Recently by Barry Horne

The absence of Premier League football will cast a long shadow over the summer, but now is the time to reflect on the season just ended, a campaign which has been a tremendous one for Everton Football Club.

If you take wage bills and transfer expenditure into account, you could put up an argument that Everton were the most successful club in the country last season.

I believe the way Everton have gone about their business in recent years - prudently and low risk in an era when more and more clubs are existing on a knife edge - is the right strategy.

THE dramatic resolution of the 2007/08 season is upon us, and while Everton can only finish in one of two places, to my mind finishing fifth is significantly better than the place immediately below.

That's not just because the fifth spot carries with it the reward of UEFA Cup football.
Finishing fifth means you have effectively won the league beneath the so-called Big Four.

Kevin Keegan's comments in the week may well have angered his club's owners and maybe even some Newcastle fans, but what he says is fundamentally the truth as it stands.

EVERTON go into tomorrow's game at the Emirates as masters of their own destiny.

Four points from the last two matches will mean that there is nothing Aston Villa can do to snatch fifth place.

Hopefully, that means Everton will go out at Arsenal and produce an aggressive, purposeful performance.

THIS is a time when people make a big deal about footballers' wages and the way in which they behave.

But over the last three or four days we have seen top level football played at its very best.

You can argue long and hard about the salaries which modern players are paid, but the play that we saw on Tuesday and Wednesday was amongst the best you will see anywhere in the world.

We saw the best teams, managed by the best coaches, containing the best players playing at the very top of their games.

WITH the FA finally making their position clear on who will get their nomination for next season's UEFA Cup, the significance of tomorrow's match at Goodison Park is magnified.

To qualify for Europe next season Everton must finish above Aston Villa

AS it was at the start of the season, Everton will do well to finish fifth this season.

It was true right at the start of the campaign, it was true when we were hitting the heights and it is true now.

To finish top of the 'other' Premier League is a creditable achievement.

For all those Everton fans on Thursday night who claimed they weren't going to renew season tickets next season, who believed David Moyes must go and who said what they were seeing wasn't good enough, I would just ask to cast their minds back six weeks when the vast majority were saying how good it was to be an Evertonian.

AVRAM GRANT delivered a very quirky post-match press conference at Goodison on Thursday night, when he seemed to be intent on answering every question in the fewest syllables possible.

It was a pre-meditated performance because half an hour later I heard him talking effusively about the match, his tactics and his team's performance to a small group of hand picked journalists