When I was in Borneo I came across a couple of local guys who were wearing Everton shirts. On asking them whether they supported Everton and knew anything about it, they were actually quite knowledgeable.
But they also followed Liverpool closely and said they were their joint favourite team. I'm not sure they quite get it.
hehe, in Singapore i still bump into a few RS supporters who seem to be living in the early 80s. when they find out i support Everton they're all like "yeah!! alright Merseyside!!! we hate Man Yoo!!!" and i'm sort of like, "yeah, but i hate you too, what you on about?" lol
but since they don't give me grief or try and take the piss, i'm semi-amiable towards them. it's the recent fans who jumped on the RS bandwagon in the 90s and later that get up my nose. don't know their history, any of them.
personally, i think in se asia, the large support for the big 4 isn't solely down to the media. it's always been there from before. lots of fans started supporting Man U, Arse and Loserpool from the 70s. it then got passed down to their children of the 80s, where Liverpool gained another substantial support base because of their dominance. but here so did Everton, and this is the era when most of the local fans i know started supporting Everton. myself included, in 1988. in those days, we only got to watch English football once a week for 2 hours on Sunday afternoon, when everyone would rush home from church to catch the game of the week on telly and the highlights from the other games that followed. cue the 90s and the start of the PL, henceforth known as the Dark Ages. now we got to watch up to 4 or 5 games live every week, so whilst Everton was staving off relegation or wallowng in mid-table mediocrity in those days, fans here witnessed the likes of Man U, ****e, Arse, Blackburn, Spurs and Newcastle on prime time telly every weekend. and when that's all the kids of those fans from the 70s see on telly week in week out, they're gonna keep supporting the team their dads did and pass it on to their children.
the odd ones out, i find, are the Chelsea 'supporters'. before they bought their first premiership, the only Chelsea fans you'd find around here are blokes who preferred Serie A to EPL and Chelsea was their 'second' club because of the number of Italians they had in those days. for the same reason Chelsea also gained a fair number of fans from the fairer sex. but that's another story...