Two households, both alike in timidity. For both Everton and Arsenal the shake ups start on Sunday but there must have been times when their respective new managers, both perched in the directors’ box, wished they could include mind over matter in the list of skills for which they had been recruited. Carlo Ancelotti and Mikel Arteta inherit teams that need pretty much everything knocking into them: common sense, confidence, patterns of play, how not to miscontrol a five-yard pass into touch. They could not do that from up high and instead had to chew over a dire affair whose scruffiness may not be outdone all season.
During one particularly grim sequence Ancelotti, sitting alongside Bill Kenwright, could be seen wanly shaking his head. Midway through another, a pensive chew on his spectacles. Too late, Carlo. He had already made a brisk first public appearance. His much-trailed arrival was confirmed an hour and 10 minutes before kick-off and it was not long before, as he was shown towards his seat, he could be seen grinning into a succession of cameraphone lenses. He made the time; Ancelotti may be a serial winner but he is clubbable, a twinkle never too far beneath those arched eyebrows, and knows how to charm his public. Attracting a manager of his calibre is a clear sign of the direction in which Everton wish to travel but a certain earthiness goes down well here and the club’s inertia is hardly suited to airs and graces.
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