All things must pass, a famous Liverpudlian sang. Not the one who attended the 1968 FA Cup final and watched Jeff Astle zing a winner from distance to deny Everton. If Paul McCartney was a Blue – his dad was – George Harrison didn’t care for football. Yogic flying was more George’s thing.
Still, the Quiet One probably knew enough about football in his home town to know that of its clubs, Everton is the one in permanent crisis. And has been since about 1971 – the year George was performing a concert for the famine in Bangladesh and Paul was forming Wings – once Alan Ball was sold to Arsenal. Time-honoured Evertonians will lament this as when their football world came off its axis – the fabled manager Harry Catterick fell ill soon after – and Liverpool soon became dominant. The two clubs had been just as good as each in the 1960s, and before that, there had often been one club in town, that in blue.
OK, there was the mid-1980s, and that wonderful team under Howard Kendall. Peter Reid’s garlic-prawn driven brio, Paul Bracewell’s grace, Andy Gray’s ability to dive 10cm above ground level and Kevin Sheedy opening up a tin of beans with his left foot. Circumstances, Heysel, and money – it’s always money – denied that team its chance to dominate. Since then, the Goodison groan has become part of football’s furniture, until the end of this season when the old place – rickety, still full of wood, not designed for a 6ft 21st century man of modern appetites but so evocative, so authentic – will be replaced by a mega-dome on the docks.
That Everton don’t have an owner of any significance, Farhad Moshiri having done his money, puts the new place under threat. Previous bidder 777 Partners are embroiled in a whole world of troubles, and buying Everton did not pass the sniff test for Roma owners Friedkin due to 777’s loans during their bidding. So hurrah for possible saviour John Textor, whose name you may recognise from being a part-owner of Crystal Palace. Textor was expected to complete his bid this week. Except, according to the New York Times, Textor has put in a full bid for … er, Palace. “It is true that we recently made an offer to buy the remaining shares of Crystal Palace, at a valuation that far exceeds levels of prior investment,”
Textor said in a statement.
The wide interpretation is that the Textor strategy is to force the sale of his Palace stake and then make a formal move for Everton. All of which still leaves Everton in continued, time-honoured, limbo. “There’s not much more wriggle room,” growled Sean Dyche, asked about new players for a squad shorn of Ashley Young, 74, suspended after last week’s red against Brighton. Dom Calvert-Lewin may be flogged, too, and there’s the prospect of Jarrad Branthwaite being sold to – oh no! – Liverpool. A cloudburst doesn’t last all day. Unless, of course, it’s at Everton.
