Is there really an anti-Everton agenda in football? For better or for worse, nobody knows Everton better than Evertonians themselves but it’s always illuminating to see how the wider world regards you and of late Blues have not been feeling the love from many outsiders.
Like the global phenomenon that everyone in the next village, town or city down the road from yours are all nuts – a paranoia that your team gets a raw deal is a pretty standard state of mind for football supporters whose emotions when it comes to their team are based on deep seated passions rather than logic or reason. However, after enduring what has been a tumultuous year so far both on and off the pitch, long-suffering Goodison Park patrons could be forgiven for thinking that the world (or at least significant chunks of the footballing community) is against them.
We’re not just talking about neighbours Liverpool here, although given their huge global fanbase and legions of former players now deployed as pundits, those with affiliations to the team across Stanley Park do have considerable sway when it comes to conducting the mood music. There’s nothing abnormal or indeed wrong about a fierce local rivalry and 130 years of Blues and Reds – as they would eventually become – trying to outdo each other has to a degree helped to ensure that this city for a long time had two successful football clubs with the bar of expectation being consistently set high unlike other regions where both sides would endure substantial fallow periods like Sheffield or the North East.
When it comes to the general relationship between Everton and Liverpool fans right now, all is not rosy in the garden but that’s an entirely different article to be written – a whole essay could be penned on the reaction to the new stadium being built at Bramley-Moore Dock alone – but here the concern is with those who, on face value at least, should have no natural hatred towards the Blues. Evertonians started to notice this hostile disposition towards their club during last season’s battle to stay in the Premier League when many in other parts of the country seemed to be almost rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of their demise.
Individual reasons behind such behaviour might be varied but while Evertonians are rightly proud of their club having played more top flight seasons than any other – avoiding the drop ensured this is their 120 th campaign in the elite level – some others seem to view them as a somewhat staid relic of football’s past, enduring a stasis in the Premier League, which while they’ll never win it (Manchester City could now go level with the Blues’ nine titles if they’re champions again this season), they’ll never go down either. Such observations might be easy to make from the outside but those who think in such a manner didn’t have to live through the Wimbledon game in 1994, Coventry City in 1998 or indeed Crystal Palace this year.
Is this just petty-minded jealousy from followers of smaller clubs or part of the wider British psyche of enjoying seeing a lofty individual or institution being taken down a peg or two and if so, should after a generation without winning any major honours, Everton see it as some kind of back-handed compliment that they’re still seen as one of the big boys and a giant to be toppled? Either way, the living legend that is Neville Southall felt compelled to say the following after the club he made a record 751 appearances for, dropped into the bottom three back in the springtime: “You have got to have a siege mentality.
“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.”
That’s exactly what Everton – and their fans, who went the extra mile in the final month of the campaign to get their team’s under-achieving players over the line with some super human levels of support – did as despite finishing on the joint lowest equivalent points total in the club’s history, they narrowly avoided what would have been a first relegation in 71 years. The day after the Blues secured their top-flight status for another year with the aforementioned dramatic 3-2 comeback win over Patrick Vieira’s side, Burnley and Leeds United threatened to try and decide such matters off the pitch with a complaint to the Premier League over Everton’s spending but by the end of June that too was dropped after the pair received assurances that Goodison Park chiefs had complied with the rules.
Everton didn’t seem to be fighting a battle merely against their relegation rivals though. Back in February, after his side were denied a spot-kick against Manchester City after what looked like a clear handball by Rodri, Frank Lampard said: “I have a three-year-old daughter at home who could tell you that was a penalty.” The outcry gained plenty of attention – presumably because the decision was also potentially detrimental to Liverpool’s title hopes – and after chief executive Denise Barrett-Baxendale made a formal complaint the Blues received apologies from PGMOL managing director Mike Riley but ultimately that counted for nothing.
READ MORE: Ben Brereton Diaz backed to make step up at Everton after 'unlocking potential'
READ MORE: Everton players appear suited and booted as club sign new fashion deal
Having only arrived at the club on the last day of January, manager Lampard, who enjoyed a hugely-successful playing career at Chelsea, is still relatively new to such raw deal treatment but he too now finds himself in the thick of things and his complaints over not being awarded a penalty against Liverpool at Anfield landed him with a £30,000 fine from the FA. Last weekend it seemed particularly ironic for Evertonians that five months after the club’s appeal for an Allan sending off for a challenge against Newcastle United which was upgraded after a VAR check, the Magpies’ own player Kieran Trippier had his red card downgraded to a yellow despite bringing down Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne with an almost identikit tackle.
Everton’s current search for a striker (and holding midfielder for that matter) have left Lampard as an increasingly frustrated figure in post-match press conferences with his team’s failings in the final third as obvious to him as they are to everyone else but withstanding the challenges of navigating a transfer window that remains open beyond the Blues’ first six fixtures of the campaign, the 44-year-old remains a hugely-popular and unifying figure among a browbeaten fanbase who were deeply divided before his appointment. Supporters recognise that after half a dozen Farhad Moshiri appointments in as many years, the last thing the club needs is another change in the dugout any time soon.
That seems to cut little ice beyond L4 though as swathes of self-styled experts appear ready to sharpen their knives and pile on the pressure for Lampard in a much sterner manner than Steven Gerrard whose record at Aston Villa is similar to that of his former midfield rival’s at Everton. There are so many different elements in which someone seems to have it in for the Blues and in some cases they appear to be reaching ridiculous proportions.
Only today, Parisian journalist Fabrice Hawkins went as far as reporting that while petrodollar-fuelled Paris Saint-Germain would be prepared to let Idrissa Gueye join either Porto or Sporting CP on a free transfer, they’d still demand a fee from Everton! Statements like that are almost comical from a Blues perspective but something that is no laughing matter is the continued witch hunt against Jordan Pickford.
This correspondent does not take the criticism of fellow journalists lightly but an article published in recent hours from a national title trotted out the tedious trope that Gareth Southgate supposedly has a decision on his hands about England’s goalkeeper. Spoiler alert: He actually really hasn’t.
The article talks about with the World Cup looming, Dean Henderson, Nick Pope and Aaron Ramsdale (whose last Three Lions outing was a shambles) will be competing to “oust Jordan Pickford as England’s number one” – words that sound like he’s some evil dictator clinging on to power against an oppressed populace rather than one of the national team manager’s most-trusted lieutenants and penalty hero from the previous finals plus Golden Glove winner at the Euros last summer. There’s also another line which is just wholly inaccurate but woefully predictable when it comes to sweeping generalisations from people who don’t watch or care about Everton.
“Pickford has kept his England spot, largely due to his consistent performances under Southgate.” This is the same Jordan Pickford who was a hundredth of a point behind Richarlison when it came to having the highest average mark for squad members who had made more than a dozen appearances among the ECHO’s Everton player ratings for last season.
For all the Blues’ problems last term, their goalkeeper was not one of them and Pickford also won the prize for Premier League Save of the Season after his incredible stop to deny Chelsea captain Cesar Azpilicueta. While it’s not necessarily in his own interests to say so, Lampard, while on Everton’s trip to the USA last month, declared it to be the best save of the entire Premier League era that now stretches back 30 years.
Although it’s almost a century since Victorian football luminary Steve Bloomer coined the phrase ‘The School of Science’ when proclaiming: “We owe a great deal to Everton. No matter where they play, and no matter whether they are well or badly placed in the league table, they always manage to serve football of the highest scientific order,” the Blues have long had to endure something of an image problem with certain outsiders.
Gavin Buckland’s illuminating book Money Can’t Buy us Love about Everton in the 1960s, describes how a combination of John Moores’ big spending and a seemingly haughty, almost aristocratic manner from within the club’s corridors of power made them look standoffish. After all, manager Harry Catterick’s reluctance to welcome television cameras placed him at odds to Liverpool’s extrovert boss Bill Shankly who welcomed publicity and was always ready to provide a sound bite while directing the swaying of the Kop to a Merseybeat tune.
Also, one of the reasons the film Everton Howard’s Way was made was to ensure the club’s most-successful team from the mid-1980s finally got the credit they deserved after often being overlooked when it came to recalling the great sides of English football. Evertonians don’t crave being at the top of any popularity contest with other fanbases, after all these are the supporters who sing: “We’ll f*** you up, whoever you may be,” and the trials and tribulations they’ve faced in recent times generally makes them thick-skinned individuals but considering they’re not being despised through being winners, the sheer level of animosity towards their club right now from many does seem wholly out of proportion to their current standing within the game.
READ NEXT
-
Everton in 'discussions' for £14million transfer of Man United midfielder
-
Amadou Onana learns 'uncomfortable' lesson as Anthony Gordon question lingers
-
Frank Lampard gives Everton transfer updates on Anthony Gordon and Dele Alli
-
Everton player ratings as Demarai Gray lively and Nathan Patterson impressive at Fleetwood
-
Everton suffer another injury blow in warm-up ahead of Fleetwood Town match
