Brian Viner: Rooney and Moyes have Blues dreaming of glory, glory days
'Evertonians reached the Promised Land before, only to find they'd left their passports at home'
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Your support makes all the difference.Wayne Rooney. It is a mundane name for a lad who appears to be leading tens of thousands towards the Promised Land, but then Ryan Giggs was a mundane name once.
Of course, Evertonians have reached the Promised Land before, only to find that that they'd left their bloody passports at home. The 1995 FA Cup final – Everton 1, Manchester United 0 – springs gloriously to mind. We thought Joe Royle had led us out of the barren wastes of relegation dogfights, but we were back there soon enough.
So it's too early to sing the hosannas just yet. And it's too early to compare the young prodigy, as chocker with promise as he is, with the likes of Giggs. On the other hand, it's possible that Rooney and Giggs will, even briefly, share a playing surface at Old Trafford this evening. What finer place for the boy to become the youngest Premiership goalscorer and remind Sir Alex Ferguson that there is some talent even his money cannot buy, hard as he reportedly tried?
Fellow Evertonians, I'm sure, will read these words and urge a restraint of optimism. Apart from anything else, fixtures against Manchester United (the 1995 FA Cup final aside) have a habit of bursting our bubble; I was one of the 48,335 at Goodison Park on Boxing Day 1977, when our unbeaten run of 22 games was emphatically halted by United, who impertinently won 6-2 and made Gordon Lee look even more like an undertaker with a stubbed toe.
Besides, the long, slow slide from the summit of English football has bred cynicism, and, while there is understandable pride this season as the club become the first – in the world! – to celebrate 100 years of top-flight footie, it is tempered with self-awareness. We are not the force we were, and in all too many recent seasons we have not been a force at all. Not since someone suggested coitus interruptus to Mick Jagger has there been a piece of Latin more disregarded than the Everton club motto nil satis nisi optimum (only the best will do).
I was one of those last season who defended Walter Smith almost to the death, but I can see now that I was wrong. For the good of a fine man and a great club, he should perhaps have gone sooner, and doubtless would have done but for the decency of the deputy chairman Bill Kenwright and the board.
On Friday I phoned Kenwright, and despite being Mr Busy from Busytown on a day with an unusually full diary, he generously found time to call me back.
I put it to him straight. Did he keep faith in Walter for too long? There was a long sigh like air escaping from an inflatable paddling pool. He said he finds it impossible to stick the boot into Smith, and is painfully aware that by praising Smith's successor, David Moyes, he is criticising by implication. Yet it is equally impossible not to praise Moyes, who is plainly doing a superb job with limited resources.
"When I first met him – and for some reason you always meet new managers at midnight on a motorway – he mentioned the word 'win' seven times in the first two minutes," Kenwright said. "He has brought an incredible energy and work ethic to the club."
It is to Smith's enduring credit, moreover, that as soon as Kenwright made it clear that he had lost the confidence of the board, he composed himself and said: "Right, who are you going to get? You need a really good man. Is David Moyes on your list?" Even those who wanted Smith out much earlier must now concede that he could not have departed at a better time.
Sooner, and David Moyes, who remained loyal to Preston even when Manchester United wanted him as their No 2, might not have come. Later, and other names might have loomed larger. For example, if Smith had seen out the season and was only now packing his bags, the fans would be screaming for Peter Reid.
As stirring as it would have been to see Reidy back at Goodison, Moyes is undoubtedly the man to guide Everton at least back to within sniffing distance of the élite of English football. He is ambitious, thorough, shrewd and lucky. They say that all great managers need a big dollop of luck. Moyes was fortunate that his new charges took the lead within 30 seconds of his first game in charge, against Fulham; it wasn't much to do with him, but there could hardly have been a more potent symbol of a brighter future.
And he is lucky that Rooney turns 17 this month and will commit himself to a long-term contract. For Everton fans with a persecution complex – most of us – it is of great significance that the club is signing a lifelong fan of sublime promise, because Michael Owen, Robbie Fowler, Steve McManaman and Ian Rush were all boyhood Evertonians who got away. Whatever happens at Old Trafford tonight, things are looking up. Nil satis nisi optimum? It doesn't sound quite as daft as it did six months ago.
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