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.
