The unbearable misery of Everton, the Premier League’s most dismal club

Euston station in London is a gloomy place at the best of times. Claustrophobic, brightly lit and always overcrowded, no one wants to stay there longer than absolutely necessary.

So it was a fitting venue for a group of Everton fans to address their team’s players as they boarded the train back to Merseyside after their 4-0 defeat to Tottenham last weekend. ‘F***ing rat’ was one of the top swear words heard in a clip that went viral over the weekend.

The images evoked conflicting thoughts. On the one hand, it was hard to disagree with the club’s forward Neal Maupay – one of the main targets of the abuse – when he posted on to receive this kind of abuse. Hanging out at a train station shouting at men who are trying their best.”

Only two games into the new season and they are not trying to lose on purpose.

Yes, the players are paid huge amounts of money, but the numbers on their paychecks are a reflection of their athletic and mental capabilities relative to the finances of the industry they are in, not a measure of how many swear words you can hurl at them while they get on the train. On Monday morning, Everton fan groups lined up to condemn the scenes.

On the other hand, there will be plenty of people who identify, perhaps in a very small way, 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 supporters shouldn’t have reacted the way they did, but when you sit at the end of a long, expensive and disappointing day and the sources of that disappointment wander past, it’s easy to see how anger can destroy the better angels of the world drown out. your nature.

The reaction isn’t just about one game either. You could make a strong argument that Everton are the bleakest club in the Premier League – and have been for some time, given all the issues swirling around them.

To start with, we take things with us that are on the field. The first two games of the season were lost 7-0. It is the first time in their history that they have lost both opening matches by three or more goals. Only Everton and Southampton have not yet scored in the Premier League this season. Everton have had just two shots on target, the lowest in the division, and a much-discussed 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 by the time the match ended in Brighton (Carl Recine/Getty Images)

Dominic Calvert-Lewin is still not at his best, despite his string of goals at the end of last season. Besides him, they only have Maupay and Beto as centre-forwards, although Iliman Ndiaye may be a threat from a slightly deeper role. Their full-back options are shallow, they look light in central midfield and they will pray that Jordan Pickford’s mistake this weekend is a blip rather than a sign of his abilities waning. Saturday’s match against Bournemouth, absurdly for the third game of the season, already looks huge.

But that’s nothing compared to things off the field. The sale of Amadou Onana to Aston Villa should allay any immediate concerns about a third points deduction regarding profitability and sustainability rules, but you never know what gremlins may be lurking on their books.

More worrying is Everton’s ownership situation. Fans have been protesting against the regime of owner Farhard Moshiri for years. It’s a relief that they didn’t end up in the hands of 777, the Miami-based investment firm The Athletics pointed out in June had been “described as a ‘house of cards’ in one lawsuit and a ‘Ponzi scheme’ in another” (claims 777 denied) – but the mess left by that drawn-out takeover saga scared the Friedkin Group , a slightly more reputable potential custodian.

As Matt Slater reported in July, the Friedkins were left with cold feet due to legal uncertainties surrounding the £200 million ($260 million at current rates) that former Everton suitor 777 Partners loaned to the club over the past year.

Furthermore, even though Dan Friedkin did not take over the club, he still lent them a further £200 million to pay a bill from the builders of their new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock. So the next suitor who comes along not only has to pick apart the ball of wool that is their finances, but also have to deal with two sizeable loans to previous potential owners – loans that will have to be repaid at some point.

They’ve managed to get themselves into a Groucho Club situation: it’s such a mess that anyone you’d want to own your club is probably too sensible to even go near them.

Everton fans have been protesting against the functioning of their club for years (Lewis Storey/Getty Images)

Their best hope appears to be John Textor, but even if he manages to offload his stake in Crystal Palace – which he must do for financial and regulatory reasons to buy Everton – he is hardly a knight in shining armor. The most generous description of his record at his other clubs is ‘patchy’: a less generous interpretation is that his clubs tend to fall into varying degrees of chaos.

Belgium’s Molenbeek were relegated last season, Lyon’s men’s team faced the same danger in 2023/24 ahead of a stellar second half of the season and Palace’s progress has been stop-start since arriving as a shareholder in 2021.

Even the success stories come with an asterisk: Botafogo are second in Brazil’s Serie A, just one point off the top after 24 games, but collapsed spectacularly when well placed in last season’s title race. Textor subsequently made a series of accusations of match-fixing and corruption, which were dismissed by US authorities Superior Tribunal de Justica Desportiva, the autonomous judicial branch of Brazilian football, funded by the country’s football federation.

If Everton fans were to ultimately choose their ideal owner, it wouldn’t be Textor. He just seems to be favored over some of those who have been kicking the tires over the past year or so.

Sean Dyche summed it up more succinctly after the defeat to Tottenham: “There is so much noise and stories around Everton every day and it is tough. It’s not often about football.”

GO DEEPER

Everton’s start breeds fear, apathy and anger

There are some reasons to be cheerful. They also lost their first two games of the previous two seasons and were ultimately fine. They have an excellent manager who specializes in defying expectations, whose entire career has essentially been one long middle finger to people who have written him off. They have, at the time of writing, managed to keep Jarrad Branthwaite, a truly excellent homegrown defender (mostly – he signed from Carlisle United when he was 17) who many big teams have already sniffed around and more will are in the future. the future. If all goes well, this time next year they will be in a new, modern, picturesque stadium.

But those glimmers of hope currently have to work hard to break through 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 hopeful levels of each Premier League club’s fans. According to that survey, 76 percent were more optimistic about the coming season than pessimistic.

You wonder how different that will be now.

(Top photo: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)