Fans celebrate during the match between Everton and Brighton & Hove Albion at Hill Dickinson Stadium on August 24, 2025
Fans celebrate during the match between Everton and Brighton & Hove Albion at Hill Dickinson Stadium on August 24, 2025(Image: Michael Regan/Getty Images)
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All good things must come to an end and after more than 26 years of service, this correspondent’s time at the company that has become Reach PLC is at a close.
While many schoolchildren don’t know what they want to do when they grow up, I always aspired to become a sports journalist, putting in the hard yards from a young age (including interviewing then Preston North End manager David Moyes for my university newspaper as a student) to get to what was always a dream position, covering Everton. I’ve been reporting on Premier League football for 21 years but the last four have been the pinnacle of my career to date, doing all the Blues’ matches home and away.
Perhaps I was brainwashed as a nipper by my future boss at the ECHO, a certain David Prentice. Back in 1989, I used my pocket money to spend £2:50 on a 96-page publication he wrote for Macdonald Children’s Books in which the introduction read: “Winning trophies may be enough for the Liverpools, Arsenals and Manchester Uniteds of the football world – but not for Everton Football Club. Nil Satis Nisi Optimum is the club motto, which translated from Latin means ‘Nothing but the best is good enough.’
“And the ‘best’ for Evertonians will never be mere lifting of League Championships and FA Cups. If they win trophies it has to be with skilful, artistic football.
“Evertonians have never claimed their team to be the most successful in soccer history – just the best. The following pages explain just why...”
Some 37 years on, I guess such lofty ideals have now been tempered somewhat. At least I got to see one subsequent silverware triumph in 1995 but for anyone still fortunate enough to be the right side of 40, forget it.
Never mind ‘School of Science’ stuff, given their subsequent slide down football’s food chain (remember when Dave typed out those words, Everton had two more League Championships to their name than Manchester United), I think beleaguered Blues would gladly embrace another scruffy winner off Thierno Barry’s backside or some other random body part to finally break their League Cup duck this season.
The past generation has been the toughest in the club’s history with the longest trophy drought in their existence combined with a hat-trick of final day escapes from the dreaded drop – the most recent one of course coming on my watch as Everton reporter when Abdoulaye Doucoure’s goal against Bournemouth in 2023 saved them from a first relegation in 72 years despite posting their lowest ever equivalent points total.
That day of drama was just one of many memorable moments I got to cover in the role. It might have been, certainly until Moyes returned, a period of great turmoil – on and off the pitch – but given that coverage of the Blues is very much a two-person operation in terms of the volume of content the ECHO readership has become accustomed to, I am immensely proud of what my former colleague Joe Thomas and I achieved between 2022-26 in terms of the publication’s reputation with the fanbase.
Joe took up his role as Everton correspondent on April 6, 2022 with the baptism of fire that was Burnley’s 3-2 comeback win over Frank Lampard’s side at Turf Moor when Clarets boss Sean Dyche told his team that the visitors “don’t know how to win.” A year later, the gravel-voiced gaffer was having to deal with that problem himself.
The tables were turned somewhat on October 1 the same year as the Blues came from behind to triumph 2-1 at Southampton in the first game that Joe and I were in our respective positions. Unfortunately that proved to be a false dawn with Everton returning on an even longer journey down to the south coast twice in the space of four days the following month to suffer a brace of thrashings at Bournemouth which proved to be the beginning of the end of Lampard.
In spite of all the mayhem though as Farhad Moshiri’s reign that saw eight managers in as many years drawing to a close against the backdrop of supporter protests against the ownership, an unprecedented brace of points deductions in the same season and striking a deal to sell the club to the now disgraced Miami-based private investment company, 777 Partners, I firmly believe that the respective skill sets of Joe and myself dovetailed effectively to provide a first class service.
He of course came into the role with the background of being a highly respected former crime reporter with his extensive coverage of the Hillsborough trials, while I brought what a high-ranking opposite number at one of our sister titles told me when I informed him of my impending departure: “An encyclopaedic knowledge of Everton.”
Although we had a dozen years of previous service at the ECHO together, we had mostly been in different departments but now of course we were working cheek by jowl. I’ve worked out that during our spell together between 2022-26, Joe and I were sat side by side in a car, driving over 12,000 miles between us which is further than the distance from the United Kingdom to New Zealand (and that’s not even including all the EFL Trophy fixtures I reported on, driving by myself).
Often, we would fill that time efficiently by recording on the road podcasts when returning from fixtures from far flung corners of the country while sometimes – shining a light on what many might consider a glamorous role – which ever one of us was the passenger, would have a laptop on our knee and be thrashing out copy as we trundled along a darkened road late into the night.
Together, we got to report on a couple of unique moments in Everton history, the final game at Goodison Park and the first at Hill Dickinson Stadium. I’d say these were “once in a lifetime” events but given that the Blues played at the Grand Old Lady for 133 years, they were even rarer than that.
While all this was going on, I somehow found time to write a brace of books of my own to mark those occasions, Spirit of the Blues and On the Banks of the Royal Blue Mersey which hopefully raised the ECHO’s profile even further. From a personal point of view though, several highlights from the day job stand out though.
Christopher Beesley wrote two books while serving as the ECHO's Everton reporter with Spirit of the Blues (left) published in 2025 and On the Banks of the Royal Blue Mersey (right) published in 2026
Christopher Beesley wrote two books while serving as the ECHO's Everton reporter with Spirit of the Blues (left) published in 2025 and On the Banks of the Royal Blue Mersey (right) published in 2026
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The project I am proudest of is the Goodison Park: My Home series in which I conducted video interviews with major Everton figures ahead of the ground move. I was fortunate enough to coax the club’s most successful captain Kevin Ratcliffe to join me for the pilot episode as it were in a pub near Chester but from then onwards, it grew and grew.
Notable coups included David Moyes before he returned to the club and the Blues’ last trophy-winning manager Joe Royle but there are so many elements I love from each individual conversation and they were also so very different as various characters weaved a rich tapestry of memories. To the best of my knowledge, none of my contemporaries were producing anything comparable and fittingly we finished with a 20th instalment coming from inside Goodison itself as I spoke to club captain Seamus Coleman on the eve of the farewell fixture against Southampton.
With an absence of European football going back almost a decade, a pre-season jaunt to the shores of Lake Geneva with views of Mont Blanc on the horizon in July 2023 as the only UK-based journalist reporting on Everton’s friendly with Swiss side Stade Nyonnais, literally next door to UEFA’s headquarters – I had visions of them having to ask Aleksander Ceferin for their ball back – was fun but my 12-day coverage of the Blues in the Premier League Summer Series in the USA last year was a truly special experience.
The tour kicked off with exclusive interviews speaking to a couple of Moyes’ old boys who were American internationals, Tim Howard and Landon Donovan. I then visited the inner sanctum that is the Manhattan office of Hill Dickinson Stadium architect Dan Meis, recorded an interview with Howard Kendall’s son Simon in a shopping mall opposite MetLife Stadium, did podcasts at fan events on the streets of New York – my favourite ever episode (rest in peace Josh Pringle, the larger than life doorman at Turnmill Bar, the base for Evertonians in the city, who will be buried today) – and Atlanta while also doing a sit-down interview with the manager in the team hotel in Chicago.
Dan Meis shows ECHO Everton reporter Chris Beesley a model of a cross section of Hill Dickinson Stadium at his New York City office
Dan Meis shows ECHO Everton reporter Chris Beesley a model of a cross section of Hill Dickinson Stadium at his New York City office
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Throughout the whole trip, meeting Blues, whether they were expats, Americans or others like myself just there for the tournament, was an experience that reinforced to me how special this club is and how deserving its loyal but long-suffering supporters are for some success.
Which takes me full circle to this, my final week in the role. The job isn’t just about interviewing Premier League stars (I love Jordan Pickford’s supreme self-confidence and loyalty; James Tarkowski always fronts up regardless of the scoreline and deserved his unique moment with the last kick in the final Goodison derby; Michael Keane is an absolute gentleman; Jarrad Branthwaite comes across as a wise head on young shoulders; James Garner says it as it is in his straightforward but determined manner; and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall is affable, articulate and acutely aware of what is required to be an Everton player).
One of my last articles was with Dennis Marsh, who travels 2,000 miles from Zurich to watch the Blues play home and away, who told me: “I have built a wonderful life abroad, but I love Scousers, they bring me back to earth and remind me who I am.”
He then added: “I’ve had so many good times, even when Everton have lost, just talking to people over a pint – it’s very special.”
And so has been serving you in my dream job. My final shift at the ECHO is now complete but ahead of the fixture at Brentford, I’ve left you with a parting gift in the shape of one last big exclusive and given the magnitude of the occasion, I sincerely hope you all enjoy it and appreciate my efforts.
The full 20-episode series of Goodison Park: My Home, created by Christopher Beesley to mark Everton's stadium move is available to watch on YouTube