Talk about an understatement. Forest gambled on splashing the cash to ensure they were able to keep dining at the top table after a generation out of the limelight and so far it’s just about paid off for them. Who knows whether Manchester City’s 115 charges will ever catch up with them but in the meantime, they’re reigning English, European and World champions who also had the satisfaction of beating their neighbours United in the FA Cup final last season.
Whether success has been spectacular like for petrodollar-fuelled City who have been transformed after spending decades as an underperforming basket case and being very much the poor relations to Everton when it came to being the ‘other’ club in the North West’s two major football regions, or relative, like Forest, fortunes have been improved on the pitch. That is certainly not the case at Goodison Park where things have gone backwards in a big way.
When the Blues were hit with what was the most-severe sporting sanction in English top flight history last November, they had just come off the back of what was their lowest-ever equivalent points total across that same 135-year period, being one goal away from a first relegation in 72 years less than six months earlier. Put bluntly, no football team has ever spent so much to become so bad.
On the night before Everton’s three-day appeal began in London, Sean Dyche’s team were in the capital themselves to face Fulham. Despite earning a battling point in a goalless draw fielding a team who, partly because of the recently-enforced prudence were forced to name a team with just one natural central midfield option, the visitors fell into the drop zone at the full-time whistle.
This correspondent was invited to answer some questions in the Cottagers’ matchday programme and was asked what had been my highlights of following Everton over the years. I replied as follows: “Precious few I’m afraid. Younger readers might struggle to comprehend this but when I first became an Evertonian, they had more League Championships than Manchester United and only Liverpool and Arsenal had lifted the title on more occasions.
“I’m fortunate to have treasured memories of Everton’s 1995 FA Cup final win but almost 29 years on that remains the club’s last major piece of silverware on what is by far the longest trophy drought in their history. Instead the biggest ‘thrills’ have been a nerve-shredding hat-trick of last day escapes from relegation that were endured in 1994, 1998 and last year with your neighbours Chelsea and other Nouveau riche outfits like Manchester City pushing Everton further down the football food chain even though only Liverpool and Manchester United can match their longevity of winning major trophies across nine separate decades.”
Lamentably though, it’s not just the teams with the Sugar Daddies like Chelsea, Manchester City and more-recently Newcastle United who have overtaken the Blues though but the likes of Tottenham Hotspur, Aston Villa, West Ham United, Wolverhampton Wanderers and even outfits such as Brighton & Hove Albion plus Fulham themselves – neither of whom have ever won a major trophy – who have leapfrogged them at a time in which Everton are being punished for operating at huge losses.
In an era when the FA Cup was king, the Blues lifted the trophy some 59 years before their local rivals, five years after Liverpool’s first Wembley triumph the pair were still level on seven League Championships apiece and it took the Reds some 87 years of Merseyside Derby combat until they finally went ahead in terms of victories with a 3-1 at Anfield on November 7, 1981. Yet now the gap in the most-passionate football city in England between Everton and their neighbours from across Stanley Park has never felt more cavernous.
Indeed, at a time when Evertonians are being robbed of the enjoyment over the progress of the once-in-a-lifetime event of the building of their magnificent new stadium, the divide appears ‘Grand Canyon-esque’ right now with Liverpool adding a 10th League Cup to their trophy cabinet with ease the day before the appeal verdict result dropped. Although they were forced to actually score a goal to secure silverware against Chelsea this time around, there was still a routine air about proceedings as Jurgen Klopp was able to field his second choice goalkeeper, bring on a smattering of youngsters to collect winners’ medals early into their fledgling careers and even delegate all pre-match press conference duties throughout the competition to assistant Pep Lijnders.
One Kopite on Twitter joked: “After the announcement that Liverpool plan to do a parade for Klopp at the end of the season, not to be outdone, our Everton neighbours are planning the same”, showing a mock-up of an open top bus with the words “four points gained” emblazoned across the side. The sad fact is that ‘Super Silk’ Laurence Rabinowitz, who spearheaded the Blues’ appeal might prove to be their biggest signing of the season.
Perhaps Everton have been unfortunate to find themselves caught in the crossfire of a power play from a Premier League desperate to show that it can keep its own house in order and avoid having to relinquish control to an independent regulator? They could also count themselves unlucky that they’ve been found to have breached an arbitrary limit for rules that are no longer deemed fit for purpose and are to be changed later this year.
But as my colleague Joe Thomas wrote following the verdict dropped on Monday, really, there are no winners in this case. Evertonians understandably feel a sense of injustice among all of this yet as the appeal board wrote in their full written reasons, the club: “imprudently sailed close to the wind.”
Some outsiders have branded the Blues as being “the worst-run club in the country” but while owners come and go, even those with attachments to the club that go from the cradle to the grave like lifelong Evertonian and former player Michael Ball believe that the latest report is far from being vindication for those within Goodison’s corridors of power.
Writing in his ECHO column, he said: “The biggest win to come from the appeal verdict is for the Evertonians themselves in the vindication of what they were saying before all this came out. They were voicing their concerns about how the football club was run with major question marks about owner, the board and the direction things were going in.
“Nobody was really listening but the fans were right. They’ve been right for a long, long period of time. The way the club has been run is a joke. Only Everton Football Club can be owned by a billionaire accountant and get done for an accountancy breach.”