Club excel at finding fresh and inventive ways to distress their supporters – staying up is the very best this year's team can hope for
Jamie Carragher
25 August 2023 • 8:00am
Has there been a more demoralising, unfulfilling experience in the Premier League era than supporting Everton Football Club?
They have become an institution excelling at finding fresh and inventive ways to let their supporters down. Where the sport usually deals in highs and lows which touch every other big club, Everton are stuck in a prolonged malaise.
Whenever I focus on Everton’s woes there are those who will remind me of clubs in a far worse position below the Premier League, where there are much more harrowing experiences than a few high-profile relegation escapes.
That is true, but none of them were original members of the ‘big five’. None of them had a billionaire owner promising Champions League football, or a transfer bill over £500 million.
None of them were in a city where the neighbours, literally across the park, have celebrated Champions League and title wins.
Of the first Premier League participants only six have been ever-present; Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.
Four have been Premier League winners since then, while for all their general underachievement, Spurs have competed for the biggest honours and have never been in danger of going down.
Everton stand out for recklessly squandering chances to be much better than they are. Everton had been English champions five years before the Premier League began, as likely as Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United to win the title. The foundations were there for the club to use the new Premier League revenues to keep strengthening.
The single biggest reason for Everton’s demise is terrible recruitment of managers and players. That has also been the root cause of Farhad Moshiri’s increasingly desperate reign since 2015. There is so much internal strife at Goodison because of self-inflicted wounds.
I have read some comparisons between Moshiri’s Everton and Mike Ashley’s era at Newcastle United – two huge clubs desperate for someone competent to take control.
To me, there is a massive difference. Everton got the billionaire owner they believed would take them to the next level. Unlike at Newcastle during their lowest periods, Moshiri cannot be accused of lacking ambition. He spent a fortune. What has been missing is the expertise to use those resources properly. Now they are suffering because he cannot even buy his way out of trouble because of the Premier League spending rules.
The players Everton are being linked with today are championship standard – squad players who will not get in the starting XI if everyone is fit.
The latest setback with American investors MSP no longer buying a share of the club was met with as much pessimistic expectation as surprise. I said last year Everton are one of the worst-run clubs in the country and that news did nothing to undermine the argument.
Nothing goes smoothly at Everton, and yet the potential still remains if they ever get their act together.
I drive past Everton’s new stadium on Liverpool’s docks every day. It is a magnificent sight and a source of hope. It is very difficult to see that arena emerging and to argue Moshiri does not care about Everton’s future.
On the pitch there is no such promise.
In the darkest times, it is hard to see the entrance to a tunnel, never mind a light at the end of it. It has been this way for Everton for too long.
Two games into another season and another grinding, fractious campaign beckons. The next eight months promise to be the same as the last two years, with supporters deeply unhappy with how the club is run and every poor performance creating rifts between the players and fans.
Saturday’s home game with Wolverhampton Wanderers – another side seeking their first point after a worrying summer – already feels like a ‘must win’ in the struggle against relegation.
Living in the heart of Merseyside, I feel the pain of the Evertonians. Hard though it might be to believe given my Liverpool allegiance, I cannot help but feel sympathy.
You can write a familiar script for Everton season’s of despondency. Pre-season hope evaporates as top signings fail to arrive and the first few games end in defeat. Last Sunday’s dismal loss at Aston Villa means Everton have lost their first two Premier League fixtures for three consecutive seasons. They are already playing catch-up and trying to survive in what they have once again effectively turned into a 36-game campaign.
Next comes the fury, usually in the form of fans demonstrations against the board and accusations the players do not care enough. In the first few months of every season, Goodison becomes more toxic than supportive for its own team. Some of the social media abuse of the players is not right. It is not that they do not care.
It is more accurate to say that some of them are so far below the standard required to play for a club of Everton’s level – and in front of fans who can still remember what watching a class team looks like – it is hard to believe they are trying their best. The responsibility lies with those who buy and select those players.
Finally there comes the realisation that only by putting grievances aside can the fans and team rally together to turn it around – usually after another manager has been appointed. The campaign ends, relatively speaking, on the high of survival. And so the wheel turns again.
This debilitating process is unsustainable. The current Everton squad cannot achieve anything more than the primary objective of staying in the Premier League. For those who aspire to more, that is unacceptable.
The unpalatable truth for Everton is that since the early 1970s the periods of success have been the exceptions.
I have family and friends who are Evertonians who acknowledge that in 50 years following the club, they have only truly enjoyed seven or eight full seasons, most of them in the l980s and then those periods under David Moyes and once under Roberto Martinez when the hope of Champions League qualification was real.
That is a sobering reality for one of England’s biggest and best-supported clubs. Even the one trophy they have won in the last 28 years – the FA Cup in 1995 – followed an horrendous start when Joe Royle halted a slide towards the drop.
Relegation fights have become the new normal, and no matter how much the supporters will this not to be the case – and believe with more investment and smarter executives it can and will change – the process of reversing that was bound to take time for Sean Dyche.
But do you know what? For all that, I still believe Dyche will keep Everton up. Perhaps that is the view of someone who simply cannot imagine a football world in which Everton are not a Premier League club.
It is also a sense that Evertonians recognise earlier than usual that for all their justified grievances, the only way to save the club is make Goodison as tough and intimidating for visitors at the start and middle of the season as it is in the desperate search for points at the end.
Everton have become masters of the late recovery because of their refusal to go without a fight. That battle has begun earlier than ever.
Jamie Carragher
25 August 2023 • 8:00am
Has there been a more demoralising, unfulfilling experience in the Premier League era than supporting Everton Football Club?
They have become an institution excelling at finding fresh and inventive ways to let their supporters down. Where the sport usually deals in highs and lows which touch every other big club, Everton are stuck in a prolonged malaise.
Whenever I focus on Everton’s woes there are those who will remind me of clubs in a far worse position below the Premier League, where there are much more harrowing experiences than a few high-profile relegation escapes.
That is true, but none of them were original members of the ‘big five’. None of them had a billionaire owner promising Champions League football, or a transfer bill over £500 million.
None of them were in a city where the neighbours, literally across the park, have celebrated Champions League and title wins.
Of the first Premier League participants only six have been ever-present; Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.
Four have been Premier League winners since then, while for all their general underachievement, Spurs have competed for the biggest honours and have never been in danger of going down.
Everton stand out for recklessly squandering chances to be much better than they are. Everton had been English champions five years before the Premier League began, as likely as Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United to win the title. The foundations were there for the club to use the new Premier League revenues to keep strengthening.
The single biggest reason for Everton’s demise is terrible recruitment of managers and players. That has also been the root cause of Farhad Moshiri’s increasingly desperate reign since 2015. There is so much internal strife at Goodison because of self-inflicted wounds.
I have read some comparisons between Moshiri’s Everton and Mike Ashley’s era at Newcastle United – two huge clubs desperate for someone competent to take control.
To me, there is a massive difference. Everton got the billionaire owner they believed would take them to the next level. Unlike at Newcastle during their lowest periods, Moshiri cannot be accused of lacking ambition. He spent a fortune. What has been missing is the expertise to use those resources properly. Now they are suffering because he cannot even buy his way out of trouble because of the Premier League spending rules.
The players Everton are being linked with today are championship standard – squad players who will not get in the starting XI if everyone is fit.
The latest setback with American investors MSP no longer buying a share of the club was met with as much pessimistic expectation as surprise. I said last year Everton are one of the worst-run clubs in the country and that news did nothing to undermine the argument.
Nothing goes smoothly at Everton, and yet the potential still remains if they ever get their act together.
I drive past Everton’s new stadium on Liverpool’s docks every day. It is a magnificent sight and a source of hope. It is very difficult to see that arena emerging and to argue Moshiri does not care about Everton’s future.
On the pitch there is no such promise.
In the darkest times, it is hard to see the entrance to a tunnel, never mind a light at the end of it. It has been this way for Everton for too long.
Two games into another season and another grinding, fractious campaign beckons. The next eight months promise to be the same as the last two years, with supporters deeply unhappy with how the club is run and every poor performance creating rifts between the players and fans.
Saturday’s home game with Wolverhampton Wanderers – another side seeking their first point after a worrying summer – already feels like a ‘must win’ in the struggle against relegation.
Living in the heart of Merseyside, I feel the pain of the Evertonians. Hard though it might be to believe given my Liverpool allegiance, I cannot help but feel sympathy.
You can write a familiar script for Everton season’s of despondency. Pre-season hope evaporates as top signings fail to arrive and the first few games end in defeat. Last Sunday’s dismal loss at Aston Villa means Everton have lost their first two Premier League fixtures for three consecutive seasons. They are already playing catch-up and trying to survive in what they have once again effectively turned into a 36-game campaign.
Next comes the fury, usually in the form of fans demonstrations against the board and accusations the players do not care enough. In the first few months of every season, Goodison becomes more toxic than supportive for its own team. Some of the social media abuse of the players is not right. It is not that they do not care.
It is more accurate to say that some of them are so far below the standard required to play for a club of Everton’s level – and in front of fans who can still remember what watching a class team looks like – it is hard to believe they are trying their best. The responsibility lies with those who buy and select those players.
Finally there comes the realisation that only by putting grievances aside can the fans and team rally together to turn it around – usually after another manager has been appointed. The campaign ends, relatively speaking, on the high of survival. And so the wheel turns again.
This debilitating process is unsustainable. The current Everton squad cannot achieve anything more than the primary objective of staying in the Premier League. For those who aspire to more, that is unacceptable.
The unpalatable truth for Everton is that since the early 1970s the periods of success have been the exceptions.
I have family and friends who are Evertonians who acknowledge that in 50 years following the club, they have only truly enjoyed seven or eight full seasons, most of them in the l980s and then those periods under David Moyes and once under Roberto Martinez when the hope of Champions League qualification was real.
That is a sobering reality for one of England’s biggest and best-supported clubs. Even the one trophy they have won in the last 28 years – the FA Cup in 1995 – followed an horrendous start when Joe Royle halted a slide towards the drop.
Relegation fights have become the new normal, and no matter how much the supporters will this not to be the case – and believe with more investment and smarter executives it can and will change – the process of reversing that was bound to take time for Sean Dyche.
But do you know what? For all that, I still believe Dyche will keep Everton up. Perhaps that is the view of someone who simply cannot imagine a football world in which Everton are not a Premier League club.
It is also a sense that Evertonians recognise earlier than usual that for all their justified grievances, the only way to save the club is make Goodison as tough and intimidating for visitors at the start and middle of the season as it is in the desperate search for points at the end.
Everton have become masters of the late recovery because of their refusal to go without a fight. That battle has begun earlier than ever.
