Last month when Amadou Onana chose to join Everton rather than West Ham United, some not-so-happy Hammers appeared perplexed by the player’s decision but it seems as though after being given a couple of good years by the former long-serving Blues boss David Moyes, certain followers of the Irons have become somewhat deluded when it comes to their club’s position within the game.
This correspondent has no personal axe to grind with the long-standing former patrons of the Boleyn Ground, who like many Evertonians have been loyal supporters of a team steeped in the traditions of their community for generations, but perhaps since the move to the London Stadium, some sections of the fanbase have started to suffer from delusions of grandeur, certainly when it comes to their standing compared to Everton.
Onana himself was in no doubt why he chose to come to Merseyside and, after completing his £33.5million transfer, he declared: “I know it’s a big, big club, one of the biggest in England.” Some bitter West Ham followers would have you believe that the Belgian’s decision must have been all about the money though.
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While it’s true that the Hammers have finished about Everton for the past two seasons, their overall pedigree pales in comparison to the Blues. Everton have been champions of England on nine occasions, with those victories achieved across seven different decades, West Ham have never so much as finished runners-up, let alone secured a solitary title.
Everton, the only founder members of both the Football League and Premier League to also be ever-presents in the latter, are currently competing in their record-breaking 120th top-flight season – some 11 more than nearest challengers Aston Villa – while this is West Ham’s 65th campaign in the elite division, which puts them 16th overall, level with Derby County, one behind Sheffield Wednesday, eight behind Bolton Wanderers and still 21 fewer than Sunderland.
Perhaps you don’t care for the value of history? Shame on you if so, but it could be pointed out that neither Everton nor West Ham have actually won any major honours in Onana’s lifetime with the player celebrating his 21st birthday the week after he joined the Blues from Lille.
Okay then, we’ll only look at the two clubs since 2001/02 then, but we still find that Everton have finished above West Ham in 16 of the 21 seasons and the east London outfit have been relegated twice in this period alone. That’s the same number of times that the Blues have gone down in 134 years and an ignominy they haven’t suffered for 71 years.
Onana celebrated Everton’s 1-0 victory over West Ham on Sunday in a very modern manner by filming himself on a fan’s smartphone that had been tossed onto the pitch, but the win just extended the Blues’ record of taking more points against the Hammers than any other opponent in the Premier League era and they need just one more to reach the century mark (for context Newcastle United are next on the list some 20 points back). Indeed, it’s taken the appointment – or should that be re-appointment, after they had to come crawling back cap in hand after their expensive dalliance with Manuel Pellegrini turned sour – of a manager who forged his reputation at Goodison Park to finally bring the Irons some good times.
Moyes steered West Ham to back-to-back top-seven finishes in the top flight in 2020/21 and 2021/22, something not achieved previously by the club in their entire history. Just let that sink in for a moment, that’s a feat that even the self-styled ‘Academy of Football’ never even managed when they had the World Cup-winning trio of Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst in the side.
Yet the Scot – like his former employers on Merseyside – is not being shown due deference for his achievements by some West Ham followers, who after a difficult start to the season, are already losing patience with him after the defeat to ‘minnow club’ Everton (as proclaimed by one of the many cranks on social media) left them in the bottom three some seven matches into the fledgling campaign. A man of honour, Moyes refused to blame his side’s involvement in the UEFA Europa Conference League for their slow start domestically, refreshingly proclaiming that he’d always prefer to be competing in Europe in a post-match press conference at Goodison that started with him being disrespectfully referred to as “Moyesy” by a reporter from the capital, which elicited a response of: “F****** hell, I don’t think we’re that close!”
Moyes endured tough times during his long reign at Everton but he always got more things right than he got wrong – you have to in order to survive in such a position for over a decade. The 17th-placed finish in 2004 when the Blues accrued just 39 points (their lowest equivalent total until it was equalled last season) was followed by coming fourth just a year later as the club enjoyed their highest-ever Premier League position.
In turn, the season after that started badly with 12 defeats out of 19 in the first half of the campaign but ultimately Moyes would stabilise his side to finish 11th. After that, there were an additional seven consecutive top-half placings to take him through to the end of his Goodison tenure.
Since Moyes departed for Manchester United in 2013, Everton have learned the hard way the folly of regular chopping and changing in the dugout. Despite investing – or arguably to a large extent, squandering – a fortune on the playing squad, owner Farhad Moshiri has got through seven managers in just six years since he took control of the club and it’s only now under Frank Lampard, the son of a bona fide West Ham legend who then himself left the club in somewhat acrimonious circumstances early in his playing career, that the Blues look like they’re trying to turn their fortunes around in a more sustainable manner.
Yes, Everton’s under-achieving squad were rotten last season but that was hopefully the Blues at their absolute lowest ebb whereas in many ways, West Ham had never had it so good. Long-suffering Evertonians are currently having to endure the longest trophy drought in the club’s history but there is finally a feeling that brighter times are on the horizon and the Hammers might only have one more trip to Goodison left now before Everton make their own big ground move to Bramley-Moore Dock, which unlike the sterile former Olympic Stadium, will be a proper football venue fit for third decade of the 21st century and beyond.
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