As Everton prepare to begin a new season, this is the story of what happened last time Chelsea visited Goodison Park in the words of those who made it so special
When Josh Brownhill found the bottom corner of Ben Foster’s net on the last day of April it was a sickening blow to Everton’s hopes of Premier League survival.
Just three minutes earlier his teammate Jack Cork had scored with a diving header as Burnley secured a dramatic late comeback to win at Watford. It was a Saturday afternoon that had started with promise as the hosts took the lead, then ended with watching Blues stunned.
The result was Burnley’s third consecutive win and continued a run that saw them pick up 10 points in four games. It moved them level with Leeds United on 34 points - leaving Everton five points from safety heading into the final month of the season.
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Frank Lampard would later accept the result had a sobering impact as it highlighted the club’s plight, recalling: “The day before we played Chelsea and we watched Burnley win and the gap open to five points it was one of those real realisations of the situation because the reality smacked you in the face.”
His next words tell the story of what happened next as, in the aftermath of yet another major setback, a remarkable week revitalised an Everton side that, just seven days later, pulled out of the relegation zone. As Lampard said: “That was the moment that everybody in the club dug in.”
Even before Burnley’s win at Watford the importance of the home match with Chelsea was clear. Fans, emboldened by their role in the recent Goodison Park win over Manchester United and who had sucked Richarlison’s bobbling effort into the Gwladys Street goal in the final seconds to salvage a point against Leicester City, knew they were needed more than ever.
Hana Roks, who runs the Han’s Tours coach travel to Blues games and the organisation’s influential Twitter account, remembered thinking something had to be done after Everton’s defeat in the Merseyside derby days earlier: “Myself and a few of the other fan sites and individual fans who go home and away, we all had a talk to discuss what we could possibly do because we were at a point where we needed points.”
Welcoming the players’ coaches to Goodison Park had been discussed - and ruled out - before, but they decided to give it a go. Hana said: “We were like, even if 100 people meet up with a few pyro[technics] that would be a success. I put the idea up on Twitter and we all retweeted it and got it out there.”
Hana was full of apprehension heading to the Chelsea match, thinking: “We have put it out there that much that if there are no fans we are going to get laughed at.”
David Wycherley and Barry Williams run Everton supporters group County Road Bobblers, which was also crucial in setting up and amplifying the plans. Like Hana, David was nervous as he made the journey with Barry to the Chelsea game - worried most Blues would stick to their pre-match rituals and traditions. He said the plans had their roots in Zoom meetings between fan groups and discussions at the Hot Wok and, when it came to May 1, it was an “Elvis Pressley, now or never moment”. David explained: “We needed to do something so at least we could say, hand on heart, that we, as fans, had done what we could.”
When a graphic displaying where the coach welcome would take place was created and shared, David was surprised by how quickly it took off - repeatedly being sent it by his network of contacts, many unaware he was part of the planning process.
The effort captured the mood among many of those who had watched the fallout from defeat at Liverpool, which included frustration at the latest significant decision to go against Everton at a crucial time in an important game - appeals for a penalty for a foul on Anthony Gordon waved away while the scores were level.
That mood was effectively encapsulated by the words of Everton Fans’ Forum as they called on supporters to show their backing ahead of the Chelsea match, writing in a post published on Everton’s website: “It feels like everyone on the outside - other clubs, other fans, pundits, the media – is enjoying seeing a club of our size in the position we are in. If it's us against the world, that's fine. Let's have a siege mentality for these final games - because it's that sort of spirit that can and will get us out of this. And we know there is no group of fans and no city in the world that could do it better.
“So join us at noon on Goodison Road this Sunday. If you've got a banner or a flag, bring it along. If you've not, make one. If you've taken a flag home after a recent match, make sure you bring it back for Sunday for you or someone else. Together we can make Goodison a really difficult and intimidating place for Chelsea... That's what we can do as we play our part as fans.”
Despite the publicity leading up to the coach welcome, there were still nerves - David admitting he was “absolutely terrified”. He had no need to be though, which became apparent as he gradually got closer to the ground: “I was walking up County Road to Goodison Road via Spellow and could see more people around the ground than normal and I started to twig ‘this is actually looking quite promising, there’s actually quite a few people here'.”
Like many Blues, he was swept up in the scenes as the tight roads surrounding Goodison Park were filled with supporters and, for the first of several famous afternoons and nights to follow, the air echoed with the sound of terrace songs and fell thick with the sensation of burning blue smoke. He said: “The whole thing was surreal. I just stopped. If you could screenshot a moment, it just felt like that was Everton, that was Everton fans, that was Evertonia.”
The players clearly felt the spirit that surged through the crowd, which included the unlikely hero Myra the dog - lifted almost ceremonially above the masses as she was being taken home. Footage from inside their coaches would later show the players watching on, Anthony Gordon recording on his phone as the coach was enveloped in the fans and smoke bombs.
And it worked. The passion and intensity of the fans - inside and outside of Goodison Park - carried onto the pitch and helped the players stun Chelsea and gain a vital three points. The winning goal came from Demarai Gray and Richarlison hunting down Cesar Azpilicueta on the edge of his own box as tens of thousands of Blues roared them on. The impact was so clear Paul Draper, another important voice among the supporters, remembers: "I was a bit sceptical about how many would turn up but after seeing that I just thought 'now we can do anything'."
It inspired magic too - including Jordan Pickford’s sensational save from Azpilicueta and, seconds later, his point blank stop from Antonio Rudiger. Pickford had walked onto the pitch to the sight of a giant banner proclaiming him as Everton and England’s number one. Days later he told the ECHO: “I am a very passionate person and it touches me. I am very passionate and growing up all I’ve known was football stuff and the atmosphere before the game was second to none.”
Lampard, meanwhile, said the scenes gave him goosebumps : "It is special, it is not the norm. Coming in, driving up today and receiving the fans as we went through on the bus, and the understanding or feeling of the players to understand what it means to the fans is special.
"If it doesn’t give you goosebumps, if it doesn't get you ready to go out and give everything, then there is something wrong with you, you shouldn't be playing the game. They were the 12th man, they were the people of the match, the men, the women, the children that came and did that before, also in the warm up, also at the start of the game, also to get us over the line late in the game."
Post-Chelsea, Lampard also identified the next hurdle for an Everton side still in the relegation zone and with more tough fixtures looming: “When the club comes together at Goodison that is amazing and that is why results have been so good here. The negative is when we go away from home our players can’t replicate what we do here. That is the next challenge.”
Those who were key to the coach welcome were all too aware of the same issue - addressing the club’s wretched away form ahead of consecutive away games to Leicester City and then Watford. Katie Carter who, with Jemma Birks, was also influential in the scenes before Chelsea, said minds quickly turned to how that could be changed.
Katie said she and others “hounded” Everton, whose officials were praised for the way they worked with fans during this period, for a time the players’ coaches would be departing the Finch Farm training ground for Leicester the day before the next game. They received confirmation on the Friday afternoon - giving them 24 hours to potentially organise a send-off.
Katie said: “We spoke with everyone and worried if we got 100 people there it would look a bit stupid. But I just said to Hana at around 4pm, ‘you know what - just tweet it out and we will know by 6pm if people are going to come or not’. And it just took off, so we went with it.”
Again, those involved approached the event with a degree of trepidation. But again their efforts were rewarded.
Katie said: “We parked the car and walked up the lane [to the training complex] and I thought ‘Oh my God’. I was more shocked at that send-off than any other display because there were more than 1,000 people there with just 24 hours’ notice, so it had worked. And it helped the players.”
Pictures from Halewood showed a carnival atmosphere as the coaches departed in the sunshine that Saturday afternoon - Lampard taking the front passenger seat and winding his window down to fist bump supporters and thank them for their efforts.
With Leicester it was a coach send-off rather than welcome due to the difficulty of getting supporters to the King Power Stadium early enough to see the players arrive. But the momentum of the fans was taken into that stadium, where travelling supporters competed with the stadium's PA in a battle for who could be the loudest.
The noise of the away end was immense and intense. A tidal wave of emotion greeted Vitalii Mykolenko's stunning opener - his heroics another compelling narrative in the story of Everton's survival. When Mason Holgate restored the lead it fuelled a party that never ended. The noise had picked up just before then - Katie saying: "The away end just started singing and it felt like something was about to happen."
The away end bounced to Spirit of the Blues until half-time, the noise surged into the concourse during the break and then returned to pitch-side not just for the 45 minutes that followed but a long, long time after that as the away supporters inspired Everton to a first away win since August and then celebrated the first travelling points of 2022 well after the game. Those among that crowd returned home knowing Everton were no longer in the relegation zone.
After the sucker-punch of Burnley's late comeback eight days earlier, the scenes that met the players outside Goodison Park for the Chelsea match had sparked seven memorable days that would end with the Blues above the drop zone. While it took several more displays of passion for safety to be confirmed, they did not return to the bottom three.
Looking back on that week, a representative of Everton culture collective Mint - which also played a key role in galvanising the supporters - agreed the Chelsea game was the “catalyst” for what followed and said: “Out of the darkness I think people thought they had nothing to lose. We didn’t want to say we had not tried everything we could [to help the club]... now could you imagine if we were actually successful? They would be able to see it from the space station. The fanbase is the club - it runs generations deep, and I think that is what is important.”
After Leicester there was another coach send-off before the trip to Watford and then two more sensational Goodison coach welcomes - the reception ahead of the game against Crystal Palace the most emphatic. What happened before Chelsea paved the way for each of those occasions, laid the foundation for the fanbase to unite in support as Dele Alli ran out onto the pitch at half time as Everton were 2-0 down against Palace and then, ultimately, paved the way for the huge outpouring of release as Dominic Calvert-Lewin's late header completed a remarkable comeback that guaranteed Everton's Premier League status for another year. The fans - and all those who spoke to the ECHO said there were many more who deserved credit - inspired the players and so it was fitting that, at the end, both celebrated together on the Goodison pitch.
Lampard has - repeatedly - paid homage to the supporters for the role they played in Everton securing safety. And he has been clear to stress his understanding that, if what he has described as the "powerful force" of a united Finch Farm and fanbase is to be harnessed in the future, results and performances have to improve. The club must find a direction of travel towards progress, he said, adding: "What we have here is a magic that not every club has, so if we can find that direction in certain footballing senses, then maybe we can have successes down the line."
That magic is still coursing through Paul even with the tension of the relegation battle now gone. He said: "I just feel proud about how the fanbase came together. We were just a group who did our best to help the club stay up and the whole fanbase brought into it. It was a massive success."
Before Brentford, Lampard met with many of the influential fans and groups involved in organising the scenes before Chelsea and those that followed until that memorable night against Crystal Palace. Hana was among those in attendance at Goodison Park for the surprise meeting with the manager. She will be there next season too, when Premier League football returns to the famous stadium - in part because of what the supporters did during their club's time of despair.
Looking back at the Chelsea coach welcome and all that followed, Hana said: “When I saw thousands of people there I was glad we all came together and decided to have a go because that was the catalyst, that was the turning point.”
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