Anyway they’re back if you wanted them to be or not.
For me, I’d like an extension of maybe another month without Everton in my weekends but for some of you you’re champing at the bit. For which I commend your masochism based on you knowing what The Toffees are about to do your plans, your mood and relationships with those closest to you.
I could of course just pretend they don’t exist but then I’m left in a Schrödinger’s Everton scenario haunted by knowing they’re playing somewhere without being sure if glory or tragedy prevailed, or both existing at the same time. Summer has been great, really great. Weekends of laissez faire opportunity or, indeed, absolutely nothing. Summers years ago used to be a gigantic crushing void of weekend nothingness, yet now summer is release. Beautiful release of not having to bother on weekends where I am at what time so I can study familiar patterns of disappointment in the hope that the next Kevin Brock moment is unfolding right in front of my eyes. That release is keener felt after three consecutive seasons of circling a drain to disaster that somehow didn’t suck Everton in. These past seasons have been loads, loads worse than the nineties. Everton being utterly stinking, or slightly less stinking but with a big points deduction. Dear reader I can’t wait to bury these times and move on.
I haven’t watched a pre season game, instead opting to prolong peace in our times. Therefore you can be sure there’s no searing insight nor astute tactical stargazing of what is to come, other people are loads better at that stuff than me. In fact when I weigh it all up it’s quite possibly the most passive I’ve felt towards a new season, and a significant one at that being the final one at the place that really made me fall love with Everton Football Club. I just hope it’s nice, as in not checking every fixture left and calculating how Everton stay up. That would be really nice.
There’s obviously the big obsession at this time of year with new signings which – with a few decades of hype from Sky and friends – is the life and death of club success now. I suppose a good thing about being a blue now is you know there’s no money left unless – bye lads – so whenever someone new is linked you don’t have the motivation to even click the YouTube link and watch them do all manner of wonderful things to shit musical tracks that all sound the exact same. The squad looks a few light but finances will play their part in being able to remedy that, or not. Dyche repeatedly saying there’s no more signings is obviously interpreted as some form of Jedi mind trick by eager beavers twenty seasons deep into FM and personally scouting for unearthed talent to fix Everton’s critical xG. Maybe he’s just being honest, lads. As I am when I say go shower, dress alright and get out making connections with other humans in the distant hope one of them will let you kiss them WITH their consent. And then just roll from there.
Although Everton have already brought some new faces in this season which is a pleasant surprise in contrast to the usual last minute bargain basement dash we’ve become accustomed to. In come Ndiaye, O’Brien, Iroegbunam and Lindstrom as Onana, Godrey, Dele, Dobbin and Gomes leave. That looks a net gain to me with a few weeks left still. The summer singing anxiety was and will still be one of seeing if Everton can retain Branthwaite who is vital at the back in both defence and his ability to play out of it. Keeping him for one more season would be smart value as a growing asset. I’d talk about the takeover fiasco and new exclusively but truth be told, I’m bored shitless of it and Moshiri. I’m just here for the footie mate.
Brighton are the opposition and I write this with the brevity that I have no idea how their summer has gone or indeed who their new manager is. Their season of meh put paid to their union with Zerbi, who was served up as the saviour of football itself just the season before – the keen little LinkedIn looking possession pixie. Everton’s recent seasons of woe have seen Brighton held up as an aspirational model – Davie Weir lad – of what Everton could be if they got decent ownership, had a aligned short medium and long term strategy from astute business brains, signed good players below book value and played football in an effective manner. You know, rather than want to be Brighton I just want to be Everton. Something identifiable and relatable as Everton. Front foot Everton with great enthusiasm for tackles but also nice incisive football. Whipping some crosses in the box to a big number 9 butting them into the net. Fist pumps. Two and three nils at home. Everton.
Usually there’ll be some pantomime jibing of oppositions in previews I occasionally type but I like Brighton. Maybe influenced by the zen state I find myself returning to football in but Brighton are alright, and alright is desirable in a league of unfortunate scruffy try hards devoid of genuine wit or redeeming collective qualities. Brighton is a cool place with easy humans and that makes my job to cruelly typecast them all the harder. Their community came together to repel recent social unrests which was a pleasant change. It’s good to be alright, alright is definitely aspirational. It’s loads harder to be a prick than alright which is why I’m unforgiving on those who go to all that effort to be a prick to others. Just be alright. We have a word for it in our city and it’s a really super aspirational model, that word is “sound”. Being sound means you’re a good person and company. You’re amicable and dependable. You’ll have friends, kiss more of the people you want, have more doors of opportunity open if you’re just sound. And anyone can be sound, as not everyone can be the funniest, the hardest, the craziest, the best looking or shape, but anyone can be sound. And it’s really easy. I hope more and more people in my city and on this island choose to just be sound. Celebrate sound people. Not pricks, even if their output is sadly hard wired for rubber necking in how we communicate too often these days on social media. Well in Brighton, for being sound.
On saying that they’re standing in the way of Everton and an opening 3pm kick off win at Goodison Park this Saturday so if they have to be hurt or shithoused to get those three points then fuck your sound and get them points you royal blue sexers, go through their new signings, do some Australian body popping for innocuous contact and get them sent the fuck off. I want their kids crying all the way home to the south coast, with average speed cameras on every bit of motorway they travel. How dare you come up here and take our points? Ev-er-TON.
Final score: Everton 1-3 Brighton then.
The last season at Goodson is going to be an emotive one, and this game commences a very real count down timer. Nineteen and a few cup games to go. It may well add a layer of poignancy as you traipse familiar ways, seeing familiar faces, observing time hardened routines. Everton is synonymous with Goodison Park so like any long steadfast relationship the breaking up is gonna be painful. You’re gonna miss that seat, wooden or plastic, miss it so much you may even try and steal it in May. Sometimes we all take things a little too much for granted so I hope all the times you’re there this season that you note, and appreciate, all them tiny things that bring familiarity, memories and joy. The connection with people around you and who you see before or after. Personally I can’t wait to see the back of a place where we’ve only won trophies in three of the forty seasons I’ve attended, and move into somewhere I can get a pint at half time, watch a game of football without a neck hernia from straining around an inconveniently placed giant post and – with some luck take a piss without extensive water damage to the footwear I’m wearing whilst inhaling approximately 35 Woodbines. But each to their own.
If the last pre season friendly is the marker of how a team sets up in its first competitive game then there’ll be few surprises come 2pm on Saturday. By all accounts Everton finished the game much better than they started, aided by the tenacity of Ndiaye, Harrison and Lindstrom behind the focal point of a striker. Likely Calvert- Lewin. Might that be a better approach on a Brighton team keen to play from the back? Or will the Dyche work them until we scuff one strategy that served well last season continue? There’s a need, or opportunity, this season for Everton to progress from the tight systems it’s deployed to stabilise. It’s a hope Dyche takes that.
Midfield seen Gomes and Onana leave and Iroegbunam come in. Should Ndiaye play well then Doucoure may well drop back in – control your moans at the back there. Iroegbunam has been impressing you in pre season but how will he fare in the weekly grind of an unforgiving season? Everton have an ability to scar you through ghosts of the past so I’m tempering any hopes there, lest I contract Besicitis. Anyway it’s a position that needs a new face – even if Dyche has poo pooed that hope.
Branthwaite is being nursed back from injury so it looks likely that big slick celt soccer weasel O’Brien will start next to Tarkowski, when he looks like he could do with being eased in really. A cautionary tale on injuries there, Everton got relatively lucky last season and should that fortune swing this season then it’s a notable risk to a squad that’s more on the lean side.
The position Everton are most at need of additions is full back unless undetected meteorites land in the Finch Farm swimming pool one night, and the full backs have a morning swim session booked. In the meantime Mykolenko will play left back, probably Young at right back and Jordan Pickford in goal – who should Everton make it to a new stadium in the top flight, he deserves everlasting gratitude. What a keeper, if the English don’t rate him then all the better really.
And that’s it really, it’s another nine month jamboree of emotions. Does it bring us purpose? Might it be our vehicle for exploring the concept of hope and its importance on these fleeting laps of the sun? Could it just be a weekend distraction? A foul habit passed on from your Dad? Or an excuse to feel tribe, and excuse to get out of the house for a beer with your mates? Answers on a postcard to Bramley Moore Dock, right next to the cone.
Welcome back. What’s our name?