Sylvain Distin believes Everton’s fans need to realise the power they have while calling on manager Frank Lampard to be given time to turn the Blues’ fortunes around. Everton’s supporters helped roar the team to Premier League safety both inside and outside the ground in the latter stages of last season and Distin, who played for Everton between 2009-15, admits it was incredible to witness.
He told the Official Everton Podcast: “I hope that they (the fans) are going to realise the power they have got, positively and negatively. When things go wrong and you’ve got the pressure of the fans but the wrong type of pressure, it’s a tough one and some players will elevate their games but some will react negatively and start hiding as well.
“I’m pretty sure that now they realise if they all push behind and all be fantastic as they’ve done, they can change a lot. It’s a tough moment because that’s when Everton were at the bottom but if Everton is at the top and they pushed the same way, I hope they realise what Everton could achieve as well because it’s an amazing strength, it was fantastic to see.”
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Everton finished with the joint lowest equivalent points total for a season in the club’s history (39, shared with 2003/04) but ensured they avoided what would have been a first relegation in 71 years with a dramatic 3-2 comeback win over Crystal Palace in their final home game after trailing 2-0 at half-time. Distin said: “I’m not even sure I want to speak about it to be honest. I think the only stuff I’m going to remember is the celebration after the last (home) game, the one to remain in the Premier League.
“Although it was stressful, I was really jealous about the celebration because I have never seen Goodison like that and I wish I did. Although there was a bit of jealousy, there was also a feeling of let’s move on and forget about it because it was stressful.
“I obviously have a lot of feelings, affection and love for Everton, even if it’s not too many players that I know (personally) now but there’s Seamus Coleman, and some of the backroom staff, and thinking about going through a season like that, it’s horrible. You want to forget about it and start afresh but I think there’s a lot to learn from it for everyone.”
Lampard, the seventh manager to work under Farhad Moshiri, came in on the last day of January after Rafael Benitez had been sacked after winning just one of his last 13 Premier League matches and while the Londoner, who celebrates his 44th birthday today, has proven a popular figure with supporters, Distin hopes Goodison Park officials will also continue to back him. He said: “I hope that he’ll have time. When I joined Everton, I came because the club was stable. I think that was the most important thing to me because there were lads who had been there for six, seven, eight years and the manager had been there a long time.
“It was a club where there was no big change. They were just trying to improve by little touches, season after season. That’s what attracted me, that family feeling and that desire to fight for each other. When you feel that this is lacking, you don’t recognise the club.
“I know that every club evolves and a lot of things happened in seven years. We got a lot of money and investment coming in but I think Everton without that Everton passion will never be the same club.
“Some clubs need it and I think Everton is one of them. They need that fighting spirit, they need that working hard, for the fans, for the players, for everyone.
“Possibly over the last seven years, the club have lost a bit of that, which I can understand as football evolves and there are less tackles, now there is more passing from the back, which is beautiful but I think Everton have a special identity that they should never lose.”
Distin, who is nine months older than the Everton manager, has just returned to his home in Dorset from a gruelling charity cycle ride which raised funds for families in war-torn Ukraine. He said: “That was really tough. A group of 10 of us – although one suffered a serious injury on the last day of training so it was nine cyclists plus two on the support vehicles – decided to ride from Sandbanks, where I am now, to do St Tropez in 10 days. So that was roughly 90 miles a day.
“Obviously the closer we go to the south of France, the warmer the temperatures were so as much as you enjoy the warm temperatures when you’re sat in your garden, when you’re on your bike, doing 90-to-100 miles, it’s not fun. It was a tough challenge but it went really well, no accidents, the roads were absolutely beautiful, the weather was nice as well, so I really enjoyed it.
“We all agreed, because of what we can see at the moment on TV, that trying to raise money for families in Ukraine who have to leave the conflict and don’t even know if they are going to meet again, was the best thing to do. We all have families and are touched by it and are affected by it.
“Personally I trained really hard to try and do the challenge, I wasn’t sure whether I could finish because endurance is not my strength at all. When things got tough, we said ‘we’d raised money, we’d told people we were going to do it’ so we had to finish it. (Thinking of the families in Ukraine) It was definitely a motivation because I had some obligations.”
- You can still donate to the Sandbanks To St Tropez Cycle Challenge by clicking here.
