Recently by Myles Shackley

SOMETIMES you have to just hold your hands up, shrug off the contentious decisions, acknowledge the bit of luck you might have had and be pleased to have witnessed an absolute cracker of a match.

There was a time when games against Villa were ones that even Sky would have winced at the thought of televising.

You can't fool all of the people all of the time, and all that. Nowadays you feel cheated if they provide less than five goals a throw.

Everton and the Birmingham Deans went toe-to-toe for the third time this season and, once again, the watching public can genuinely feel they got what they paid for.

I DON'T know if it's a genetic predisposition, something that we inherit when we're chosen Blue, but I can't think of a single Evertonian that goes into one of these games confident of a win.

The quirks of the Premier League fixture list and the lottery of the FA Cup draw has ensured that the noble half of the city is pitched into battle with its more uncouth younger cousin for the second time in less than a week.

Had we laid waste at Anfield on Monday night - and we had the chance - my natural reaction would have been to expect an avenging defeat of biblical proportions on Sunday.

WELL, it won't rank as one of the all-time greats, but Sunday's game had pretty much everything you could wish for.

In what made for something of a refreshing change, both sides came out wanting to win and it ensured that the 90 minutes was open, fast paced, error strewn and laden with half chances at either end.

We even had a good old fashioned bounce ball to enjoy, as referees finally seem to have learned that people falling over doesn't automatically equate to foul deeds perpetrated by dastardly footfall.

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IT'S a peculiar time to follow Walton's finest.

The recent splurge of victories and points have provided a welcome respite to what had been a dismal start to the season.

And with nigh on a third of the season already behind us, it's quite the relief to be looking down on more teams than we're looking up at.

DIFFERENT opposition, same old script. The defensive frailties which have punctuated our indifferent start to the season were once again evident, particularly for Hull's comedy second.

The bedrock upon which our recent relative successes have been built is now looking to be the area most likely to undo any good work. It's becoming increasingly worrying - not just in terms of the numbers of goals we're shipping, but also in view of the teams we're conceding them to.

We've not played anyone decent yet but we're still conceding freakish goals to ordinary sides on a regular basis.

EVEN when blinded by the sorry sight of Mitch Ward, Farrelly, Thomsen, Angell et al, my Everton FC souvenir glass has always been half full. The glass is now so evaporated, however, one's throat is like Gandhi's flip-flop.

When the fixtures came out, West Brom away was seen as the perfect opportunity to get our first away win to get us in the top three or four after a relatively easy first six games. O how the times have painfully changed.

AS a mate of mine quipped after Saturday's result, I preferred the pre-season - even though we weren't signing players, we weren't dropping points at home either.

I've tried to stay positive about the comings and goings - or more accurately, the goings - at Goodison over the summer.

So much ink has been spilled over our inactivity and our bumbling from one PR disappointment to the next that I just shut my eyes and hoped everything would be ok.

One game into the season and it's painfully obvious that this isn't something that will just sort itself out if left alone. We need new faces and we need them quickly.

We were woeful in the first half.

Blackburn played through us, around us and over us with minimal resistance. It came as no surprise when we went behind and our guests were so far on top that it was actually embarrassing to go in level at half-time.