By Ian King
Two games played, none scored, seven conceded and only two shots on target. But it wasn’t the fact that Everton lost these matches that caused the greatest concern for their season ahead. It was the way in which they did so. These were enfeebled performances, weakened still further by individual mistakes that bordered on the incomprehensible.
This was relegation football, a team apparently bereft of much of a plan to avoid falling from the Premier League at the end of a season which marks their 70th consecutive one in the top flight of English football. There is a case for a defence of sorts. Brighton at home and Tottenham away is not an easy way to start a Premier League season. But none of this tempers the feeling of decay that seems so difficult to shift from a club that should be preparing for a brave new world at Bramley-Moore Dock from next season.
As is already well established, the issues that the club faces are structural. A fairly quiet summer in the transfer market and the £50m sale of Amadou Onana to Aston Villa in July should have quelled the worst of their PSR concerns for this season, but these issues stretch back further than this.
Since the withdrawal of ‘main sponsor’ Alisher Usmanov early in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the club has been in a state of financial tumult. They have at least managed to avoid the further attention of the wretched 777 Partners by that suitor’s collapse into insolvency, but the money that they had already put into the club now hangs around any future sale of the club like an albatross around their neck.
The Friedkins, who’d been next in line, reportedly baulked at the £200m debt that had been loaded onto the club to plug previous holes in their accounts. The other name being mentioned as being interested is the current Crystal Palace part-owner John Textor, but he would have to offload his shareholding in the Eagles first and his record with other clubs could best be described as ‘patchy’.
Meanwhile on the pitch, familiar problems have started to rear their heads. Dominic Calvert-Lewin has been their great hope through a couple of injury-ravaged seasons, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that waiting for him to settle into becoming the 20-goals-a-season striker that they need could be futile. DCL managed eight goals in all competitions for Everton last season, but that was from 38 games. Abdoulaye Doucouré only scored one fewer from 35 games, and that was from midfield.
Elsewhere, they continue to labour along with the soon-to-be 39 year-old Ashley Young at right-back, with cover coming from the 35 year-old Seamus Coleman. Young, of course, contrived to get himself sent off on the opening day of the season against Brighton. By the end of that match Goodison Park, so familiar to us as a bearpit on big match days, was probably more than half empty. There was something ominous about all of this, a feeling that even the most passionate of Everton supporters were reaching the end of their tether extremely early, this time around.
This frustration eventually manifested itself at Euston railway station in London after their wretched 4-0 defeat at Spurs the following week. With supporters also travelling back to Merseyside from the same station there was always a possibility that there may be a ‘welcoming reception’, but the abuse that the players got as they passed through the station to get their train was of such a level that it prompted striker Neal Maupay to comment: “Imagine another job where it’s normalised to get abuse like this. Hanging around at a train station to scream at men who are trying their best.”
It was a sentiment with which a large proportion of Everton supporters seemed to agree. What good could possibly come from acting like this, especially at this early point of the season? The desire to vent was completely understandable, but there does come a point at which ‘support’ like this can start to look more like a burden than anything else.
This doesn’t have to be a disaster. Sean Dyche has done a pretty decent job since he took the job, and there remain fewer better qualified to get Everton out of danger. But the smell of rot hanging around Goodison Park has become increasingly evident in recent seasons, and most clubs who end up finding themselves in perpetual battles against relegation usually find themselves on the receiving end of it sooner or later. This dread scenario is the one that Dyche has to negotiate, but the answer to the question of whether Everton have the stomach to fight it remains an open one.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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