The Fans

If you’ve been watching Everton, or even following with passing interest, you’ll know we’ve been through the wringer over the last couple of seasons. A well-meaning set of owners, who once saw themselves as custodians of the club, managed to drive us to the brink of extinction, with some saying the club came dangerously close to administration.

That this even became a consideration under the ownership of so-called billionaires is staggering.

In that calamitous tenure, which nearly saw us sold to an entity facing its own financial turmoil, Everton truly embodied the phrase “Everton, that.” And yet, pundits and talking heads rarely highlighted what kept the club afloat through this chaos. Was it the fine thread of cash keeping us alive? Likely. But without 40,000 fans pouring through Goodison’s gates every single week to watch some of the most testing football we’ve ever endured, Everton would probably look like a very different club heading into the 2025/26 season.

This club is the elder of the city, the one that gave birth to another side that’s gone on to some moderate success. Now we find ourselves in another new, shiny, expensive, and very “Everton” stadium. And still, hiccups happen. We’ve been quick to point them out: “The ticket machines don’t work,” “I didn’t get my ticket until three minutes before kickoff,” “The donuts are six fkn quid!” These complaints, in their own way, feel very Everton. We have a knack for making simple things difficult, doing ourselves no favours. It’s easy to mock, but it’s far more noble to fix.

We’ve seen the comical, lemming-like queuing system for the bridge, thankfully saving us from swimming to town—and we even got a shiny new footbridge at Sandhills.

Don’t ever say we don’t get anything nice, eh? Just think how cosy you’ll be standing there in January, waiting for a train. Cheers Uncle Steve.

The Fans. The Heartbeat.​

The flares. The protests. The fans, la.

At the risk of turning this into a Chicoazul-style funny post (which he isn’t, by the way), no references to wools here soz.

The fans survived near relegation(s).

The fans survived the points deduction.

And the fans will survive the future, because we survived our past.

We’ve always been here, and we always will be. We hope to be moderately successful, to win things. Will “Everton, that” fade away as we stare fear in the face and succeed, as our grand history shows we can? Recent history hasn’t been kind to Everton, nor has luck smiled much on us. But it’s rare for a club to gain a new stadium, new players, and new owners who’ve quietly gone about their work at a pace unseen here before.

We’ve seen owners chasing headlines, wanting their faces tied to success. We’ve seen custodians claiming their hands were tied. We’ve heard chairmen insist we’ve had “good times.”

Have we, one to mull over isn’t it?

We, the fans, are the lifeblood of this club. Without you standing on that bridge at Sandhills, there is no Jack Grealish contract. Without you paying £25 to park in a dodgy car park for two hours, there’s no Jordan Pickford extension. Without your six-quid donut purchase, maybe there’s no Dewsbury-Hall transfer. So when they say the fans are important, they mean you. We mean us. Light the flares. Shout their names. Complain about missed chances. Protest when the owners do you dirty. Let them know who we are and where we come from.

Because the fans are number one. Not the players. Not the owners. And certainly not the hidden hands pulling strings behind the scenes, the stadium is built – now fill it with memories.

It’s all on us.