‘Twas the night before derby day and all was absolutely poisonous in workplaces, houses, bars and WhatsApp groups across L postcodes and way beyond.
Mostly because Liverpool couldn’t be a one club city, it just wouldn’t work. The dark part of your twisted soul really wants, needs, something to strive against, argue with and project your antsy self-loathing onto rather than traditional methods of well spent adult journeys, therapy and just growing the fuck up. Our city needs teams reflecting the duality of healthy pride and anger in a working class scouser. For what it’s worth, I think we do it well. Both parties, with the odd exception for the occasional dickhead who takes it too far. Just as you have sometimes, dear reader. Me too.
It’s been a week of increasing angst, back and forth, some wild projections and the usual slightly unconvincing heady mix of bravado and antagonism that many dial into preceding a Merseyside derby. I’ve been trying to keep up with rebuttals that seemingly must always start or end with “lad” from passionate Reds from across this digital globe, some not of this hemisphere. I’ve been spectating strong reactions to a Tifo while professing definitely not being irked by it. Embracing the protective fatalism that many of us deploy to manage expectations and protect us from looking at tit. Having small whimsical daydreams of Dewsbury Hall finding bottom corners and a half-empty away end. Thinking of mates blue and red alike not around anymore. Pondering stuff to do late Sunday afternoon to distract my foul mood post “Isak Derby”. Wishing my Grandad was here. Consuming podcasts. And the most peculiar of all, writing words on a screen about it that no one is really arsed about. All enveloped in a middle-aged dissonance that makes me smile at those really getting really angry about it all, lad.
Which is cool as I don’t support Everton as a vehicle for my own self-worth or identity. If I did, then I’d be a contrite, insecure psychological mess, sodden by disappointment and prone to existential anxiety about imminent disasters yet to occur. I support Everton because a) they’re my neighbourhood’s local team growing up, b) I’m obstinate by nature, and c) I’ve invested that much into them over the years; they can fuck off if they get away without giving me one more moment of cup lifting joy. What reasons you have for supporting Everton is up to you mate; few of them will be for reflected glory, and that’s sound. This is the week to explore and celebrate that against the tedious backdrop of an outside media and would be “influencers” ramping everything up to a crescendo.
There’s been a wider movement of hysteria and hype being normalised into the game, purposely, over the course of the decades. Driven by traditional media and social media alike, it’s turned the ante up on how we talk about and react to the game. It’s also fuelled entitlement via clubs, players, managers, media beatifying the fans lest RedRonnie21Times from the US App Store becomes self-aware he’s a customer, not a fan, and starts an uprising. This whole new ecosystem demands win at all costs. Two straight defeats and heat is ON. How dare you deny these loyal fans? Three managers in a season is normalised. If you’re not seething, then you’re not a true red/blue/green/black and white *delete as applicable. The age of soap operas is dead; welcome the new circus but with its main cast consuming all the bread.
Derbies tend to be at their best when there’s not much between the two teams. Everton have often failed to contribute to that through our long dance of being shit. However, wonderfully now it’s Atlético Ambulance Rockers turn, the season after they won the league they’ve had a relative shitter, while Everton have just casually upped and downed to within a few points of them. It means there’s an edge to the game even if the Evertonian lizard part of my brain is, as above, flashing horror scenarios at me.
One of the arbitrary behaviours I evaluate other fanbases on is their ability to viciously hate their own team and club. It shows healthy self-appraisal and rejection of cult-like echo chambers forming amongst your fanbase as a whole. As I’ve written long before, no one can hate Everton as much as Evertonians do. This, and a continual Evertonian Tall Poppy Syndrome, absolutely eviscerates both collective and individual ego to the point where feet are firmly planted on the ground and we wouldn’t do something ridiculous like dress as cardinals and march to support our team’s manager. Or climb up a Spanish fountain and have a wank as families look on. Or gather supporting celebs to do a gritty protest video comparing the current ownership to repeated rape. Or book out venues with an acoustic guitar and heart full of shanties. Or become South American linguistic experts to excuse racism. Any of that stuff really. Anyway, my point is that previously the Super Scarf Lofters might have fallen for such things en masse as one homogenous big red entity, but now I’m seeing from the normal ones a transformative anger and self-awareness taking hold amongst many of them, which makes us feel less alone, and it’s driven by two vital components: disappointment and foreign fans.
The latter is quite the spectacle for anyone unfortunate enough to consider social media an honourable pastime. In many ways, there’s a certain deliciousness about the thing you crave and boast about most— glory— also being the seductive bait to attract unscrupulous legions of overcompensating humans to your beloved beacon of pride, as they too want a slice of that happiness and belonging you’re eschewing there. They’ll even play along and call you lad to try be part of the tribe. Then consume your club whole like a terrifying inevitability of slow, creeping dark matter, tearing through a utopian make-believe planet you’d positioned yourself as the proudest resident of. To make matters worse, the hard-nosed corporate ownership— that you too attracted to by your precious glory and propensity for buying ill-fitting replica kits—invites the enemy in while pushing you out. Fuck those “fans” no matter the colour shirt as they’ll be the slow death of the game we fell in love with.
Try as I might, I can’t take joy watching on as humans, friends, family, that I love being pushed out and unable to pass the scouse birthright of a red or blue ticket to the generations of theirs beneath them. I recoil in horror as Darragh from Dublin or KingKopite21 from South East Asia App Store speak with such authority on behalf of reds everywhere. I bristle at loudmouths with no connection to the city, stir contempt towards Scousers. This isn’t aimed at the many who do “get it” and travel in to participate in what we live and feel. Merseyside has a really good rivalry with such well defined identity and values associated with each of its offerings. It’s not about you; it’s about us, and that’s why those who shout loudest really don’t get it. It’s a working-class game manipulated by billionaires, and possibly why 550 away tickets had to go on general sale for this game.
Which is my way of saying fuck off with the ticket increases, fuck off with charging an admin fee for credit, fuck off with charging a membership fee to swap tickets, fuck off charging pensioners full whack, fuck off exploiting working scousers who pile in and make your team fight to avoid you having to sell your asset at a much reduced price. Everton’s ticket increase will generate circa £1.5m of additional revenue, which gets you a reserve keeper for a year. You already charge £6 for a pint of Budweiser. It’s our weekend social club, not yours. Go get some conglomerate dickhead to spew multiples of that to put their logo around the stadium or kit, blue or red, and use your data, tech, expertise to target who to exploit and keep the game affordable for fans, not customers. To my red comrades you might want to get really angry at your lads with 200 season tickets each enabling the dilution of an in ground culture you hold so dear. My enemy isn’t the other fan, my enemy is those exploiting all of us because the future is grim while they’re allowed to.
Arne Slot is struggling to maintain the goodwill of their masses, not helped by talking like he’s swallowed a wasp, and less so by denying them their weekend hit of reflected serotonin. It was always going to be hard following on from the charismatic crowd-pumping German before him, but a first-year title softened that blow. Their title wasn’t a fluke; they absolutely pissed it, and without the guilt of spreading a Nan, endangering airborne disease in their need to be seen celebrating it. Yet it makes me think that title has somehow made it worse as they had a taste and can’t forget it. This season they were meant to push on and assert a new age of dominance, but Man City and Arsenal have casually, nonchalantly, someone would say cruelly, slipped the clutch and shifted the gear up by one and sped off. The half a billion spent in forging this new empire has become largely superfluous in the angry dance of denied glory. Spend more, spend bigger, sack them all, and thus a twitching tail eventually moves it all until the big red dog has tremors.
They’ve had a few injuries, but you’d expect a billion-pound squad to still put together a decent team. I find myself putting a throttle on being confident here. Maybe that mentality is an issue, and I’m the problem; maybe I’m a superfluous lone speck of inconsequential consciousness that has no impact on a club I occasionally obsess over.
As for who will play for Everton, we could go into deep analysis, which I promise I won’t, largely as Moyes will very likely start the same team as the last one he picked.
This means Beto up front, who is scoring goals regularly, a commodity Everton really need to finish strongly. It should also drive up his value should Everton cash in come summer, which, looking at his remaining years, age, and inconsistency, is likely. I like Beto a lot, as I’m sure many of you do; any replacement now or future should take a little study of his work ethics and attitude to understand how to give you the very best chance of being accepted as an Everton player. Another derby goal, please, big man, and I’ll eagerly attend your future speaking dinners in pub basements when your money has been misinvested and you need to pay the ex.
Dewsbury Hall will play behind him and looks to be a player with a big game mentality. The prize to be won is a Derby named after him, for good reasons. Behind him will be Gana Gueye and James Garner. The latter of whom really has developed into a fine all round footballer of some impact this season. May all of them avoid becoming a Rodwell File.
Out wide is where the chat has been this week. Ndiaye didn’t have his best game at Brentford, but it was the replacement for McNeil on the other wing who set tongues wagging. Tyrique George came on in the 74th minute, immediately starting running at Brentford’s right-hand side. George is fast, direct, confident, and not afraid to have a shot on goal— all qualities which excite a football fan. Was it enough to get him a starting place for this game? I’d say unlikely, as Moyes tends to go with what he knows. There are a few other factors too, such as having to shunt Ndiaye to the right to accommodate that. Was George effective because he was running at tired legs? Does the dashing young man have the defensive discipline that Moyes demands? It’s nice to have options though; the lad has six games left to make a case for a permanent deal. Just as Everton have six games left to give him a platform to make him want to stay. Perhaps.
Defensively, it will be Mykolenko, Branthwaite, Tarkowski, and O’Brien, and I’m sound with that. Pickford in goal, even more so. I rate that young Rio lad that FC Slumlords have, and you’d think Salah will want to leave a final impression on the fixture. The foundation of any Everton result will be in its back five’s ability to play the game, not the occasion.
It’s nice to write about Everton going into a late derby free from trepidation from our own peril or clinching a title for them. Is it a free hit? I don’t think any derby ever is really, but both clubs have reasons of their own other than mandatory local and much enjoyed post game revelries.
Everton get to welcome Liverpool to the banks of the Mersey for this one, so that’s gonna be poignant and remembered for some time after. In amongst all the noise and the hype and the hysteria and the uncles being cruel and the Tifo insecurity and the WhatsApp groups, there’s a game of football to be played. And Everton should be playing to win it. Right into every single fucking one of them from the first second to feed that dark twisted part of your souls.
What’s our name?
