27 Comments

Great article, and I fully understand why you have fallen out of love with the modern game.

I have to a certain degree, the rules regarding financial liabilities of each club, are firmly skewed towards maintaining the status quo of the 'sly six' over any upstarts capable of challenging their dominance.

However, my support of Everton is something I cant and wont give up on, despite the last 3 years of despair and heartache.

You see it's a family thing going back four generations, I could never walk out on one of Europes historic clubs, ever.

The irony is, despite the lack of trophies, the club is as popular now, as it has ever been.

Next season, 53,000 of us will walk along the Dock Road every two weeks in a truly iconic new stadium.

Compare this to the average attendance in the 1980s, of around 33,000 going to Goodison?

Finally, you've let our former owner and chairman off the hook somewhat. Sadly, the man was a compulsive liar and charlatan, who led the club for 20 years into a slow decline,refusing to let go of his 'train set', while so called smaller clubs, like Brighton, followed a more scientific and sustainable route, forge ahead.

Keep the faith.

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Very well put argument about modern football. But I often reflect that Everton had no issues with the Littlewoods money that bought success in the 1960s and triggered the monetarisation of the sport gaining momentum. As for Kenwright he arrived on the scene without realising how deep his pockets needed to be and as time passed they needed to be deeper and deeper causing the club to go searching for benefactors with no prior attachment to the club.

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David Lloyd, I salute you! Every single WORD of your article reflects my own sentiments precisely.

The fact that the Holy Cow of Cash (regardless of the 'dubious' nature of its SOURCE) has become the major preoccupation of far too many clubs (especially here in the UK) needed someone with the courage to highlight the elephant (giving birth to twins) in the Room. I'll stand at your shoulder and tell Rich-Boy EXACTLY the same as you if he ever dares visit these Blessed Shores and refer to "all the football, this summer" ...

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Loved this piece.

Brilliant, funny, perfectly structured, beautifully written.

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Could NOT stop reading. I am squarely in the exact same camp as you albeit a decade or so later. As a doting daughter in the early 2000s I jumped at the chance to fill the space of my dad's hungover mates at the match only to find myself, a chubby teenager, chanting "you're fat and you slap your bird" at the recently departed Rooney, kidding myself that I was somehow included in that crowd. You make so many valid points outside of the LGBTQIA+ double standards, which isn't spoken about enough. Can't wait for your next piece. Anyone who can somehow turn their butt hole into a football metaphor has my vote.

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Excellent and well written and I agree with every single word. My dad was the same, he lived and breathed Everton even though he came from a family of reds. Like the saying goes, money is the root of all evil and there are some very very dubious people with money now involved in the game.

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As ever, DL nails it.

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Spot on.

(COYB)

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Bloody marvellous!

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Interesting article, but I get the impression that you were never really a great fan, or I doubt you'd have given it up as erasy as you seem to have. Granted a lot of the off the field escapades certainly put a strain on your loyalty, but that's part and parcel of watching the game and understanding what it means to you as well as the rest of us.

Finally, can anybody who ever writes about the game from the aspect of watching it, please stop writing in such a detached manner? You start off talking about how your dad used to take you, but then you go off on some kind of middle class University Thesis type theme. You start wondering about the various aromas, the worst thing Nick Hornby ever did was write about football! Also, why is it so important to any of you Literati types whether or not players are openly gay? To me, the only ones who ever seems to feel the need to declare their sexuality openly are (mostly) musicians, and I often suspect that that is done with one eye on the tills. Possibly a totally different demographic, but it doesn't seem to be any kind of issue in the women's game, even at the highest level

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Brilliantly written but very sobering for me in my 90th year and still a season ticket-holder after watching Everton for the first time in 1948: Everton 3 - Newcastle 3.

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I hope you enjoy the new stadium. It's sad seeing Goodison go but one constant in life is change. I wish Everton all the best of luck - I gave up football so I could marry Suzi Quattro.

That never happened.

Good luck mate - you should write something about how things were back in the 40s and 50s. Different game. People say footballers today are way more fitter - but I honestly think the game was far tougher back then so fitness might not be a match for the tough players back then.

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I really enjoyed this article. I still go every week behind the Gwladys Street goal, but until money departs the game and the glitz and glamour is a distant memory the game is a shadow of its former self

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Guilty as charged, David: I simply cannot forsake my religion. And I've foisted it on my two kids, too, with three season tickets in the Top Balcony. Most of last season we sat there, rocking backwards and forwards, muttering 'make it stop.' A familial self-help group rendered helpless to do anything, as our team was washed back and forth on a financial tide set to overwhelm us.

And then up steps an American with a wad of cash and a back story that makes us feel better about our club. A 3.2 million acre conservation reserve in Tanzania, you say? Flies the planes himself that target the poachers? And makes great movies whilst flogging Toyotas? He'll do for us. Much better than a bloke described as a close mate of that murderous head-case running Russia (into the ground).

It's back to Goodison for us in August, though not Mass. Gave that up as a bad job years ago.

Up those marvellous, infuriating, inconsistent, wonderful Toffees.

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VAR has killed it off for me. Can't celebrate a goal properly then what's the point? The whole sport (at top level) is such a sterile spectacle now with VAR micro management, rampant consumerism (3 kits a year?), robotic players far removed from the real world, gulf states playing monopoly. I've never watched as little football as I did last season and can't see my interest igniting again, it's just something to have on in the background now.

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Steve; I reckon you, too, have let off Boys' Pen Bill very lightly!

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Yep, spot on. I’m with David. It’s not my game anymore, and LFC are no longer my club. Football somehow feels like the worst excesses of capitalism + showbiz. Resisting its pull is a challenge, but resist I will.

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