As Goodison Park fizzed, banged and crashed like a huge bubbling cauldron about to reach boiling point when the Everton and Newcastle United players took to the field, one senior member of the Merseyside pack who has been all over Europe with his work was heard to utter from the press box that when like this, the Blues’ fanbase are the closest thing to their counterparts at Napoli.
This must be taken as a huge compliment for loyal but long-suffering Evertonians. However, while both clubs endured their most-successful eras to date back in the 1980s, these two blue collar outfits from proud and fiercely-independent cities whose inhabitants often feel a breed apart from the rest of their respective countries are currently poles apart in terms of where their teams are currently at.
For all the pre-match passion from their supporters, Everton’s 4-1 home defeat to the Magpies leaves them with just one win from their last 10 matches and in desperate need for a major upturn in momentum if they’re to avoid their first relegation in 72 years while Napoli are on the brink of their first Serie A title since 1990 which marked the end of their glory days with Diego Maradona. Another significant difference of course is that Naples, like Newcastle upon Tyne, is one of European football’s biggest single team conurbations unlike Liverpool where an intense rivalry across Stanley Park has fuelled two giants for over 130 years and despite the Reds’ huge global appeal, many thousands of Scousers – for now at least – still choose to follow the city’s senior club.
With Everton’s new stadium currently being built at Bramley-Moore Dock, the loss to Newcastle United might well prove to be the last top flight game under the lights at ‘The Grand Old Lady’ but while Blues should be looking forward to an exciting new era by the Mersey waterfront, they’re increasingly resembling an archaic football institution. Back in 1971 when Goodison’s triple decker Main Stand was completed, the elite end of English football was in equilibrium with Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal all level on the most League Championships won with seven apiece.
However, in the half century or so since, while United have won 13 more, Liverpool a dozen and even Arsenal, who now look poised to be overhauled in this year’s race (which would see Manchester City go level with Everton), have been crowned champions some six further times. The Blues in contrast have two titles in the corresponding period – the same as Derby County – and none since 1987 now, by far the longest such drought in their history.
Although Evertonians have begrudgingly had to come to accept the financial realities of 21st century football that have severely eroded their chances of challenging again, one badge of honour they have long clung onto is their record-breaking haul of top flight seasons, including an unbroken run stretching back until 1954 but even that now is in serious jeopardy. Just how has it come to this though?
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In less than 18 months, Newcastle United have already displayed the kind of dramatic upturn in fortunes that a wise injection of funds can bring to a club. After finding themselves strapped for cash for most of the Premier League era, many beleaguered Blues also felt like they’d won the lottery when Bill Kenwright brought in Farhad Moshiri but just like so many such windfalls for recipients who didn’t previously have such spending power, it’s now in serious danger of all ending in tears because of wild and wasteful profligacy.
Such boom and bust though – last summer the owner admitted “we have not always spent significant amounts of money wisely” – has seen the splurges of his early years make way for what now resembles a managed decline over the past couple of seasons and even though Moshiri told fans in January that “If we need a striker, we’ll get one,” a chronically goal-shy Everton were the only club involved in the relegation battle not to strengthen their squad in the winter transfer window despite selling Anthony Gordon to Newcastle United for £45million. It’s not just a lack of firepower that is severely hampering the Blues’ survival hopes though.
Manager Sean Dyche acknowledged after the game that the imbalance within Everton’s squad has been well-documented and one of the most-damning indicators of this is how they’re currently missing Seamus Coleman so badly. It remains unclear why Scotland international Nathan Patterson, who started the seasons as first choice right-back, can’t get a look in right now – something his gaffer has been asked about – but Dyche’s persistence with the struggling Ben Godfrey in the position after giving Mason Holgate, another player more at home in the centre of defence, a go at Crystal Palace only to have him sent off, looks to be a major head-scratcher.
Coleman of course remains the Blues’ club captain and is arguably their best player in the position of the Premier League era but he’ll be 35 later this year and obtained his UEFA B coaching licence over three years ago. At a better-run Everton he might now be fulfilling the kind of understudy role modern day icon Leighton Baines played on the opposite full-back flank for his last couple of seasons after Lucas Digne’s arrival.
However, rather than it coming to quality over quantity at this advanced stage of the veteran’s career, the Blues have already required him to net the winning goal from an outrageous angle in one of Dyche’s three victories and during his current injury absence, the team look lost without him. In many ways, Coleman is the living embodiment of the club before the current regime when there was a much stronger Everton identity.
The current squad resembles an ugly Frankenstein’s monster in terms of it being assembled, often at great cost, under the watch of several different managers with wildly varying football philosophies. With his much-vaunted sixty grand price tag though, the Irishman is surely – pound for pound – the greatest bargain in Premier League history and one of the finest examples of the many diamonds from the rough who were polished up into becoming proven performers under the stability of David Moyes’ long reign.
Not only is Coleman the last remaining player from the Scot’s tenure that ended almost a decade ago but it’s also testament to the club’s sharp decline in fortunes and potential lack of character in the squad that he’s the only one of their number to have triumphed in a Merseyside Derby at Goodison Park over a dozen years on. When the Blues narrowly avoided the drop last season, securing their top flight status with a dramatic 3-2 comeback win over Crystal Palace, then manager Frank Lampard who was a serial winner during his own playing days at Chelsea, as “the best man I’ve ever met” but where are the younger versions of him coming through at Everton and do they even exist?
In January last year, when speaking to the ECHO, Everton legend Neville Southall said: “We haven’t got an identity. When Evertonians go to the game they want pride, passion, work rate and skill.
“We seem to be getting a little bit of each of those in everybody. There are a few players there who are having a really good go but there’s a few that aren’t.”
Or put more succinctly by one banner message directed to the team from the Gwladys Street ahead of Everton’s game with Newcastle United: “Fight for us.”
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