The feel Goodison factor: Steven Pienaar ready to go back where he belongs

Supreme being: Steven Pienaar scores against Man U

Steven Pienaar’s frustrating 18 months at Tottenham Hotspur will end this week as South Africa’s iconic midfielder returns to Everton for a fee in the region of £5m (R60m).

While top players like Eleazar Rodgers change hands for a maximum of  a mere £550,000 (R7m) in the land of his birth, Goodison Park’s notoriously thrifty supremo Bill Kenwright is prepared to break the bank for Schilla, the Westbury wizard whose return to Everton on loan from Spurs revived the Toffees’ season last January.

With the side languishing in 12^th position before the loan danger’s arrival, Pienaar’s four goals and club-best six assists saw David Moyes’ side finish in seventh position – four points clear of neighbours Liverpool – and Moyes himself accepts: “Stevie just fits with Everton. My job is to get Pienaar back, I’ve been working at that for some time now. I know he’d like to be here.”

According to my sources, after an uncertain summer both clubs believe Pienaar will be playing for Everton when they kick-off the new Premier League season against Manchester United – who landed for their South African tour yesterday – at Goodison Park on August 20.

It was Pienaar’s £3m (R36m) cut-price move from Everton to Harry Redknapp’s Tottenham in January 2011 which led to my fall-out with South Africa’s “superagent” Rob Moore.

At the time, I said on SuperSport’s Thursday Night Live with Robert Marawa that it was a poor move. Moore called me from Barcelona and insisted I apologise for that statement but anybody could have told him Harry had enough midfielders on board in North London, with transformed Welsh full-back Gareth Bale having just made Pienaar’s left-of-midfield channel his own.

Now 30, Pienaar said at the time he was going to Spurs for Champions League football. Sadly, Tottenham fell just short of the top four in 2011 and were forced out when Chelsea won the trophy this year. And he made few friends among the notoriously fickle Spurs fans when he tweeted “well done Chelsea” after their rivals’ shock penalty shoot-out win over Bayern Munich that clinched the final European berth.

Pienaar’s contract was coming to an end at Goodison and with compatriot Bongani Khumalo also bound for Spurs at the time, it may have looked an attractive option. Less than two years later, Khumalo finds himself shipped out to Greek outfit PAOK Thessaloniki and Pienaar is “not needed” by new Spurs boss Andre Villas Boas.

The South African pair are not alone in leaving White Hart Lane – England midfielder Jermaine Jenas, French veteran William Gallas, England striker Jermain Defoe and Brazilian goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes are among a long list of not-so-Hotspurs with “for sale” written across their foreheads.

Croatian Luca Modric, set to be sold to Real Madrid before the transfer window closes, may open up a space in midfield, but with Bale, Rafa van der Vaart, Scott Parker and Aaron Lennon staying put as the new boys Gylfi Sigurdsson and Jan Vertonghen were unveiled last week, there is apparently no room for Pienaar despite his form for Everton last season.

The Bafana Bafana captain – who may yet the armband taken from him by new coach Gordon Igesund – was not included in the 25-strong picture of the Spurs squad in their new kit last week.

The Pienaar effect:

Before Pienaar’s return, Everton were 14^th in the Premier League.

After his arrival they were transformed in to the third-best side in the league.

Everton won 43% of their games with Pienaar, 37.5% without him.

Without Pienaar, Everton scored just 24 in 24 games. With him, they scored 26 in 14.

Pienaar played just 14 times for Everton but ended the season with the most assists, six.

In his half-season, Pienaar created 32 chances, third best among Everton players.

He also led the way in passes, pass accuracy and through balls.

For more of Pienaar’s incredible stats:

http://www.eplindex.com/14856/everton-steven-pienaar-vital-dispensable-opta-stats.html

My previous blogs concerning Steve Pienaar, Everton, Spurs and Rob Moore (note his comments):

 http://www.neal-collins.blogspot.com/2011/11/when-moore-is-less-re-appointed-bafana.html

http://www.neal-collins.blogspot.com/2012/02/curious-tale-of-steven-pienaars-year-at.htmlSteven Pienaar’s frustrating 18 months at Tottenham Hotspur will end this week as South Africa’s iconic midfielder returns to Everton for a fee in the region of £5m (R60m).

While top players like Eleazar Rodgers change hands for a maximum of  a mere £550,000 (R7m) in the land of his birth, Goodison Park’s notoriously thrifty supremo Bill Kenwright is prepared to break the bank for Schilla, the Westbury wizard whose return to Everton on loan from Spurs revived the Toffees’ season last January.

With the side languishing in 12^th position before the loan danger’s arrival, Pienaar’s four goals and club-best six assists saw David Moyes’ side finish in seventh position – four points clear of neighbours Liverpool – and Moyes himself accepts: “Stevie just fits with Everton. My job is to get Pienaar back, I’ve been working at that for some time now. I know he’d like to be here.”

According to my sources, after an uncertain summer both clubs believe Pienaar will be playing for Everton when they kick-off the new Premier League season against Manchester United – who landed for their South African tour yesterday – at Goodison Park on August 20.

It was Pienaar’s £3m (R36m) cut-price move from Everton to Harry Redknapp’s Tottenham in January 2011 which led to my fall-out with South Africa’s “superagent” Rob Moore.

At the time, I said on SuperSport’s Thursday Night Live with Robert Marawa that it was a poor move. Moore called me from Barcelona and insisted I apologise for that statement but anybody could have told him Harry had enough midfielders on board in North London, with transformed Welsh full-back Gareth Bale having just made Pienaar’s left-of-midfield channel his own.

Now 30, Pienaar said at the time he was going to Spurs for Champions League football. Sadly, Tottenham fell just short of the top four in 2011 and were forced out when Chelsea won the trophy this year. And he made few friends among the notoriously fickle Spurs fans when he tweeted “well done Chelsea” after their rivals’ shock penalty shoot-out win over Bayern Munich that clinched the final European berth.

Pienaar’s contract was coming to an end at Goodison and with compatriot Bongani Khumalo also bound for Spurs at the time, it may have looked an attractive option. Less than two years later, Khumalo finds himself shipped out to Greek outfit PAOK Thessaloniki and Pienaar is “not needed” by new Spurs boss Andre Villas Boas.

The South African pair are not alone in leaving White Hart Lane – England midfielder Jermaine Jenas, French veteran William Gallas, England striker Jermain Defoe and Brazilian goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes are among a long list of not-so-Hotspurs with “for sale” written across their foreheads.

Croatian Luca Modric, set to be sold to Real Madrid before the transfer window closes, may open up a space in midfield, but with Bale, Rafa van der Vaart, Scott Parker and Aaron Lennon staying put as the new boys Gylfi Sigurdsson and Jan Vertonghen were unveiled last week, there is apparently no room for Pienaar despite his form for Everton last season.

The Bafana Bafana captain – who may yet the armband taken from him by new coach Gordon Igesund – was not included in the 25-strong picture of the Spurs squad in their new kit last week.

The Pienaar effect:

Before Pienaar’s return, Everton were 14^th in the Premier League.

After his arrival they were transformed in to the third-best side in the league.

Everton won 43% of their games with Pienaar, 37.5% without him.

Without Pienaar, Everton scored just 24 in 24 games. With him, they scored 26 in 14.

Pienaar played just 14 times for Everton but ended the season with the most assists, six.

In his half-season, Pienaar created 32 chances, third best among Everton players.

He also led the way in passes, pass accuracy and through balls.

For more of Pienaar’s incredible stats:

http://www.eplindex.com/14856/everton-steven-pienaar-vital-dispensable-opta-stats.html

My previous blogs concerning Steve Pienaar, Everton, Spurs and Rob Moore (note his comments):

 http://www.neal-collins.blogspot.com/2011/11/when-moore-is-less-re-appointed-bafana.html

http://www.neal-collins.blogspot.com/2012/02/curious-tale-of-steven-pienaars-year-at.html

No answers to the questions swirling around Gary Speed's death

The mystery surrounding the tragic death of Wales manager Gary Speed deepens. Yesterday, his close friend Alan Shearer asked the question everyone needs answered. He said simply: “Why Speedo, didn't you give me or one of your other close mates a ring, if you were feeling so bad?”
And Speed’s agent Hayden Evans, best man at his wedding to wife Louise, failed to cast any further light on the 42-year-old’s apparent decision to hang himself in the garage of his Cheshire home on Saturday night. He said: "Louise is bewildered. They didn’t argue. She just doesn't understand it."
A post-mortem will be held today at 3pm GMT where details of Speed’s death will be clarified. Current reports suggest he may have hung himself at around 11.30pm on Saturday night. Police were called to the house in Huntingdon at 7am on Sunday morning and the news of his death was released just before Swansea City – the only Welsh side in the Premier League - kicked-off their game against Aston Villa.
After a minute’s silence filled with warm applause, Speed’s former Newcastle team-mate, Villa goalkeeper Shay Given, was inconsolable, weeping openly as a 0-0 draw which should never have been played dragged to a conclusion. What was it Bill Shankly said? “Football isn’t life and death. It’s more important than that.” Bollocks.
But the mystery remains. Speed appeared on BBC’s Football Forum in Manchester on Saturday morning, where he talked on air with former Leeds team-mate Gary McAllister, making jokes and promising to play golf next week. He then watched a televised game with Shearer in the studio.
As rumours of a row with Louise and a possible kiss-and-tell story lurking in the tabloids swirled around the internet, Hayden told The Sun this morning: "Gary and Louise were happily married and anyone who knows them will tell you that. This is why it's a mystery.
"We genuinely at the moment have no clue whatsoever what has caused it and I have been with the family all day. Everybody is asking the same question and no one has an answer. We are all in shock."
Many on Twitter have asked if Speed suffered from depression, blamed for the attempted suicides of boxer Frank Bruno and footballer Paul Gascoigne, sportsmen of similar ages over the past decade.
But with Speed taking Wales 70 places up the FIFA rankings in less than a year and widely revered for being a level-headed veteran of 840 games including a record 84 games for his nation before his retirement, there is no suggestion of any mental illness. Never has been.
Hayden, who said Speed was “happy as can be” when they spoke on the telephone on Saturday night, insisted: “Bouts of depression? None whatsoever. The one thing the family and me - as one of his closest friends - would totally refute is that. There was no indication of any problems and never has been."
Shearer is equally mystified. The pair played together at Newcastle for six winters and still take family holidays together. He said: "The question I keep asking myself and have done since I heard the dreadful news is 'Why? Why Speedo, didn't you give me or one of your other close mates a ring, if you were feeling so bad?'
"Why he couldn't have picked up the phone for a chat in those moments before he did what he did, I'll never know. None of us will.
"I was with him on Saturday watching the Stoke game and arranging next weekend.

"He was coming up with his wife to stay at my house. We were going to various charity dinners. I left the studio, shook his hand and said, 'See you next weekend.' Unfortunately I won't."
Shearer, like so many in football this week, is finding the loss of one of the game’s most respected players impossible to accept: "This just doesn't happen to one of your best mates. My wife is in bits. We just keep thinking of Louise, the two boys and his mum and dad. I can't imagine the pain they're going through. I can't get my head around the fact I was with him and he was happy, joking.
"We were having a laugh and joke about golf trips and holidays that we went on together last year. We were planning our next holiday in Portugal next summer with the families and the kids.
"I played against him many times, but when Kenny Dalglish signed him for Newcastle straight away we struck up a relationship. You're bound to have arguments along the way in football — but no one ever did with Gary.
"No one had a bad word for him. He was what you'd describe as a proper bloke, a proper man. You could depend on him."

Steven Pienaar: If you're from Westbury Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur's a doddle!

Bafana Bafana captain Steve Pienaar insists he has “mixed feelings” but “no regrets” over his R35m move from Everton to Tottenham Hotspur in January.

Pienaar, voted Player of the Year by fans at Goodison Park in 2010, chose not to sign a new deal at Everton and moved to Spurs in a cut-price deal with just six months left on his contract.

But injury and selection problems – he was always going to have trouble forcing his way past a fit Gareth Bale on the left of Harry Redknapp’s midfield – have seen him play just one game for Spurs this season. And that was in a second-string Europa League outfit in the defeat against Rubin Kazan in Russia just before the international break.

Pienaar, outstanding in South Africa’s 1-1 draw against Africa’s No1 side Ivory Coast in Port Elizabeth on Saturday, told The Independent on his return to England his week: “Yes, it’s been a bumpy road at White Hart Lane. It has been a year of mixed feelings, but hopefully I can make it a successful move. Don’t have to show the Spurs fans what I can do, they’ve seen me play against them for Everton.”

But Pienaar rejected a late bid from Chelsea to move to their London neighbours – and ignored warnings from Everton boss David Moyes that he would live to regret his decision to leave Liverpool. But the 29-year-old from Westbury near Johannesburg said: "Regrets? No, not at all. It was a very hard decision to make. It was hard to leave Everton as club and Liverpool as a city. The people I had around me, the players, most of the supporters were very good to me, and I will always be grateful to them.

"It was hard to go, but in life you have to make decisions. I made this one as a footballer and as a human being, and I don't have any regrets about what I chose to do. Not at all."

Pienaar, who left South Africa’s Ajax Cape Town for their mother club in Amsterdam before moving to Borussia Dortmund, was once told he would never play football again when he suffered a serious nerve injury.

He admits: "I had a tough time at Ajax. When I damaged my nerve, they said I'd never play again. I came back strong. I had a difficult spell at Dortmund, and I came back strong. Things like that help you appreciate the things that you do have.

“Being a footballer is only a short career. Having been through all of that helps me appreciate the time I am on the field. It drives you to fight for your place.

“Harry Redknapp (currently off sick for a month after heart surgery) has been very supportive. I want to be part of this team, and I want to show I did not come here by mistake. I have come back twice already, and I will come back again.”

Pienaar has proved he can return from adversity before. Ever since he was first spotted by the Ajax scouts playing for Westbury Arsenal – not a name his current club will enjoy – Pienaar has shown durability, a willingness to succeed despite the odds.

Now running a charity for jailed Johannesburg teenagers, Pienaar offers this explanation of his bouncebackability: "When I grew up in Westbury it was the toughest place in South Africa outside of Soweto. The crime rate was high and life expectancy was short.

"Because our house was in the area where the drug gangs hang out, they'd say to me 'You be our look-out. If you see someone you don't know, whistle.' Sometimes I'd get involved but I was more afraid of my mum than the gangs.

“If she found money in my pockets she'd want to know where it came from. I'd say we'd played football against other boys for money. It was difficult to stay out of trouble. It was a dodgy area and the temptation was huge. I'd be so envious of the boys who'd turn up with new sneakers from their drugs money. But I knew I'd get a hiding from my mum if I got involved.

"Now I realise how fortunate I was to have a mum who was always on my case to get an education. She brought up four children on her own and it was because she was strict we escaped gangs and drug dealers."