Recently by David Taylor

I have tried to avoid the subject.

I have racked my brain for something light hearted and uplifting to say but my mind keeps falling back into the unavoidable issue generations of blues are debating and arguing over.

My attempt to ride along with the process of building a new stadium and accepting whatever the journey brings has failed miserably. I was of the mind that what will be will be and despite my reservations about the move I was willing to put my trust (although some will say I was hugely naive) in the Everton hierachy to deliver a stadium we could not afford to not move to.

As the rumours start to build and the names become ever more unrealistic (although the Owen rumour may have legs, preferably ones without dodgy hamstrings) there is one player who has impressed me more and more over the last few weeks. The young midfielder causes a massive divide in opinion amongst the fans, so I can only imagine the indecision is magnified ten fold in the mind of our outstanding manager.

Manuel Fernandes is the type of player Everton need, even at around £8 million.

What seems like a ridiculous statement given his relative inconsistency is one which I will back to the hilt and one which I hope Mr Moyes agrees with.

Admittedly he struggled for form and ability to keep hold of the ball when he returned from Spain, yet one argument you could never level at him is that he shunned his responsibilities. The knack to find a yard of space and demand posession is a quality all top midfielders have, and is something we see in Manny at a higher level than anyone since Dacourt delighted the Street End.

The greatest striker to grace any turf died one year before I was brought into this world, yet the ominous legacy and fabulous story of William R Dean has always been close to my heart and thoughts as my Everton education has unfolded.

As I watched the touching Dixie Dean play being acted out in Crosby on Monday I realised more than ever that the esteem in which William was held far outweighed anything we are likely to ever see again at Everton. Whilst very few clubs can realistically expect to have a true great in their annals anywhere near the stature of Dean, I have clung onto the slimmest of hopes that one day a true great will again arrive for all Evertonians to embrace.

The painful truth is that it was a massive slice of Grand Old Lady Luck that Dean was born where he was and, much more importantly, when he was. Can we ever expect a truly great player to ever grace the field of a team who is either not playing in the 'Champions' League or has more money than sense and will risk all in trying to grace the aforementioned competition?

There have been rumblings of discontent around the Gwladys Street recently about all manner of things be it the over the top size of the giant pies to the over the top style of play, but one area of disgruntlement which has caught my mind's eye is the marathon man himself, Andy Johnson.

There is a rapid race to jump on the bandwagon named 'He is not good enough after all' with an entourage of wagons emblazoned 'He runs around with no end product'. Whilst it is clear he has struggled for form and consistency a la Arteta this season, the simplistic notion he has lost all the ability he posessed when he joined the Moyes revolution is surely preventing a cause for his decreased influence on games being correctly diagnosed.

I can not be the only patron of the Grand Old Lady who cringes at the sight of AJ running his legs into a blur, I saw enough of Beattie trying to compensate his severe lack of footballing brain by running blindly at anything to try and fool the fans into thinking he was good enough. This is where AJ is receiving a poor deal as he has the footballing brain, he just isn't permitted to use it by his boss.