Supporters gather outside the ground to welcome the arrival of the team coach ahead of the match between Everton and Chelsea at Goodison Park on May 1, 2022
Supporters gather outside the ground to welcome the arrival of the team coach ahead of the match between Everton and Chelsea at Goodison Park on May 1, 2022
The wait is over. Everton is a club under new ownership that could not come soon enough.
Evaluating the legacy of the departing Farhad Moshiri is a challenge of epic proportions and huge complexity. But that the club he departs is viewed as a worthwhile investment has as much to do with its greatest asset as any other factor.
That much was crystal clear just a few days ago. As Everton repelled attack after attack at Arsenal the noise from the away end grew louder. The several thousand Blues who travelled across the country shortly before Christmas epitomised the very best of one of football’s most storied clubs.
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They sang in defiance rather than expectation. As for hope, that evaporated a long time ago.
Everton have not won at the Emirates in front of their own supporters. The only victory there came in front of the empty stands of lockdown and it was 1996 when they last took three points home to Merseyside. The Gunners were still at Highbury.
Indeed, Everton have won just once away from home in this calendar year. And yet that away end is always sold out - supporters returning time and again despite a cost of living crisis and despite a track record that has taught them not to set off with belief.
That is THE story of Moshiri’s Everton - the story of how a passionate fanbase proved more powerful than a billionaire’s chequebook.
Moshiri’s arrival was supposed to set in motion an exciting new dawn but, over time, it disintegrated into an expensive farce. Dreams of challenging for silverware and European nights under the lights at Goodison Park turned into a vicious, repetitive nightmare of relegation fights, crises in the boardroom and unprecedented punishments from a Premier League that appeared intent on making an example of a club that had lost its lustre.
Over recent years the threat even became existential as the club flirted with catastrophe. If that sounds dramatic, it was Moshiri, the majority shareholder himself, who used that word.
And yet those supporters kept coming back to drag Everton from the precipice. The low points were grim and painful. The spring 2022 defeat under Frank Lampard at Turf Moor, dished out by then Burnley boss and later Everton saviour Sean Dyche, was one nadir. That was the first time in a generation the Blues looked in real danger of a slump to the Championship.
Then there were the home defeats of January 2023 that marked the end of Lampard’s reign. The empty stands as Brighton and Hove Albion routed his side at Goodison were representative of an exhausted fanbase taking a deep breath as it tried to work out whether it could muster the energy needed to push the club to safety, as it had done so incredibly just eight months earlier. Southampton followed, a game that took place amid supporter protests over how the club was run by a board that was absent due to alleged safety concerns - claims that, significantly, had not been substantiated by police.
Newcastle United, a defeat in the early stages of Dyche’s tenure, may have been the worst of the lot in terms of the club's on-the-pitch fate. The situation appeared dire then.
But as they had done a season earlier when thousands flooded the streets of Walton and hundreds gathered outside Finch Farm to back the players with flares, applause and Myra the good-luck Goodison dog, the supporters rose to the occasion and rallied instead of deserting the club they love. They did so again last season, when the consequences of Moshiri’s oversight of the club led to the points deductions that provided a chastening new threat.
It is poignant that the most emphatic celebration of Moshiri’s eight years came with that historic, remarkable comeback win that secured Premier League survival against Crystal Palace in May 2022. A club with dreams of going to the top was jubilant at having not quite hit rock bottom and it was those ever-present supporters who had, as they have done so many times since, made the difference.
It is they who have once again been made to suffer most as a club that has been in paralysis during years of ownership uncertainty limped through a state of purgatory over the opening months of this season, one that has seen a hollowed out squad struggle to lift Goodison in her final campaign.
The hope now is that the Friedkins can change the fortunes of Everton. For all that has gone wrong under Moshiri he leaves as the club prepares to accept the keys to a wonderful new stadium, a venue he will seek to claim as his legacy and which should provide the Blues with fresh zest. There is a lot of hard work yet to do but for all that recent years have been a period of struggle, the foundations have also been laid for a better, brighter future and that cannot be ignored amid the rush to judgement.
Everton’s supporters deserve to see the huge potential on the banks of the Mersey be exploited by new owners who should provide stability and will hopefully use that as a platform for success. When Everton won at Arsenal back in 1996 the club were the reigning FA Cup champions. Twenty eight years later, as the away end roared its side on to a valuable point against the same opposition on Saturday, that is still the last piece of silverware raised by a club that has lost its way.
Should Everton now go on to enjoy happier times then, when the club is at its best, the role of the supporters when it was at its worst should not be forgotten. They deserve all the Friedkins hope to achieve, and more. Without the fans, the opportunity that awaits these new owners would simply not exist.