Aerial photograph of Liverpool's ground Anfield and Everton's ground Goodison Park
Aerial photograph of Liverpool's ground Anfield and Everton's ground Goodison Park (Image: David Goddard)
“Across the park/crossing the park” – everyone in Merseyside football understands what that means.
Everton will “cross the park” for the final time on Wednesday when they make the short journey from Goodison to Anfield, the two grounds that for 133 years have stood either side of Stanley Park. At their closest point, these two sporting cathedrals are a mere 800 yards apart but in terms of what they’ve come to represent, they’re now worlds away from each other.
Although they’ve curiously never actually played in Everton itself, where the tower emblazoned on their club crest is situated, the Blues are steeped in the history of this part of the city. Everton originally played on an open pitch on Stanley Park itself before a brief spell being based at Priory Road.
They’d been at Anfield for four years when they got the nod over their original local rivals Bootle to become founder members of the Football League in 1888. This was mainly due to their pulling power at the turnstiles over on-the-field record at the time – Everton can claim to be football’s first major fanbase having enjoyed the highest average gates for the inaugural decade of the Football League – and they were still based at Liverpool’s current home in 1891 when they became the first club to lift the League Championship trophy (Preston North End had to make do with a flag in 1889 and 1890).
The following year of course saw Everton ‘cross the park’ for the first time as they fell out with landlord John Houlding over the terms of their rent and decamped to a site called Mere Green field, where they built Goodison Park. Fans of both clubs should therefore acknowledge that if it wasn’t for Everton FC then there would have been no Liverpool FC, and if it wasn’t for Liverpool FC, then there would be no Goodison Park.
Having been in Walton since 1892, the Blues, who have already built several community facilities in the shadow of their ground, are understandably eager to retain a presence in the area through the Goodison Park Legacy Project but while the good folk of L4 won’t be forgotten when the team makes the two-mile journey to Vauxhall on the Mersey waterfront this summer, Everton will change. It won’t just be derby days that are different though.
Merseyside Derbies have been taking place at Goodison Park and Anfield since 1894. Consider this... it was the year that Liverpool-born William Gladstone stepped down from his fourth and final stint as Prime Minister aged 84.
Much to the chagrin of Scousers and those who worked on the Mersey docks, the Manchester Ship Canal would officially open, linking Liverpool’s previously landlocked Lancashire neighbour to the Irish Sea, a revolution that would later prompt local teams United and City, who also changed their name from Ardwick that year, to incorporate a ship on their club crests. Also opening for the first time were Blackpool Tower and London’s Tower Bridge across the Thames while rounding things off in December, Walthamstow plumber and gasfitter Frederick Bremer ran the first British four-wheeled petrol motor car on a public highway – what a time to be alive!
Despite their contrasting genesis stories, Everton and Liverpool Football Clubs and their fans had much more in common than they had differences for the lion’s share of the 20th century. For many years, the pair shared a matchday programme and comparable attendance figures over time suggests that in an era when top flight football was much more affordable for the working man, there was a significant crossover in attendances for home matches over alternate Saturdays.
England World Cup winners, Roger Hunt of Liverpool and Ray Wilson of Everton, carry the trophy around Goodison Park ahead of the 1966 Charity Shield, followed by their club colleagues with captains Ron Yeats and Brian Labone holding the League Championship and FA Cup respectively
England World Cup winners, Roger Hunt of Liverpool and Ray Wilson of Everton, carry the trophy around Goodison Park ahead of the 1966 Charity Shield, followed by their club colleagues with captains Ron Yeats and Brian Labone holding the League Championship and FA Cup respectively (Image: Photo by Peter Sheppard/Mirrorpix/Getty Image)
As recently as 1971, the duo were tied at the top of English football alongside Arsenal and Manchester United on a record seven League Championships apiece. When the Blues secured that seventh crown the previous year, they looked well-placed for another period of dominance but both the health of their team and manager Harry Catterick – who controversially sold talisman Alan Ball, still just 26, to Arsenal just before Christmas 1971 – quickly deteriorated.
In contrast, Liverpool, building upon the foundations laid by the groundwork of Bill Shankly, who in the previous decade had steered them out of an eight-year Second Division exile, took off under Bob Paisley to become dominant both at home and abroad. After 87 years of derby combat, the Reds finally moved ahead in terms of victories with a 3-1 triumph at Anfield on November 7, 1981, but now stand 31 wins ahead.
Therefore, anyone still in any doubt as to why James Tarkowski’s equaliser last time out from the last kick of the game by an Everton player to ensure they didn’t finish with a losing record in the fixture at Goodison after over 130 years of going toe-to-toe was so wildly celebrated by home fans and players alike really needs to check themselves for a pulse. There’s nothing like having your neighbours’ successes rammed down your throat to inspire you to do better and it’s that ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ mentality that has spurred on the rivalry for long periods of the two clubs’ existence.
James Tarkowski celebrates after scoring during the match between Everton and Liverpool at Goodison Park on February 12, 2025
James Tarkowski celebrates after scoring during the match between Everton and Liverpool at Goodison Park on February 12, 2025 (Image: Jon Super/Everton FC Official Photography Library/SmartFrame)
Only this week, this correspondent spoke in the latest episode of Goodison Park: My Home to Peter Reid, the Huyton-born boyhood Kopite turned True Blue about how he refused to board the joint open top bus parade through the city that had been planned after the 1986 FA Cup final when Liverpool clinched the double for the only time to date. Everton responded the following season with what remains their last League Championship.
Other than Joe Royle’s solitary success in the 1995 FA Cup final, the modern era of the Premier League has proven mostly to be a trail of tears for the Blues though, who are now suffering their longest-ever silverware drought. The Reds will likely be celebrating their first title in front of fans in 35 years come May, but while that in itself represents a decline other than the surreal success during the coronavirus pandemic, a brace of Champions League triumphs to take their European Cup total to six plus a plethora of domestic cups have ensured they remain firmly entrenched as a global football superpower.
Tears will undoubtedly be shed when Everton wave a fond farewell to ‘The Grand Old Lady’ in the same month that their neighbours will be enjoying their latest trophy lift, but in truth it’s a move which is long overdue. For the bulk of her existence, Goodison Park was the pre-eminent club ground in the country but it can be more than mere coincidence that the record-breaking barren spell in the pitch correspondents with a time in which the venue has now been listed as being in the bottom three in the Premier League for generating matchday revenue.
The move to the Mersey waterfront will enable the Blues to play in front of the biggest regular crowds in their history and the quiet revolution being ushered in behind the scenes by returning manager David Moyes – the man who steered the club to nine top eight finishes first time around, including a best-ever Premier League position of fourth – and new owners The Friedkin Group, should start to bear fruit.
Given that they have become such an international behemoth, Liverpool should embrace a strong Everton and as Atletico Madrid have shown in recent times, you can still succeed in your own right even if you share your city with a huge and successful neighbour, if you’re run efficiently both on and off the pitch. A long-serving colleague of mine who is a lifelong Reds fan has long maintained that even at their absolute worst, the Blues should be considered to be about the eighth biggest sporting institution in this country.
Yet an article produced by BBC Sport this week, headlined ‘Which is the biggest football club in Britain?’ excluded Everton from its top 10. Even if we discount the Old Firm who bizarrely had Tottenham Hotspur sandwiched between them in seventh spot, the list of English sides went: Manchester United; Liverpool; Arsenal; Manchester City; Chelsea; Spurs; Aston Villa; Newcastle United.
Wealthy owners have enabled Manchester City and Chelsea to move ahead of the Blues in the past couple of decades while backed by the sovereign wealth fund of the House of Saud, Newcastle United have just ended their own 70-year domestic trophy drought while Aston Villa are currently competing in the Champions League.
It must be remembered though that even for Everton's recent travails, only the undisputed top two (the argument comes when deciding which order to place them) Manchester United and Liverpool have won major silverware across more decades than their figure of nine, they remain fourth in the all-time top flight table (which starts Liverpool, Arsenal then Manchester United) and so long as Moyes keeps them up this term, they will kick-off life at their new stadium by extending their record number of top flight seasons to 123.
However, as one senior member of Everton staff was overheard telling an overseas visitor who was making a recent final year pilgrimage to Goodison Park, not being just ‘across the park’ from Liverpool might be a good thing for the Blues. And maybe even the Reds too in the grand scheme of things?