FOR EVERTON supporters the chance to finish above Liverpool in the Premier League tomorrow is the last tangible thing they could celebrate from a season which has entertained and dismayed in equal measures.
For the club’s players it should be a burning desire to restore professional pride, after their cross-city counterparts have won all three derbies during the campaign.
But for reasons that could matter infinitely more in the wider context of the coming summer, Everton can barely afford not to cling onto seventh place.
David Moyes’ side can finish no higher than seventh, but after drawing their last two games against Stoke City and Wolves, could yet be leapfrogged by the Reds, and Fulham, only to end up in ninth.
That’s an unpalatable outcome for more than just reasons of wounded pride.
An estimated £2.5m in Barclays Premier League prize money stands between seventh or ninth – or to put it another way, enough to buy five Darron Gibsons.
With Moyes likely, as ever, to be tasked with operating on the tightest of budgets when the summer transfer bidding war gets underway, the addition of that prize cash could be crucial.
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The season isn’t even over yet and a host of different names have been lazily linked with the Blues by media outlets blithely ignoring the financial constraints at Goodison.
It seems likely that, as in January, Moyes will have to sell some of his current first team squad if he is to be able to recruit.
But while the Blues were lucky enough then to be able to sell Diniyar Bilyaletdinov, a 26-year-old Russian international back to his homeland where his value had not depreciated beneath £5m, and prune Louis Saha from the wage bill, there are less obvious fringe players who other clubs will want to buy in the summer.
That raises the thorny prospect of Moyes having to consider bids for some of his key performers who are very much coveted elsewhere; think Phil Jagielka, Marouane Fellaini and Leighton Baines, so every penny of money he can recoup before player sales is, well, priceless.
Newcastle may well be bidding for a much larger cash influx if they can squeeze into the Champions League when they arrive at Goodison tomorrow, but for Everton every penny counts.
And just in case that there was anyone still labouring under the illusion that the result doesn’t matter, £2.5m is also half the price of a Nikica Jelavic.
How many other teams in the league wish they had a player with half of the Croatian’s goal-poaching ability?
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