes loves to shine up reluctant stars, could it be possible that he’ll tap into untouched potential with Gardner? Let’s hope so…