Everton v Brighton

Welcome, come in, do us a favour and leave your shoes in the porch, please. Fancy a drink?

It’s a weekend of brand new beginnings for Everton as they finally move to a new home after 133 years the previous abode. There’s a little bit about Brighton below too, which technically makes it a preview.

More than 50,000 of you will be present to witness this first game, with no doubt a lot of focus on the outcome of it – yet it’s what comes next which is far more important. Lamentably, the modern corporate game is about generating sufficient income – for that read “fleecing of fans and businesses” – to acquire extortionate resources – and for that read “humans who kick a ball pretty good” – and compete to make fans and businesses believe something good is imminently about to happen, so you can fleece them of even more money. The working-class game this is not.

The obsession with new signings is at extraordinary levels amongst fans who willingly give up their summers to hyperfocus in minute detail over exactly who their team needs. And when this doesn’t happen, or when an expensively assembled full department of recruitment aided by top-tier professionals and cutting-edge data technology chooses someone other than what these fans want, well then there’s all manner of indignation. Some even wait eagerly for failure to remind others that they, not the club they support, were right all along. Just look at the hysteria Sky Sports and cohorts have created, turning Transfer Deadline Day into a major date in the sporting calendar. Which doesn’t account for the variables of, oh I don’t know, a player not developing as intended, or fitting into that club or area, or responding to the manager they will play for there, having a bad time in their life, or a whole myriad of reasons why we don’t fit in some places professionally and personally. Still, do your little formation and demonstrate to strangers on the internet how this or that is gonna work. You absolute freaks, just enjoy the game, lads.

Right, that’s the transfer virgins done. Let’s continue on Everton’s new stadium. To get to this point on Sunday Everton have been through three decades of proposed moves which turned into abject and humiliating failures. From Kings Dock, to Kirkby, to that place off the end of the 57, to Walton Hall Park and finally to Bramley-Moore Dock – whilst battling against what would have been catastrophic relegations in many of the years the stadium was being built. Indeed, Everton’s ownership and very existence was under threat in these years just gone. They say nothing worth winning comes without a struggle and Everton are fond of being a nascent reference point pretty much in the way the Greek Gods liked to use outlandish, brutal examples so the message to their followers is really driven home. Although it is also said that Greeks appreciate melancholia on a deeper, more nuanced level than others – think of it in relatable terms as “do you like Radiohead or not, mate” – so, you can consider anxiety-ridden Evertonians as enlightened individuals who have experienced the full spectrum of human emotion, really.

Farhad Moshiri will be remembered as the man who made Everton’s third home happen. With a pinpoint assist from Dan Meis and his vision of an iconic home Evertonians could make their own. I hope for those at the test events that it did feel like home, as home is a feeling rather than a place. Like any move it will feel a little weird and out of sync, yet the human mind nests accordingly via a feeling of safety and through familiarity. Some early happy Everton moments would really help Everton settle in but, as we discussed in the prior paragraph, there’ll be an eager Prometheus sat off somewhere wanting to mess with our minds a little. Let’s work through it together and smile at the inevitable perma-chocka, lad, who deals in extremes and likes to be heard.

The thing with modern stadia is they quickly become dated. The Cellnet, the Reebok Stadiums feel like dated out-of-town relics. Manchester City and Leicester’s homes are just generic bowls akin to a neutral Pro Evo venue, and the less said about where West Ham play every fortnight the better. Arsenal did a good job in their move, Spurs’ recent offering is excellent – how will they and Everton’s new stadium hold up in decades to come? That’s for another day, another year. But if the Hill Dickinson logo on the roof can’t be taken off with a Brillo and has to be painted over years from now, there is one vital component which will remain: location. The dalliance with out-of-town, big-car-park, American-influenced stadia is now doubted. But then again behaviour of English football fans is very different to Chad and Byron having a BBQ in the back of their Dodge Ram. 

A football team should be reflective of its home locale – and for Scousers there is no more sacred place than on the banks of the River Mersey. And I’m not gonna snipe at the mismatched giant hole punch looking down enviously from Anfield, like a smited ugly sister, because it’s very much part of the community it serves and that’s really important. Even if there’s been a mass corporate displacement of some generational families to make more money from non-Scousers in attendance. Lingering on that would just be trite and unnecessary. Our city needs to be a two-club city as it feeds into our competitive psyche and love of a well-placed wind-up, debate or argument. It also inoculates us from the unaware mockery that is the one-club-city echo chamber. Liverpool needs two clubs and a semblance of competition for it to be its best. It’s been a while since those in blue provided any sort of competition, even if occasional spite is a pleasant shot in the arm. Your turn, Everton.

The area around Bramley-Moore will be developed, new favoured/lucky walks to the stadium (thinking of you, Goat) will be forged. New watering holes for pre and post game time with those you value will pop up. As will the memories that accompany them. Then you, without realising, might feel like home. Everton having the chance to take advantage of the upheaval and bring its patrons onto its footprint for profit and engagement yet choosing £6 blue doughnuts and £6.70 for a decent pint is a disappointment. If you’re reading this Everton (that’s a joke) then fire the person with the PowerPoint projections and futile corporate modelling, and hire someone who understands “long-term sustainable gain” and, more than that, someone who understands what Everton is to Evertonians. Never mind facilitating a last-minute rush before the game and exodus afterwards in a narrow space confined by water on one side. Titheads.

Onto Everton’s opponents on Sunday then, as Brighton & Hove Albion make the long trek from the tropics to share the special day on the Mersey. After a pretty decent pre-season they suffered a late sickener of a 97th-minute equaliser at home to Fulham in their first game last weekend. There’s a correlation between poor result one game and good result the next – a natural response to adversity – so my loose point is B&HA will be motivated first opponents wanting to leave their own bit of trivia behind at our new ground. 

No malice to Brighton here as they’re a nicely run club from a nice city with a mostly kind populous. They’re held up as a Premier League business model for others to aspire to, even if my troublesome ego would never be too comfy as an Evertonian aspiring to be Brighton, you can see why. What tends to happen however is your Brightons come along every decade or so and this model of proficiency and relative stability, only for one misplaced management change or season of ill luck and injuries to torpedo the whole good ship – sending them back to Hadestown (go see it) – while the superficial hype-dogs doing the media narrative turn focus on someone novel, and thus the wheel turns. There’s much worse company in this hellhole of a Premier League so I hope B&HA stick around, with apologies to my Palace mates – you know how fond I am of you and yours. But do you really want Hull scruffs doing tiger mauling gestures at you when they score? Or the Brexit microcosm that is Leicester “City” asking in mass if your ground is a library?

If you reached this point congratulations, and now you’ve seen the low bar why don’t you write for this website? Be it previews, reports, tactical insights or anecdotal nonsense, GrandOldTeam is looking for regular writers to publish your words to an audience of x Evertonians online. Don’t be a shithouse, give it a go and go from there. Just as I did.

Everton also suffered a late blow in their first game at Leeds at the hands of what was really a fucking stupid penalty decision. Let’s call it what it is and demand not better but a full clear-out and competent officiating this game before the transformation of Premier League football into “Sports Entertainment” is complete. Like any aspiring echo chamber the Premier League penalises and restricts criticism and enemies, so it’s not as if managers can create the necessary stink in the media – a media who are happy to dine on the controversies and drama all fucking day – to instigate accountability and REAL change. The custodians of your game, the working-class game, are failing you and leading you down a path the game can never recover from in the name of a “modernisation” fallacy. The handball rule was not broken for them to attempt rule changes every season to fix it, only to confuse players and fans accordingly. That they introduced VAR to cut the mistakes out and only succeeded in promoting how shambolic the decision-making is of their officials, even with slow-mo and every angle you can think of in their hands, is testimony to how a full overhaul is needed urgently. 

Fuck Richard Masters the big stiff corporate twat, fuck those who enable him. Stop fighting each other momentarily and do a collective rising up demanding that change and watch how quickly that change comes. Don’t believe me? Look how quickly they backtracked on the Super League when fans started protesting in and out of stadiums against their plans. Get outside their gates, make it known in your stadiums, they’re ripping you off and taking away something which is yours. Or this weekly ruining of games will not just continue – it will get worse.

Can’t be arsed talking about Everton now as I sip on a cold coffee, just that the insipid performance first game rightfully worries Evertonians desperate for change themselves. Looks like they’re about to cough up forty big ones for Dibling, who looks yet more potential. It would be nice if he was ready to plug in and play now. Maybe he will be. His signing would take spending this summer to over £100m which makes me slightly twitchy about this financial fair play thing that’s plagued us in recent years. One can hope there’s a strategy at play and there’s maybe an anticipated sale in the financial year ahead, or a Goodison Park sale wildcard for the books – I don’t know, I follow football not spreadsheets. Putting all that noise aside my aspiration is a simple one: to watch Everton play pleasing front-foot football most weeks, with some suitable bullying/shithousing of opponents leaving them much unhappier than me on my weekend break from being a futile tax slave.

You know what, that’s a good point to leave the preview, hope you’re reading Everton (no joke). 

And hey, welcome home.