London’s Euston station is a bleak place at best. Claustrophobic, brightly lit and always overcrowded, no one wants to stay there any longer than absolutely necessary.
It was a fitting location, then, for a group of Everton fans to heckle their team’s players as they boarded the train back to Merseyside following their 4-0 defeat to Tottenham last weekend. “F***ing rat” was among the best swear words heard in a clip that went viral over the weekend.
The images prompted conflicting thoughts. On the one hand, it was hard not to agree with the club’s striker Neal Maupay — one of the main targets of the abuse — when he posted on X: “Imagine another job where it’s normal to receive this kind of abuse. Hanging around a train station shouting at men who are trying their best.”
The new season is only two games in and they are deliberately trying not to lose.
Neal Maupay was the subject of abuse on Saturday (Charlotte Tattersall/Getty Images)
Yes, the players are paid huge sums of money, but the numbers on their pay slips are a reflection of their athletic and mental abilities against the finances of the industry they work in, not a measure of how many abuses you can hurl at them as they board a train. Everton fan groups queued up on Monday morning to condemn the scenes.
On the other hand, there will be plenty of people who, perhaps in a very small way, identify with those Everton fans. Sometimes you have a lot of anger and frustration and you don’t know what to do with it. Those Everton fans shouldn’t have reacted in this way, but when you’re at the end of a long, expensive and disappointing day and the sources of that disappointment are wandering by, it’s easy to see how anger can drown out the better angels of your nature.
The backlash isn’t just about one game either. You could make a strong argument that Everton are the most dismal club in the Premier League — and have been for some time, given all the problems swirling around them.
Let’s start with the on-field stuff. They’ve lost their opening two games of the season by a 7-0 aggregate scoreline. It’s the first time in their history that they’ve lost both of their opening games by three goals or more. Only Everton and Southampton have yet to score in this season’s Premier League. Everton have only had two shots on target, the lowest in the division, and a much-vaunted final season at Goodison Park began with a defeat to Brighton that left the stadium half-empty by the time the final whistle blew.
Goodison Park was largely empty as the match against Brighton ended (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Dominic Calvert-Lewin, despite a run of goals towards the end of last season, is still not at his best. Apart from him, they have only Maupay and Beto as strikers, although Iliman Ndiaye could pose a threat from a slightly deeper role. Their full-back options are shallow, they look light in central midfield and they will be praying that Jordan Pickford’s mistake this weekend is a blip rather than a sign of his declining abilities. Saturday’s game against Bournemouth, absurdly for just their third game of the season, already looks huge.
But that’s nothing compared to the off-pitch stuff. The sale of Amadou Onana to Aston Villa should put aside any immediate concerns about a third points deduction in terms of profitability and sustainability rules, but you never know what gremlins are lurking on their books.
A bigger concern is Everton’s ownership situation. Fans have been protesting against the regime of owner Farhard Moshiri for years. It is a relief that they have not fallen into the hands of 777, the Miami-based investment firm that The Athletics in June was labeled “a ‘house of cards’ in one lawsuit and a ‘Ponzi scheme’ in another” (claims 777) — but the mess left by that protracted takeover saga terrified the Friedkin Group, a potential custodian with a slightly better reputation.
As Matt Slater reported in July, the Friedkins were left feeling cold amid legal uncertainties surrounding the £200 million ($260 million at current rates) that former Everton signing 777 Partners loaned to the club over the past year.
Furthermore, even though Dan Friedkin didn’t take over the club, he lent them another £200m to pay a bill from the builders of their new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock. So the next suitor that comes along will not only have to unravel the wool over their finances, but will also have to pay off two hefty loans to previous potential owners – loans that will have to be repaid at some point.
They’ve found themselves in a Groucho Club situation: it’s such chaos that anyone who wants to own your club is probably too smart to even come near it.
Everton fans have been protesting the state of affairs at their club for years (Lewis Storey/Getty Images)
Their best hope appears to be John Textor, but even if he does manage to sell his stake in Crystal Palace – which he will have to do for financial and legal reasons in order to buy Everton – he is hardly a knight in shining armour. The most generous description of his record at his other clubs is ‘irregular’; a less generous interpretation is that his clubs tend to descend into varying degrees of chaos.
Belgian Molenbeek were relegated last season, Lyon’s men’s team were again in danger in the 2023/24 season until the second half of the season went very well. Since his arrival as shareholder in 2021, Palace’s development has been difficult.
Even the success stories have an asterisk: Botafogo are second in Brazil’s Serie A, just one point off the top after 24 games, but collapsed spectacularly when they were well-positioned in the title race last season. Textor then made a series of accusations of match-fixing and corruption that were rejected by the Superior Tribunal de Justica Desportiva, the autonomous judicial arm of Brazilian football, funded by the country’s football federation.
Ultimately, if Everton fans had to choose their ideal owner, it wouldn’t be Textor. He just seems preferable to some of those who have bitten the tires in the past year or so.
Sean Dyche summed it up more succinctly after the defeat to Tottenham: “There’s so much noise and stories around Everton every day and it’s tough. It’s not often about football.”
GALLING DEEPER
Everton’s start creates fear, apathy and anger
There are reasons to be cheerful. They also lost their first two games of the previous two seasons and eventually things went well. They have an excellent manager who specialises in defying expectations, whose entire career has been one long middle finger to those who wrote him off. They have, at the time of writing, managed to retain Jarrad Branthwaite, a truly excellent home-grown (mainly – he signed for Carlisle United at 17) defender who has been sniffed out by many big teams and will do even more in the future. If all goes well, they will be playing in a new, modern, picturesque stadium by this time next year.
But those sparks of hope are having to work hard right now to pierce the fog of despair. If you search for ‘Everton dejected’ in the Getty Images database, you’ll get 4,563 results. And they’re not all Pickford.
At the beginning of the season, The Athletics conducted a survey to gauge the hopes of fans of each Premier League club, and found that 76 percent were more optimistic about the upcoming season than pessimistic.
You wonder how different things will be now.
(Top photo: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
