This week last year...

[Dublin blue 75]

Was fortunate to get tickets for the home derby this Spring with my seven year old (dreadful game and drenched but) and one image of the prior regime(s) deadbeats resonates. We were in the family enclosure and pre-game Williams, in team gear but hadn't made match day squad, buying a foot long dog and bottle of some sugary crap orange and heading up stairs to players seating. Keeping it classy, good optics. We seem to have rooted out much of those bed blockers, some turnaround in several months. Bravo Marcel and Marco.

 

[degsy]

We were the worst team in the league by a mile at this point. If someone had said then we’d have Richarlison Bernard Digne Gomes and Mina playing for us in 12 months time we would have laughed.

When you put it like that its a small miracle

 

[Brett Angell Delight]

Lucky. Add another few years to that and you would have witnessed a bright period, that makes the dark of the embalmer's reign all the more terrible. Awful, awful period.

Yeah, I have a vague recollection of my auld fella celebrating us winning the league, and I can never work out whether I feel gutted not to have the proper memory of it or relieved not to have had a brief taste of glory before a couple of decades of garbage!

 

[maccavennie]

Sam Allardyce being appointed as manager of Everton Football Club was the darkest day in my opinion.

100%

 

[Yarrgh]

Yeah, I have a vague recollection of my auld fella celebrating us winning the league, and I can never work out whether I feel gutted not to have the proper memory of it or relieved not to have had a brief taste of glory before a couple of decades of garbage!

You have the truest of Evertonian existences- all the awfulness with only the sense of what could've been without actually seeing it.

 

[LydiateLee]

Mad how much this has hit home with all of us.

Compare how you feel ahead of going tomorrow to say the Newcastle game in January. Crazy.

 

[Lanolin]

Terrible, terrible, game but massively overstated as a some sort of portent of disaster in my opinion. I've seen so many abject Everton performances over the years, but often a week or 2 later they look like a decent side. I remember all the mutterings that we were going to relegated when we got annihilated at home by Arsenal on the opening day in 2004, only for us to win about the next 5 or 6 games on the bounce. Same season 'the bubble had burst' when we lost for the second time in 3 days, getting massacred at Spurs on New Years Day, only for us to be back to winning ways before the week was out. The season after that we were definitely going down after consecutive 4-0 losses over Christmas, and then we didn't lose again until March. It happens all the time, football's a weird game.

 

[Zezti]

I remember before that game we all mostly thought "This'll be easy, we can get our season back on track with this" and we got totally spunked.

 

[Groucho]

Everton, raising blood preasure to 1878/1878

Fixed

 

[Saint Domingo]

Terrible, terrible, game but massively overstated as a some sort of portent of disaster in my opinion. I've seen so many abject Everton performances over the years, but often a week or 2 later they look like a decent side. I remember all the mutterings that we were going to relegated when we got annihilated at home by Arsenal on the opening day in 2004, only for us to win about the next 5 or 6 games on the bounce. Same season 'the bubble had burst' when we lost for the second time in 3 days, getting massacred at Spurs on New Years Day, only for us to be back to winning ways before the week was out. The season after that we were definitely going down after consecutive 4-0 losses over Christmas, and then we didn't lose again until March. It happens all the time, football's a weird game.

I think the difference both those times was that we had a manager that we knew was capable of turning form around, and we had some players who could scrap for points if needed like Cahill Osman Bent Arteta Kilbane etc. At Southampton we had an interim manager in Unsworth, an injury crisis, and a squad that had been cobbled together with players looking completely unmotivated. Granted they made a mockery of this almost immediately after that game but in that match whilst not thinking we were down I did think that unless we make a drastic change we could go down this season as we were poor enough that day and the games leading up to it.

 

[Lanolin]

I think the difference both those times was that we had a manager that we knew was capable of turning form around, and we had some players who could scrap for points if needed like Cahill Osman Bent Arteta Kilbane etc. At Southampton we had an interim manager in Unsworth, an injury crisis, and a squad that had been cobbled together with players looking completely unmotivated. Granted they made a mockery of this almost immediately after that game but in that match whilst not thinking we were down I did think that unless we make a drastic change we could go down this season as we were poor enough that day and the games leading up to it.

Yeah I know what you mean, and I can understand why people were scared, so was I while I was watching it. I just think sometimes people forget that it's really not uncommon for those games to happen, and it doesn't mean we were doomed.

 

[KaiserEFC]

I was there. Easily in the top 3 worst games I’ve ever been to.

 

[Yarrgh]

I was there. Easily in the top 3 worst games I’ve ever been to.

I can't remember actually watching it and hence it doesn't fill me with the anguish of those who suffered. Hearing from people who were there though is/was grim enough for me though.

We have progressed.

 

[Cels]

You have to experience the lows to appreciate the highs. We should dream but never become arrogant, or too complacent. Damn... I really shouldn't be this drunk so early in the afternoon.

 

[KaiserEFC]

I can't remember actually watching it and hence it doesn't fill me with the anguish of those who suffered. Hearing from people who were there though is/was grim enough for me though.

We have progressed.

Southampton’s whopper section who sit right next to the away end even took pity and stopped giving us abuse. That’s how bad it got.