MIKEL ARTETA collected all the accolades after last Saturday’s opening day win over Wigan, and quite rightly so. But here’s another, which I consider to be praise indeed. The two names which came to mind while I watched Arteta on Saturday were Alex Young and Trevor Steven, and you can’t get a bigger compliment than that. Both had exceptional balance, incredible skill and were easy on the eye. Arteta is the same and it’s easy to see why he is such a big crowd favourite. In fact if you talk about strengthening the current Everton line-up I’d say the only area you could look at presently is up front, because every other department looks in good shape – and of course there are still players like Phil Jagielka, Leighton Baines and Stephen Pienaar to come in. Ultimately I’m sure Joleon Lescott will move to centre-back and Baines will come in, but at the moment Alan Stubbs’ form has been so good that there has been no need to rush that. Lescott is fully deserving of a call-up to the England squad. He scored on Tuesday, which immediately thrusts him into the spotlight, but I’m sure Steve McClaren knows all about him already. He has a lot to offer and he certainly looks good enough for international football. The big problem for McClaren surrounds his goalkeeping options. For me there is still a question mark over Paul Robinson. There has always been a question mark over David James. But beyond that, apart from the inexperienced Rob Green there simply isn’t one currently first choice keeper for his club, which underlines the problems Steve has – problems caused by the number of foreign players invited to this country. There are plus points to that influx – seeing players like Arteta every week – but downsides for international bosses. A word of warning AS a manager I always used to say two things to my players before every season. One: Try and get the first home win under your belt as quickly as possible. And two, try and win away as soon as you can. Successfully completing those two targets means critics can’t write about them and the pressure is lessened. If you haven’t managed to win game for half-a-dozen matches or so, you can guarantee it will be the first thing people talk about before every away match. But Everton have got both those statistics out of the way already, which is great. A word of warning, however. We won our first three matches of the 1993-94 season. That campaign ended with the famous Wimbledon relegation. In 1984 we lost our first two, and went on to win the title! Oster poses a threat JOHN OSTER could be up against Everton tomorrow, a full decade after I brought him to Goodison Park. That move never really came off for the lad. Maybe it was too soon for him, perhaps he started believing he’d already made it when he got here – but for whatever reason he never consistently showed the ability I knew he had. When I was at Sheffield United he tore us apart once for Grimsby, and his potential was so good that Man United wanted to take him on an end of season trip to assess him. He left Everton and ended up at, among others, Sunderland, Barnsley, Grimsby again, Leeds and Burnley before Reading gave him a belated opportunity. He seems to have settled down again and Everton will have to watch him carefully. The lad certainly has talent and has the ability to undo Everton’s fine start. | 
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