Baines plays the partisan for Everton

One of the more laughable aspects of the transfer window is to hear the arrivals at a club tell how they’ve supported their new team since boyhood. Last year it was Craig Bellamy who justified his move from Blackburn Rovers to Liverpool by citing a childhood allegience. This year he’s playing for West Ham United. Bellamy’s juvenile affection for Anfield didn’t do him much good.

But does claiming allegiance make the fans any more sympathetic to a newcomer? I doubt it. Because like badge-kissing, it’s one of those gestures that looks contrived.

“This move is a dream for me,” is translated by the cynics to mean: “I never thought anyone would pay me 80 grand a week.” But it’s fun when it all goes wrong, as it has at Goodison Park this week.

Of course, the modern football player usually only supports ‘big’ clubs. Manchester United and, as mentioned before, seem to have a lot of professionals in their fanbase. So when one of the “small” clubs gets a chance to flaunt the partisan nature of their new acquisition, they jump at the chance. “He is a big Evertonian,” David Moyes said of Leighton Baines, on his arrival from Wigan Athletic.

Baines, on the other hand, showed a little reluctance to nail his blue colours to the mast of The People’s Club.

“I am a local lad and all my family support Everton so it’s good to be here at last,” the defender said, although in television interviews Baines seemed to intimate that he was a Blue.

Which made an interview with a magazine last year look like an outrageous example of the black journalistic art of the misquote. In answer to the question, “Who did you support as a boy,” the reply is: “Liverpool. As a local lad I used to watch from The Kop...”

So there’s hilarity from Kopites, who see this as another example of the ‘small-club syndrome’, with Everton desperate to underline their self-appointed People’s Club tagline by proving that another Scouser is Blue (subtext: Liverpool fans are all out-of-towners). Some Everton fans, on the other hand, will have labelled Baines a ‘closet Red’ and question his committment.

That’s madness. Baines is a fantastic buy for Everton and will give 100 per cent whenever he pulls on a blue shirt. And anyone who doubts that should look at how that boyhood Evertonian, Jamie Carragher, has come to symbolise everything that’s good about Anfield. Players should make their performances their PR for the fans. That’s all. Claiming you’re a supporter in a shirt will not help if you’re rubbish.

And if you’re a club that’s tied itself into a promotional vehicle built on a myth like the People’s Club, leave the players out of it. It’ll just embarrass them. Ask Leighton Baines.

If Baines’s mother was an Evertonian, he could take the ‘childhood fan’ stuff a step further. “I was an Everton fan in the womb,” he could say. Just leave out the bit about the birth and after.

Comments

[REDrascal]

So typical of everton(the Tesco car park club)to get it's players to claim childish aqllegance,they say they are the 'peoples club' I THINK THOU PROTESTS TOO MUCH.

[colin hughes(scouser)]

Tony, everton are NOT a small club and it is a fact that more scouse footballers support efc past and present e.g- fowler,Rush ,Mcmannaman,Rooney,Owen ,Hibbert,Stubbs,Nugent,Trundle,Brian Hughes, the list is endless and as Baines has said recently his father took him to anfield as a child but he did,nt care to much about lfc and stopped going to watch them.