Mersey misery

"WAS it bad?" asked one Rovers fan on Saturday evening after he had wisely decided to trundle a trolley around Tesco and volunteer for some housework rather than travel to Merseyside.

Actually it wasn't as good as that.

And it left one major question unanswered.

Was that a smirk of satisfaction on the face of the Lyon spy in the Goodison Park stand? Or was it a look of incredulity that two of English football's elite 20 clubs could provide a spectacle as truly awful as this mind-numbing encounter?

Let's look at the positive side. Rovers picked up their first away point of the season and it was desperately needed to stop the rot after three successive Premiership defeats.

Right, now for the rest as prospects of a long, hard winter loom.

Perhaps we should not have been surprised at the scoreline.

Everton have yet to score their first goal at home in the League and are also struggling.

Rovers went into the game minus three frontline strikers through injury and illness and were forced to play the returning Damien Duff up front alongside their only remaining senior striker Martin Dahlin.

And then there were none . . . as Dahlin picked up a 79th minute red card to leave 10 men to hang on grimly for that precious point. With Everton fielding four centre backs in their rearguard, it must have been like playing in the land of the giants for Rovers' front two.

It didn't help them that too many balls arrived in the air and the obvious ground route was either ignored or their team-mates did not have the competence to produce that kind of football.

But, then again, competence was not a word associated with these two teams on Saturday.

Both sides struggled to string two passes together and, as often happens, the game got the referee it deserved in Mike Riley who seemed determined to dominate proceedings with his whistle and notorious yellow-card flourish.

The statistics reflect what went on in terms of creative attacking play. Rovers did not manage a single on-target goal attempt -- in fact they only had three in all and one of those finished closer to the corner flag than Everton keeper Thomas Mhyre.

Everton were not much better, though they always have a chance of creating danger with their never-ending long hump forward to the lanky Duncan Ferguson.

To be fair to Rovers' central defenders, they handled that threat quite well to earn their point. But, on a turgid afternoon, that was about the only satisfaction to be taken from the visitors' point of view.

Roy Hodgson, understandably, saw it a little differently while acknowledging the poverty of the fare provided.

He said: "It's rather strange after producing one of the best football spectacles I have seen in a long while on Monday night and getting absolutely nothing for it, we gave a gritty, determined, hard-working performance and the post came to our rescue on the one clear-cut goal occasion they created in the first half.

"We had that bit of luck.

"But one thing that is not changing is our luck with referees because I don't think anything in our performance merited so many bookings and a sending-off.

"Billy McKinlay got booked for a tackle that almost broke his leg and Stephane Henchoz got booked for complaining about a kick which almost took his head off.

"I think that sometimes when someone does something really dangerous you are entitled to complain."

He was "proud" of the effort put in after all their setbacks but that is the least we are entitled to expect.

Even taking into account their absentees, there was no excuse for the lack of class and creativity on both sides.

Heads were shaking as the referee's yellow card was regularly produced in the first half but, then again, there wasn't much else to talk about. Ferguson struck a Rovers post with a well-struck shot and Tim Flowers made a good save from Nick Barmby.

In fact, Rovers also produced their best move of the game to slice open the Everton defence but Jason Wilcox was clearly offside before he finished it.

That moment, as early as the 14th minute, flattered to deceive.

It couldn't get any worse, or could it. The second half was just as unwatchable as error followed blunder, followed mistake.

Flowers again saved from John Collins and put himself bravely at players' feet as Everton threatened a win neither side deserved.

Teenager David Dunn was given his senior bow, replacing a tired Duff up front, but had to be withdrawn minutes later for a tactical substitution when Dahlin was dismissed.

Hodgson summed it up with his first post-match words: "You want me to analyse the game? It won't take long. The ball was either in the air or in the stand."

He's lucky, he didn't have to write 800 words about it. Mind you, I'm fortunate too -- unlike the fans, I didn't have to pay.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.