Everton need to fix things - not their fans

Supporters shouldn't be expected to repair a fractured club time and again

Just two games into the season, Everton are already lurching towards a familiar crisis.

Back-to-back defeats for Sean Dyche’s side with a 7-0 aggregate have been punctuated by familiar failings on the pitch while turmoil continues to rage off it, typified by the unsavoury scenes at London Euston on Saturday after their hammering by Tottenham.

What transpired on Platform 2 was deplorable, and the response to it saw now-ritual calls for unity aired that again called on the club’s supporters to take up that mantle.

But why does it, time and again, fall to Evertonians to do their club’s job for them?

Over the previous three seasons, “The fans will sort it” has increasingly become an expectation rather than hope whenever the Toffees’ backs are against the wall. When the former board of directors were catching heat, in January 2023, they were thrown in front of the bus with unproven claims about headlocks and other malicious behaviour.

As briefings against them took place inside the Goodison Park press room, those same fans stood barely 100 feet away, in bracing winds, trying to provide Frank Lampard’s side with some much-needed inspiration in the form of a coach greeting.

They stepped up again when their club was hit with a 10-point deduction by the Premier League for breaching Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), spreading their message against top-flight officials in stadiums across the land about their plight.

Either side of that, they carried the torch for a struggling side by creating a lasting legacy in the stands through the tireless pre-match work undertaken by The 1878s.

Sooner rather than later, however, Goodison’s well will finally run dry.

The fanbase’s relationship with the club has become largely transactional, with their diehard loyalty often taken for granted by executive figures and playing staff alike.

Expecting them to act as the great unifier for a fourth time in as many years due to a leadership vacuum caused by Farhad Moshiri’s absenteeism risk being a step too far.

Some fans are already openly discussing the possibility of bookending their Everton journey by making the transition from Goodison to Bramley-Moore Dock before dialling back on a lifetime of loyalty due to the trauma inflicted over numerous years.

Regaining their trust, and that of the wider fanbase, will be among the biggest tasks for whoever eventually succeeds Moshiri as the club’s owner, but it has to start now.

Dyche is a great advocate of ‘trying to change the story’; it is incumbent on him and others within Goodison’s corridors of power to finally turn those words into actions.