Sometimes football supporters can be a tiny bit delusional.

Last weekend a group of Everton fans forked out some of their hard-earned money to fly a protest banner over the ground before their team’s away game with Southampton (presumably it’s cheaper than in Liverpool).

The banner read “Kenwright & co, time to go”, suggesting they believe it may be the appropriate juncture for owner Bill Kenwright and his fellow directors to sell up and move on.

Now if this were a club being badly run, I would understand their protest. No proper fan wants to see their team controlled by people who know nothing about what the club means to the community.

Equally I would sympathise with the protest if Kenwright was clinging to power because he is on an ego trip or because he enjoys the thrill of being the man who signs the cheques.

But neither of those two scenarios is even remotely accurate.

From the day he took over at Goodison Park, Kenwright has done his best to run the club sensibly and with its long-term interests at heart.

True, they haven’t spent money like some others have, but that is purely because Kenwright wanted to make sure they lived within their means.

And while it is undeniably true that Everton have sold some talented players over the past few years, it has to be said that they have also brought some good – and expensive – ones in. Uniquely, they are a selling club that is not afraid of buying too.

Kenwright is fully aware that he may have taken Everton as far as he can with his own limited finances. In fact, he has been trying to sell the club for years but has yet to find an appropriate person to take over.

If you could accuse him of anything, then maybe he is being too cautious when it comes to finding a new owner.

But we all know what happened to Portsmouth, Blackburn Rovers and Leeds United when they ended up in the hands of people who weren’t fit to run a football club.

Can anyone blame a man for being cautious when he is selling a club he dearly loves?

It would be easy to jump on the current bandwagon of finding a dodgy billionaire who fancies a piece of the Premiership television pie.

It would be easy to jump on the bandwagon of finding a dodgy billionaire who fancies a piece of the Premiership television pie

But Kenwright wants to ensure that when he does hand over it is to someone who has the right plans and intentions for Everton, somebody who is going to get them back to challenging for the title.

There are lots of club owners around who deserve flyover protests. Some of them by the Red Arrows. But Kenwright, an honourable and passionate owner, is not one of them.

Fittingly Everton went on to win the Southampton game 3-0, a cracking result against a team that finished five places higher than them last season.

A repeat performance against Manchester City this afternoon is unlikely. But you never know what might happen at this early stage of the season.

But whatever does happen, there is absolutely no point in Everton’s fans blaming a man who genuinely only wants the best for the club.

All a bit nervy at Stamford Bridge

John Terry wasn’t substituted at half time against Manchester City so Jose Mourinho could send some coded message to Roman Abramovich.

If he’s nothing else, then Mourinho is outspoken and forthright. If he wants to sign more players he would sit down in a room with Abramovich and demand it. Not play stupid mind games that will ultimately damage his own reputation.

Last Sunday, Terry was taken off the pitch because there was a fairly decent chance the team would be better without him . It’s as simple as that.

Mourinho saw that his defence was being torn apart by City and he made a tactical move to try and improve their fortunes for the second 45 minutes.

Whether it worked is open to debate. Chelsea got better in the second half but still conceded two more goals.

As manager it is Mourinho’s job to take tough decisions in the interests of his team, and substituting Terry for the first time in 177 Premier League games is the sort of difficult choice he is paid millions to make.

Let’s face it, at 34, Terry is no longer the player he once was. He is still a great defender and will no doubt be the first name down on the team sheet for the vast majority of Chelsea’s games this season.

But there will be occasions, like against City, when he is exposed by faster and more mobile attacks. Equally, the chances of him simply having a bad day at the office have started to increase, as his legs won’t always be able to keep up with what his brain is suggesting they might want to do.

That’s a simple fact of life and getting older.

All in all it hasn’t exactly been a great start to the season for Mourinho – on and off the pitch.

A draw with Swansea followed by defeat to City have left his team languishing near the bottom of the Premier League, a very inauspicious start for defending champions.

Added to that there is the controversy surrounding the Special One’s spat with his medical team, when he lost his temper with club doctor Eva Carneiro and physiotherapist Jon Fearn for going on to the pitch to treat Eden Hazard.

Although that was probably nothing more than frustration at what was unfolding in the Swansea game, it does give the impression that not all is calm and settled in Mourinho’s head at the moment.

Some people have put all these things – the Terry substitution, the poor start and the medical meltdown – together and decided it is conclusive proof that Mourinho is unhappy at Chelsea and wants out, possibly to catch a flight to Bayern.

But I don’t buy it. He has just signed a new contract at Stamford Bridge, and when he took over at Chelsea for the second time it was with the intention of building an Alex Ferguson-style legacy, not running away after a couple of years.

What I think has happened is that Mourinho may have rested on his laurels a bit this close season. They won the title relatively easily last year and I don’t think he realised just how much effort the rest of the top four were going to put in over the summer to close the gap.

But the gap has not only been closed, it might have opened in the other direction.

The signing of Pedro from under Manchester United’s noses will no doubt have cheered up Mourinho.

And I would be surprised if they didn’t sign John Stones from Everton before the end of the transfer window.

Will those two be enough to reverse the Chelsea’s current slide? Only time will tell, I suppose.

What I do expect to happen, however, is for West Bromwich Albion to be the unfortunate recipients of a Chelsea bounce back this afternoon.

Hold on to your hats, West Brom fans, this might not be very pretty.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade

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