Chris Beesley examines a major talking point from Everton's 3-0 win over Chelsea at Hill Dickinson Stadium
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This was Everton’s best day yet at Hill Dickinson Stadium.
As much as we all love Goodison Park and the integral role she played in epitomising the Spirit of the Blues for 133 years, it was also the final nail in the coffin to those who allowed nostalgia to cloud their judgement and tried to peddle the myth that the club’s new home by the banks of the Mersey was incapable of matching the atmosphere at ‘The Grand Old Lady.’
Everton was Goodison Park and Goodison Park was Everton.
When the Blues departed last May, Andy Gray, one of the heroes of the ground’s greatest night against Bayern Munich, declared: “We might be leaving Goodison, but Goodison will never leave us.”
Ahead of Everton’s inaugural competitive fixture at Hill Dickinson Stadium against Brighton & Hove Albion, Gray’s fellow Glaswegian, manager David Moyes wrote in his programme notes: “What I know won’t change is the way you’ve supported the team over all the years at Goodison Park. The move here wouldn’t be worthwhile if we didn’t bring the soul of Goodison Park with us to Hill Dickinson Stadium.”
And that’s exactly what has happened. New matchday rituals have had to be embraced and everyone has had to get used to their fresh ‘spec’ among the new surroundings, but it’s those same Evertonians who made Goodison Park so special that are now turning up by the banks of the Mersey to keep supporting their team. Also, they’re doing so in even greater numbers.
The Blues have only once enjoyed an average attendance figure over a season that’s been north of 50,000 (51,603 for the 1962/63 title-winning campaign). However, this term they’re currently running at 52,067 ensuring that despite attracting 16 figures of over 70,000 for one-off fixtures at Goodison, so they’re playing in front of the biggest regular crowds in their history.
For all of the power of Goodison, with the team struggling in recent seasons, highlight moments – other than ‘great escapes’ from relegation – were few and far between in her latter years. Everton only won five league games at home in their historic final campaign, their joint lowest ever total along with 1957/58.
After enduring something of a bleak mid-winter on home turf, back-to-back victories at Hill Dickinson Stadium have now eclipsed that figure for 2025/26 in spite of the teething problems that are only natural with such a major adjustment. Unlike some of the sterile bowls that other teams have moved into, Dan Meis’ masterpiece encapsulates all the best elements of Goodison into a modern setting, positioned in the most enviable stadium location in the land.
Visitors coming to Bramley-Moore Dock have been saying that all season, heaping praise on this gem of a football arena, and now even the naysayers among its regular patrons are seeing the light and getting onside. The dedicated volunteers of fan group the 1878s, whose herculean efforts to improve matchdays in Goodison’s final years have now continued at Hill Dickinson Stadium, organising Saturday’s coach welcome that midfielder Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall declared: “set the tone.”
Afterwards, the 1878s also took to social media to remark on X (formerly Twitter): “Now that felt like home. What a performance Everton & what an atmosphere.”
On the same platform, Scousericey wrote: “I never want to hear again that the stadium is incapable of creating an atmosphere as good as Goodison. That tonight was better than 90% of games at Goodison in the last decade. Up the Toffees!”
A major element when generating that noise comes from the team itself producing performances on the pitch that the supporters can get behind and the timing of the kick off – this was Saturday evening on a sunny day unlike all those cold, midweek encounters – but Evertonians also ‘Pump up the volume’ (coincidently the name of MARRS’ number one single that was top of the charts the last time that the Blues beat Chelsea by three goals in 1987) when they’re riled by a seeming injustice.
We witnessed that back in October when Hill Dickinson Stadium saw its first stoppage time winner in Everton’s 2-1 comeback victory over Crystal Palace. The high-flying Eagles, who had lifted the first major trophy in their history earlier that year when defeating Manchester City in the FA Cup final, were looking to extend their unbeaten run to 20 matches and looked to be cruising to success when they led at the interval and should have been out of sight.
However, there was an incident midway through the second half when the tide turned by the Mersey with a significant change of mood within the ground. Palace’s Yeremy Pino, rather foolishly hindsight will show him, refused to withdraw when the hosts had a free-kick by the centre circle.
Both James Garner – who shoved the petulant Spaniard – and manager Moyes, got a yellow card for their troubles but Everton, with their fanbase riled, got their cue for a comeback. On this occasion, the seeds were sown before kick-off.
In the days leading up to the game, it was revealed that the Stamford Bridge outfit – unlike the Blues in 2023/24 with their unprecedented brace of points deductions – were to avoid a similar punishment despite admitting to making £47million of secret payments to unlicensed agents between 2011-18 with the catalogue of illicit deals enabling them to build a team of superstars during the period.
As Andy Hunter observed in his Guardian match report: “It was left to Everton to impose the only serious sporting sanction of the week on Chelsea.”
On X, Howard Parr, who describes himself as “Family man, Evertonian, socialist, in that order,” remarked: “We needed the anger, the unifying anger, stoked by a cossetted Sky 6 team strutting about like the world owes them... to make the HD a ‘bear-pit.’ Could be THE game that makes the ground feel like home, at last.”