Ashtonian
Banned on request
Have we lost our passion as a football club?
I remember going back to when I first started following Everton properly as a kid. We had just stayed up through a heroic 2-0 turnaround against Wimbledon on the last day of the season. My first game was Forest at home on a weeknight, we lost 2-0, but just seeing my team made me happy. Not long after that came my first Derby, I never realised then how bad the team was, or understood the notion of how bad mike walker was. So hearing Joe Royle was manager went straight over my head at the time. What I do remember, was a Scotsman called Duncan Ferguson jump higher than any Liverpool player and bury a header into the Gwladys Street end, and subsequently the whole crowd make the ground shake afterwards. Fast forward 22 years later and I witnessed an Everton team turn up to Anfield and proceed to go through the motions, to not only lose but not even care. What had changed? You could pick out many reasons as to why but one thing that was not on show that night was pride or passion for the shirt, which is what I can see missing from the club.
The past 15 years have been long for us all, no success, no trophies and nothing really to boast about. However could we have lost that passion we once had, the same passion that kept us up every year, that won us derbies by itself and made Goodison such a hard place to come and play? Looking at the starting 11 today and you question who cares in that team? Our captain is quiet, the players never fight for the badge on their shirt, and we seem to accept things when they go wrong. Who do you blame for that? Moyes and his negative outlook? Martinez losing the backing of the team? Do you blame us, the fans? When was the last time we genuinely went out onto the pitch and fought for 90 minutes every week? Or when the team actually cared after losing? Perhaps this is what the problem is, why we aren’t successful, why we have bottled every big chance we have got over the past 15 years.
Us fans are very much part of this as well. Goodison sometimes can be quiet as a church, I can’t remember the last time we finished singing Grand Old Team, in fact we have been content for 2 years now to pay our money and not say a word until customary boos on half time. Is this lack of passion now rubbing off on us? We are the best fans in the world when we want to be, yet we seem so apathetic now, we have stopped really expecting us to be the Everton of old and have settled for the Everton of today? No different to anyone else in the league? There is always the discussion of whether Cahill was a club legend, or Ferguson, but at least they cared for the club. You knew when they went out on the pitch they would run through brick walls for us, would fight for every ball for us, and in one case literally wear the club on their sleeve for us. Do any of the players we have now carry that same passion? Do any of them care losing when they go back to their big houses and rich lives, do they even need to care?
You could argue this is all product of the new money club culture that has really taken over. Our former owner has not really helped things and Moyes sucked a lot of enthusiasm out of the club by the end of his tenure, but are we lacking our Fergusons, our Cahill’s, our Watson’s? I remember not too long ago, Suarez the year before had deliberately injured Mirallas to get him off the pitch; he escaped with just a booking. We were all fuming, it was the same old story again, which cost us going for the win. Then 12 months later, the ball has bounced up on the half way line, bit of a nothing ball, then BANG! Mirallas had gone in on Suarez, a bit of revenge for last year. That actually made me over the moon to see because it was the first time in a derby in my memory that any one of our players shown that passion, to care about that game, and for the club. Perhaps, just perhaps, we need to start on December 19th to get that passion back, to fight on the pitch and turn this around because otherwise, if the passion and pride go away, then so does the spark that really made us Everton.
I remember going back to when I first started following Everton properly as a kid. We had just stayed up through a heroic 2-0 turnaround against Wimbledon on the last day of the season. My first game was Forest at home on a weeknight, we lost 2-0, but just seeing my team made me happy. Not long after that came my first Derby, I never realised then how bad the team was, or understood the notion of how bad mike walker was. So hearing Joe Royle was manager went straight over my head at the time. What I do remember, was a Scotsman called Duncan Ferguson jump higher than any Liverpool player and bury a header into the Gwladys Street end, and subsequently the whole crowd make the ground shake afterwards. Fast forward 22 years later and I witnessed an Everton team turn up to Anfield and proceed to go through the motions, to not only lose but not even care. What had changed? You could pick out many reasons as to why but one thing that was not on show that night was pride or passion for the shirt, which is what I can see missing from the club.
The past 15 years have been long for us all, no success, no trophies and nothing really to boast about. However could we have lost that passion we once had, the same passion that kept us up every year, that won us derbies by itself and made Goodison such a hard place to come and play? Looking at the starting 11 today and you question who cares in that team? Our captain is quiet, the players never fight for the badge on their shirt, and we seem to accept things when they go wrong. Who do you blame for that? Moyes and his negative outlook? Martinez losing the backing of the team? Do you blame us, the fans? When was the last time we genuinely went out onto the pitch and fought for 90 minutes every week? Or when the team actually cared after losing? Perhaps this is what the problem is, why we aren’t successful, why we have bottled every big chance we have got over the past 15 years.
Us fans are very much part of this as well. Goodison sometimes can be quiet as a church, I can’t remember the last time we finished singing Grand Old Team, in fact we have been content for 2 years now to pay our money and not say a word until customary boos on half time. Is this lack of passion now rubbing off on us? We are the best fans in the world when we want to be, yet we seem so apathetic now, we have stopped really expecting us to be the Everton of old and have settled for the Everton of today? No different to anyone else in the league? There is always the discussion of whether Cahill was a club legend, or Ferguson, but at least they cared for the club. You knew when they went out on the pitch they would run through brick walls for us, would fight for every ball for us, and in one case literally wear the club on their sleeve for us. Do any of the players we have now carry that same passion? Do any of them care losing when they go back to their big houses and rich lives, do they even need to care?
You could argue this is all product of the new money club culture that has really taken over. Our former owner has not really helped things and Moyes sucked a lot of enthusiasm out of the club by the end of his tenure, but are we lacking our Fergusons, our Cahill’s, our Watson’s? I remember not too long ago, Suarez the year before had deliberately injured Mirallas to get him off the pitch; he escaped with just a booking. We were all fuming, it was the same old story again, which cost us going for the win. Then 12 months later, the ball has bounced up on the half way line, bit of a nothing ball, then BANG! Mirallas had gone in on Suarez, a bit of revenge for last year. That actually made me over the moon to see because it was the first time in a derby in my memory that any one of our players shown that passion, to care about that game, and for the club. Perhaps, just perhaps, we need to start on December 19th to get that passion back, to fight on the pitch and turn this around because otherwise, if the passion and pride go away, then so does the spark that really made us Everton.
