Everton have a culture problem. Not a new one. Not a recent one. One that has festered, unchecked, for over thirty years – and the events of this season have done nothing but confirm it.
It starts at the top.
The current custodians/owners have yet to attend a game at Goodison Park, or Hill Dickinson. Let that sink in. The people who hold the future of this football club in their hands have not seen fit to sit in the stands, feel the hopes and frustration of the supporters customers, or witness first-hand what their stewardship looks like in practice. If you were searching for a symbol of misplaced priorities – of an ownership whose interest in Everton begins and ends with the balance sheet – you need look no further.
Then there is David Moyes. A manager who has elevated the art of managing expectations downward into something approaching a philosophy. Gaslighting dressed as pragmatism, and Everton fans have been force-fed it for long enough to recognise the taste.
But it was the CEO’s recent programme notes that crystallised everything.
Before a season has even concluded – a season in which we may yet finish 14th, in which we have been knocked out of cup competitions by a relegated side (the worst in Premier League history at the time) and a newly promoted team, in which we have had one of only two worse home records in the entire history of this football club – the man described, confidently, without apparent irony, as being happily dissatisfied.
Happily dissatisfied.
The owners’ man on the ground. Comfortable. At ease. Content to sit happy at being dissatisfied, because it was not quite as bad as he had feared. We were safe by December he says, phew. For consecutive seasons prior to this one, we’ve been closer to qualifying for Europe than relegation but this club won’t miss any opportunity to ram the ‘relegation’ word down your throat. Meanwhile, significant transfer funds have been spent on players who have barely seen a minute of first-team football, let alone developed into the assets this club so desperately needs.
“Happily dissatisfied” is not a rallying cry. It is not a statement of ambition. It is a confession – that the people running this football club have quietly, perhaps unconsciously, made peace with failure. That the standard being applied at Everton right now is not what is required to compete, to grow, or to honour the history of this club. It is the standard of an organisation that has stopped believing it can do better.
And that, more than any individual result or transfer misstep, is the culture problem.
Because culture is not a poster on a wall or a phrase in a press release. It is what you tolerate. It is what you celebrate. It is the message sent – loudly, implicitly – by those in positions of authority about what is and is not acceptable. When the CEO can declare himself “happily dissatisfied” with a season of this magnitude and face no meaningful challenge from above, the message is clear: this is fine.
It is not fine.
Look no further than the club’s own social media output for proof of how deep this disconnect runs.
While supporters were still processing how a side managed to surrender a two-goal home lead in under ten minutes in front of their own fans – the club was publishing slow-motion highlight reels captioned “a moment in time.” Cinematic. Atmospheric. Utterly tone-deaf. Because yes, it was a moment in time: the moment Everton contrived, once again, to find a new and dispiriting way to lose a game.
The aesthetic gloss applied to that footage tells you something important – that somewhere in the building, someone decided the priority was the content calendar, not the crowd filing out in disbelief.
Then there are the anniversary celebrations. Everton have been marking the anniversary of surviving relegation. Staying up. That is what is being commemorated now – not a trophy, not a title challenge, not a cup run, but the act of remaining in the division.
Meanwhile, Aston Villa and Crystal Palace are preparing for European finals. Bournemouth are fighting for Champions League football. Clubs that, not so long ago, were spoken of in the same breath as Everton – or below them – have moved forward while we have been busy producing memorial content for a great escape. The bar has not merely been lowered. It has been framed, hung on the wall, and given a caption.
Everton supporters have endured thirty-plus years of cycling through the same disappointments with different faces. Managers come and go. Players arrive with fanfare and leave in frustration. Owners promise transformation and deliver stagnation. The one constant is the culture – a culture in which mediocrity is dressed up in modest language, ambition is managed downward until it disappears, and accountability exists only for those without power.
Until that changes – until those at the very top of this football club demand more of themselves than “happy dissatisfaction” – nothing else will.
The fans deserve better. They always have.
