For the third consecutive home game, Everton fans staged a pre-match protest from outside the Royal Oak to the directors’ entrance at Goodison Park but this time organisers asked ‘our next generation’ to lead their rally march.
Unhappy with the way the club is being run by the owner and board of directors, the disgruntled supporters signed off their message with the words: “If you tolerate this, then your children will be next” a line from Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers’ 1998 number one hit If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, inspired by a poster from the Spanish Civil War.
Given Everton’s struggles in recent decades, the generational divide among the fanbase is arguably as stark at Goodison Park as any football team in the land.
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Many older Blues supporters have been fortunate enough to see their team be the best in the country on several occasions and middle-aged fans can recall the brief but glorious era of Howard Kendall’s first spell in charge in the 1980s but anyone under the age of 35 – which of course includes most active players now – would probably struggle to recall the 1995 FA Cup success which remains the club’s last major trophy now almost 28 years ago.
It is the lengthiest silverware drought in Everton’s history – previously 24 years was the longest they’d ever gone – and the sad fact is that after just one cup final appearance out of the last 56 opportunities to contest domestic silverware at Wembley, there are now long-suffering fans with silver in their hair but still not old enough to have experienced any genuine ‘Good times’ that chairman Bill Kenwright referenced when responding to home spectators’ grievances after the corresponding fixture against Aston Villa last season.
Despite such lean years – including a second final day escape from relegation in four seasons in 1998 and last term’s dramatic 3-2 comeback win against Crystal Palace in the last home game in a campaign that still garnered the joint lowest equivalent points total in the club’s history – young fans remain prevalent at Goodison on matchdays, in sharp contrast to the situation that prevails across Stanley Park where junior supporters, who are naturally some of the loudest and most-enthusiastic, largely find themselves squeezed out by older fans who cling on to the season tickets they’ve had for decades, as highlighted in a recent ECHO comment piece by this correspondent’s colleague Richard Garnett.
While Anfield is now something of a football ‘Disneyland’ on matchdays, attracting huge throngs of tourists from around the globe, many thousands of Merseysiders still choose to actively follow the city’s senior club in sickness and in health, with parents passing on their passion to their children in a manner that their Red brethren struggle to emulate within the ground.
The fixture between Everton and Aston Villa is the most-played in the top flight of English football and pits the only two founder members of both the Football League (1888) and Premier League (1992) to currently be competing in the latter but with the tantalising prospect of a brighter tomorrow at their new 52,888 capacity stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock that would enable the Blues to play in front of the biggest average crowds in their history, they need to ensure they’re still dining at the top table and among the elite.
This ‘children’s crusade’ is the latest reminder that such a position has become all-too-fragile under the current regime.
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