Neville Southall shrugged it off with his usual homespun wisdom but it’s come to something when even machines are being accused of being infected by football’s supposed ‘anti-Everton’ agenda.
While it’s a pretty common belief – especially when you’re struggling – that the world is against you, for a long time now, Blues have felt that many outsiders within the game do not look on them particularly favourably. Whether it’s match officials not giving them the rub of the green; over-the-top criticism of England number one Jordan Pickford (something that both Southall and Kevin Campbell have branded “a witch hunt”); London-centric scribes bigging up teams from the capital who have achieved far less than Everton or the legions of former Liverpool players we see on our television screens painting a skewed picture through their rose-tinted glasses, those at Goodison Park possess what they feel is a raft of evidence that many outsiders in the game aren’t exactly rooting for them.
Last year, ahead of Frank Lampard’s side staying up despite what was the joint lowest equivalent points total in the club’s history, Southall himself issued the following rallying cry when the Blues dropped into the relegation zone: “You have got to have a siege mentality.
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“You have got to go, you know what there’s nobody initially that wants us to stay up, there’s nobody in the media that wants us to stay up. You know what we need to do it ourselves and then we can shove it back in their faces at the end of the season.”
With a record 751 appearances for Everton and the club’s most-decorated player, Southall was widely-regarded as being the best player in the world in his position during the peak of his powers at Goodison Park but that doesn’t seem to have prevented him from being the latest victim of what could be seen as a show of contempt towards the Blues. But could a computer really be programmed to think in such a way?
Evertonian @CrazyCraven01 took to Twitter to post a list of the ‘Top Keepers of all-time' according to ChatGPT (there’s more on what that is to come) and declared: “I’ll seriously debate this, where’s Neville Southall,” tagging in the Everton legend.
Replies included: “Any list without Southall in it is redundant” (@BefordToffee74); “Criminal that Neville Southall is ignored by this list” (@NormanPatt); “Ridiculous without Big Nev” (@CMG1878); “Southall is certainly the best keeper I’ve seen, should be on that list, no question” (@LyonShaun) and “Having a laugh, how is Neville Southall not in the top 3 of that list” (@SuperShirts2). Others were more cynical with @JohnDay1878 remarking: “Played for Everton bud and as we know they will ignore him on that basis” while @Connstevie proclaimed: “This is why AI will never take over the world.”
When looking at the list, there certainly aren’t what you would describe as bad or wildcard choices, although they seem to have been chosen from a narrow pool given that they’re all European and from successful nations at international level. Other than Dutchman Edwin van der Sar, ranked eighth, who won a brace of Champions Leagues at club level, everyone on the list won major honours with their country – 1) Lev Yashin, Soviet Union (European Championship 1960); 2) Dino Zoff, Italy (World Cup 1982, European Championship 1968); 3) Gordon Banks, England (World Cup 1966); 4) Peter Schmeichel, Denmark (European Championship 1992); 5) Gianluigi Buffon, Italy (World Cup 2006); 6) Manuel Neuer, Germany (World Cup 2014); 7) Iker Casillas, Spain (World Cup 2010, European Championship 2008, 2012); 9) Sepp Maier, West Germany (World Cup 1974, European Championship 1972); 10) Oliver Kahn, Germany (European Championship 1996).
So perhaps it’s Southall’s Welsh nationality rather than his Everton career that sees him omitted. But at this juncture we should perhaps delve a little deeper into what ChatGPT actually is. It’s an artificial-intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by San Francisco-based company OpenAI and launched last November.
AI is something of a hot topic right now and there have even been claims it could have a future role in journalism with reporters inputting a few key points and the AI could generate a complete article, saving time and even potentially improving the quality of the writing. While that sounds plausible in theory, this correspondent remains unconvinced as it takes more than just facts and figures to produce interesting pieces, especially in the highly-subjective sphere of covering football.
ChatGPT might have already garnered attention for its detailed responses and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge but its uneven factual accuracy has been identified as a significant drawback. Back in January, songwriter Nick Cave was sent a song supposedly written in his own style by ChatGPT and didn’t mince his words, responding with: “With all the love and respect in the world, this song is bulls***, a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human, and, well, I don’t much like it.”
By the same token, an AI device can look at who won what and spit out 10 impressive names from the goalkeeping fraternity but how can a computer actually tell us with any kind of authority who is or isn’t the best in their field? The only way a machine might possibly top the human brain for such an observation were if it undertook a detailed scientific examination of the physics behind every save an individual made in their career, their positioning when the ball was struck and what velocity it was hit with et cetera which obviously is not possible from a practical point of view and even if it was, you wouldn’t trust it to come up with a plausible answer.
Like FiveThirtyEight’s so-called ‘supercomputer’ that keeps reassessing whether Everton will stay up or not after each round of results, there are so many real life intangibles that AI cannot input when coming to such conclusions and even then, as we all know, it’s still a game of opinions. Let’s leave the last word to Nev himself then, who magnanimously stated: “I never worry about being on lists for this or that. I won all I needed when I was accepted by the Everton fans – harsh critics and rightly so – it’s their club. I am incredibly proud of that.”
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