Thirty years on from the revolution in the English top flight, there is only one club left who were founders members of both the Football League in 1888, Premier League in 1992 and remain ever-presents in the latter – Everton. Although the Blues are now playing in a record 120th top flight season the current campaign, they came perilously close to surrendering that status with what was almost a first relegation for 71 years last term, recording the joint lowest equivalent points total in the club’s history.
The Premier League years have generally been tough for Everton, without a major trophy since 1995, and while they are indeed the only club who were there at the start of the Football League and Premier League who still haven’t gone down from the latter (Aston Villa and Blackburn Rovers were the other two dual founder members), they are by far the least-successful of the half dozen clubs never relegated since 1992. The Blues have picked up less than half the aggregate points of Manchester United over the past three decades and are the only one of the Premier League’s ever-present six (which also includes Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur) to have found themselves fighting for survival going into the final day of a season – twice, in 1994 and 1998 – and of course earlier this year only saved themselves with a dramatic 3-2 comeback win over Crystal Palace in their last home fixture.
Legendary Everton chairman Sir Philip Carter, whose name now adorns the Park End at Goodison, was one of the leading administrators in the formation of the Premier League, at a time when his own club were considered one of English football’s ‘Big Five’ but in truth the Blues have struggled to keep up with the game’s elite over the past generation and are currently enduring the longest trophy drought in their history. Having fallen behind both on and off the pitch across the last three decades, Evertonians will be hoping that their move to a new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock, which remains on schedule to be completed in 2024, will help them to bridge the gap.
Once Everton do relocate to their plush waterside home on the banks of the River Mersey, they could be regularly watched by the largest average crowds they’ve ever known. Everton Stadium, as the club are now referring to Goodison Park’s successor until a naming rights sponsorship deal is agreed, will hold 52,888. Although 78,299 once crammed into ‘The Grand Old Lady’ for a Merseyside Derby in 1948, the Blues average gate for a season has only once crept above the 50,000 mark, 51,603 for the 1962/63 title-winning campaign.
If Everton fill their new stadium on a regular basis, then such figures could be finally overhauled. These kind of numbers show – despite the serious economic hardships caused by a cost of living crisis – what a golden era it is for the Premier League in terms of spectator interest, even if long-suffering Blues, whose club have won major honours across nine separate decades, a feat only Liverpool and Manchester United can top, are enduring their longest-ever silverware drought.
READ MORE: Gordon interest to hand Lampard and Thelwell biggest Everton test
READ MORE: Frank Lampard makes transfer promise as Everton seek to fill 'void' in team
It was all very different when Everton played their first ever Premier League fixture, a 1-1 draw at home to Sheffield Wednesday, 30 years ago today. “It’s a whole new ball game” claimed broadcasters Sky in their advert for English football’s rebranded top flight but nothing much seemed to have changed at Goodison Park.
Although Sky would revolutionise television coverage, not just by taking it away from the terrestrial channels, but with the ways they marketed and packaged their product, for those inside grounds up and down the country, little, other than the name of the competition appeared to have altered overnight at least. In the 1970s and 80s, going to watch football was hardly a family-friendly day out.
Not only was the sport blighted by hooliganism at times but it was also played in often dilapidated stadia with the 1985 Heysel disaster the prime example of what a deadly combination those two factors could be. Earlier that same month, after the Bradford City stadium fire had killed 56 people at Valley Parade, a Sunday Times leader column proclaimed that football was: “A slum sport played in slum stadiums increasingly watched by slum people, who deter decent folk from turning up.”
Looking to build on the new type of fans that the game was now attracting – including both the middle classes and women – on the back of the 1990 World Cup in Italy and an increasingly sanitised environment in stadia, Sky tried to project a more wholesome image. A player from each of the 22 Premier League founder member clubs was invited to appear on the ‘Whole new ball game’ promotion (for Everton it was Peter Beardsley) set against the musical backdrop of the song ‘Alive and Kicking’ by Simple Minds.
The rival footballers were shown laughing together as they made their way by coach to a studio for filming and the smiles continued in a mock dressing room/gym environment as they donned their kits. Everton legend Peter Reid – by now manager of Manchester City – was shown delivering a team talk, calmly instructing his players: “It’s important that we get that ball back as soon as we can… let’s go and win it.”
The measured, squeaky clean approach was in stark contrast to the reality of the expletive-filled verbal volleys delivered by Reid and his staff shown in the Premier Passions documentary later in the decade. But while Sky brought gimmicks such as fireworks, cheerleaders and giant inflatable sumo wrestlers to their early live games, in truth, other than green shirts for referees and Premier League badges on the players’ sleeves, there had been no radical overhaul.
Football’s greatest alteration that summer, the introduction of the back-pass rule, had nothing to do with the Premier League but in time the game would evolve into something very different. Crowds would increase but it took time with Everton’s final game of the first Premier League season against Sheffield Wednesday’s neighbours United attracting just 15,197, much less than half the number they’d average in the early decades of the 21st century.
Squads would also become more cosmopolitan with players from across the globe – substitute Robert Warzycha from Poland was the Blues’ only non-British player in their line-up against the Owls – but back on day one, the words ‘Premier League’ were not even mentioned in Ken Rogers’ match report in the ECHO. Instead, he took the tone that this game had been much like the start of any other campaign, declaring: “The opening day of the football season is always fraught with danger.
“Expensive new signings are paraded on bowling green pitches in front of fans with hopes raised high. But that’s the beauty of it all. It’s a day for reaching for the stars, with every chance that 90 minutes later, you might be crashing down to earth with an ignominious bump.”
There were a couple of oddities to note from the action though concerning a couple of Welshmen in the Everton side, one an already experienced star at the club and the other making his debut. Nigel Pearson was gifted a 15th minute opener “the simplest of volleyed chances” by something as rare as hen’s teeth – a Neville Southall mistake. Rogers described how “the greasy ball slipped through his gloves like a lump of lard.”
Lifelong Evertonian Barry Horne, making his Blues bow aged 30, then lulled his new fans into believing their new signing might be a regular goal threat, equalising a minute before half-time as he “rifled home a superb volley that found the net off the underside of the bar.” He’d only ever do that once more, on what proved to be a much more significant day when it came to Everton playing in the Premier League a couple of years later.
READ NEXT:
Yerry Mina expected return date as Everton deal with deepening injury crisis
'Going to be difficult' - Mason Holgate makes honest Everton admission after Aston Villa loss
Nathan Patterson leaves Lucas Digne dazed as Alex Iwobi Everton message sent
Bamba Dieng 'offered' to Everton as Serhou Guirassy transfer links linger
Rio Ferdinand compares Amadou Onana to former Everton and Man United midfielder
