Effra struggles to see Tevezcherano being any good for the club, regardless of how well they eventually play.
This waiting for an away goal has gone on now almost as long as the wait for any kind of goal earlier in the season did. And just like the last wait, there are those moments, like Lee Bowyer’s miss yesterday against Everton, when it seems impossible that the ball could do anything other than hit the back of the net, and those moments, like 12 corners in the first half not producing a decent half-chance, when it seems impossible to believe that a goal will ever come.
It’s tempting in the face of the West Ham soap opera this season to look for dramatic explanations of what’s going wrong but half-way through the second half yesterday it seemed pretty simple. The defenders forget to concentrate too often, the central midfielders go missing for significant parts of every game, the wide players can’t cross, and none of the fit strikers can play with Tevez. On the last problem, the answer is, of course, Dean Ashton as it has been all season. (Yet, totally gutted as I was the day he got injured, it never occurred to me that avoiding relegation was going to depend on him getting back to fitness.) The question is with whom Deano is going to play when he returns?
Pardew’s recent interviews and actions suggest Tevez, and at times against Everton Tevez seemed about to repay Pardew’s faith. But even if the terrifyingly-faced Argie starts passing when his team-mates are in better positions, Ashton does deliver for Tevez, and Tevez starts finding the net himself, where is that going to leave us come the end of the season when Tevez pisses off on the back of that good form? By then, Cole will have been sold, Teddy will finally be facing up to retirement, and Marlon and Zamora will have spent a whole season going backwards. The consequences of letting Kia Joorabchian near our football club are far from over.
Judging from the Biscuit Man’s expression in the second half yesterday, don’t be surprised, whatever we were hearing last week, if he takes matters into his own hands come January, and draws a line under the whole Tevezcherano debacle.