In many ways it feels like there are ‘two Evertons’ right now but the concern over the one that matters the most at every football club – the team on the pitch – continues to cause many understandable concerns to a loyal but long-suffering fanbase who have already been through the wringer far too often in recent times.
Back in 1892, John Houlding was thwarted in his attempts to create a second Everton when the club who were his tenants at Anfield fell out with him over the terms of their rent, decamped to their own site across Stanley Park and constructed Goodison Park, England’s first purpose-built football ground. Eager to still have a team to fill the financial void, the Tory businessman promptly created his own club who he initially called Everton (Athletic), the Football Association said no, his new creation became Liverpool FC and the rest as they say is history.
Over 130 years later at a time when the Blues are moving towards the completion of another new stadium, it now seems as if there are two Evertons from within the same club itself. One is the smooth, well-oiled machine in the shape of the magnificent 52,888 capacity arena at Bramley-Moore Dock that almost two thirds into its three-year build, already dominates the maritime cityscape of Liverpool’s world-famous skyline.
A project which has survived the global coronavirus pandemic that caused professional football to be played without spectators for the first time and the threat of the breakaway European Super League, Colin Chong, the chief stadium officer, insisted 10 days ago in his latest update blog, that it remains on schedule. Chong, as of last month, has also been made interim chief executive following the boardroom exodus earlier in June that saw Denise Barrett-Baxendale, Grant Ingles and Graeme Sharp all depart.
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Given his elevated status, it’s to be hoped that some of the efficiency that has seen the new stadium go up with the minimum of fuss under Chong’s stewardship can now be replicated within Goodison’s corridors of power to remedy the ‘other’ Everton, the ailing football side of the club that has only just limped to survival in the Premier League for the past two seasons. The Blues squad returned to pre-season training at Finch Farm this week some five weeks after they got the win they required against Bournemouth to narrowly avoid what was one Abdoulaye Doucoure wonder-strike away from being their first relegation in 72 years.
May 28, 2023 was the third time that Everton went into the final game of a Premier League season facing the drop but the first in 25 years. Manager Sean Dyche, who had replaced Frank Lampard when the team were joint bottom of the table in late January, admitted that despite getting the victory, it was “a horrible day for all concerned,” and for all the relief and outpouring of emotion on the final whistle from beleaguered Blues, the ‘celebrations’ from players and fans alike were far more muted than against Crystal Palace 12 months earlier as a mood of anger and frustration quickly took over in the Goodison stands with chants of “sack the board.”
In his post-match press conference, Dyche himself was under no illusions about the scale of the task ahead. He said: “Work on next season started the day I got here. Don’t think this is an easy fix. There is massive work to be done.
“It’s a big club but it’s not currently at the top end of the market... we’re not performing like a big club. It’s been like this for two seasons now. This is a bigger project.”
Yet as things stand, the squad that posted the lowest equivalent points total in the Everton’s entire history in 2022/23 is currently weaker than it was at the end of last season. The ECHO understands that funds for new signings this summer remain limited with finances tight despite the club raking in almost £70million so far this year through the sales of Anthony Gordon and Moise Kean.
Having finished 17th in the Premier League last term there is literally no more margin for error when it comes to avoiding the trapdoor into the Championship and additional strength is required urgently to an unbalanced pool of players assembled by an array of different incumbents in Goodison’s home dugout with Farhad Moshiri having churned his way through seven managers in as many years since becoming majority shareholder. Over five months on from his appointment, the one Blues boss who hasn’t signed anyone is Dyche.
By his own admission, there were frantic attempts to get new faces through the door ahead of the winter transfer window shutting but Everton were the only club fighting for survival to end the month with a weaker squad than they started with, despite Moshiri’s declaration: “If we need a striker, we’ll get one.” The owner, who also told his old pal Jim White in January: “I put my money where my mouth is,” might be good at writing cheques – it’s his financial muscle that has turned the club’s new stadium dream into a reality in the shape of a project he declared was costing £760million in the same interview – but from a footballing point of view, seldom has a team squandered so much to become so bad as the Blues on his watch.
Although the Financial Fair Play restrictions that are a result of such flawed recruitment continue to bite, the fact that Everton didn’t have to sell one of their prize assets ahead of the end of the 2022/23 financial year last month – like they did with Richarlison – suggests that from an economic perspective the club aren’t having to operate within the constraints of the straightjacket that hampered their movements 12 months ago. While they go into the 2023/24 season under Dyche, a proven Premier League manager when it comes to getting results on a relative shoestring it would be at best naïve and at worst arrogant/downright negligent to presume that factor alone is enough to stay up in world football’s toughest domestic competition.
This correspondent’s visit earlier in the week to Everton’s Experience All showroom at the Royal Liver Building reinforced just how imperative it is for the Blues to remain a Premier League club when they move to their new stadium. A brighter, more successful future should lie ahead when the relocation to the banks of the Mersey is made and the mood music now sounds increasingly like that will be at the start of the 2025/26 season.
But whenever the departure from Goodison Park – the ground that has hosted more top-flight fixtures than any other – takes place, Everton, who are currently looking forward to a record 121st season at the elite level, simply have to maintain that position and what happened in the past doesn’t protect you in the present. Goodison houses some 1,300 corporate hospitality guests each matchday, approximately 3% of the ground’s 39,572 capacity, but at the new stadium, which will hold some 13,316 additional spectators, the figure increases to 5,550 which is over 10% of the capacity.
It would be a travesty for the final years of ‘The Grand Old Lady’ to be tarnished by relegation but even if we take all sentiment out of the equation, it would be an even bigger fiscal disaster to move into the new stadium as a non-Premier League club. Another by now infamous remark for Evertonians from their majority shareholder, who has now joined the board, came in his open letter last summer when he admitted: “We have not always spent significant amounts of money wisely,” but for all his profligacy in the past, if ever Moshiri needed to put his hand in his pocket when it came to the Blues team then it’s now.
