Are Evertonians self-harming?

The institution that is Everton FC. The hierarchy at the club, much-maligned in recent times, could actually be masters of psychological corruption and may not be as meek, naïve and incompetent as what some Everton supporters believe.

Personally, I am in a period of apathy with Everton at the moment, allowing me to take a few steps back and take a cold hearted look at some of the events currently unfolding. Somehow, Everton have engineered an environment where Evertonians are self-policing and it is a genius stroke. Invisible, asylum like, walls have been built high and mighty around us, so craftily it seems to have gone unnoticed. Evertonians have been herded up and appear to be unknowingly fighting to stay within these confines, no requirement for marshalling here.

With the recent flurry of poor managerial recruitment, for which the Everton hierarchy is responsible, Evertonians understood we were at a crossroads with the recruitment of Marco Silva. The overarching consensus being we need to give this fella time, most of us could foresee there would be bad periods, yet the underlying narrative was clearly laid out, we need to stick with him through these. Lucky Marco. At the time I had a niggling worry that this proclamation was too robust, there are never any guarantees in football, we know that. But the voices were strong and loud-if it starts going wrong we have to ride this out.

Of course, this all makes perfect sense, we need to build, yes we do. We need stability, we do, however – this requires a solid platform which needs to be formed first. Let us not forget identity, we need an identity. I agree with all of these points, these are exactly what we need.

Less valid views, in my opinion, expressed included; chopping and changing managers is not how ‘proper’ clubs operate, changing managers all the time is not the ‘Everton way’, has this way served us well over the last 20 years? Maybe this does not matter? As long as we can claim the moral high-ground, even if it entails self-suffering; perhaps we worry too much about the opinions of people who do not matter – taking comfort from condescending, ill-informed voices who summate long-suffering Everton, Everton ‘do things the right way’ is what they will say-great.

Compound interest is a well known phenomena, Everton appear to have developed a new first with compound punishment. Having suffered, due to poor management decision, followed by poor management decision-followed by another poor management decision; we are now, through no fault of our own as a fan base, seemingly tied into this appointment, even if it continues to sour.

Nevertheless, what if it is fundamentally wrong? After setting our stall out so strongly it becomes very difficult to redirect the narrative, no matter how desperately required this may soon be. Conceivably, we may now have well and truly snookered ourselves.

I have witnessed the, ‘Considering sacking the manager is madness’ opinion repeatedly enforced by, I would say the majority, of more prominent Evertonians – who have a media outlet/voice, as they staunchly stick to the script, fair enough.

I have struggled however with some of the reasoning and language used to try and subdue the voice of Evertonians who have noticed the inside of the walls and are asking is this good enough? This faction is gathering in numbers propelled by genuine concern, refusing to suppress their instinct – it takes bravery to go against policy so to speak.

If frank discussion is shut down the divide and extremity of views will grow wider, any middle ground, where the sense normally lies, is then lost. Nobody wins at this point, except the Everton decision makers, as we allow their poor performance to slip under the radar, escaping responsibility and we should not let this happen. We are a long way behind our publicly stated aspirations, if the situation continues on this current trend and we talk ourselves out of taking action when needed the climb could be insurmountable.

It may turn for the better, equally it could continue to collapse, we cannot persuade ourselves to stay in the eye of the storm, Everton owe us, we have played our part with no return for long enough – as Robin Williams famously said in Good Will Hunting – with a little alteration – it’s not our fault.

By Gil