The light illuminating the sign hanging above the door of the Winslow Hotel on Goodison Road is on the blink.
Flicker, flicker, flicker. Just like Everton‘s famous old home that stands 10 yards across the way, it’s almost done. Going, going, soon to be gone.
There are only seven Premier League games left at Goodison Park and just one Merseyside derby. On Wednesday Liverpool‘s two great clubs – the only two in England to have shared the same parliamentary constituency – will meet on Everton’s turf for the very last time.
‘It’s like playing on a stage,’ says former Liverpool defender Mark Lawrenson. ‘You can’t escape the sense of theatre at Goodison. It’s some place.
‘That new Gladiator movie? They could have filmed it at Goodison. Maybe they would have fed us to the lions.’
It is progress and a very clear need to catch up that is leading Everton away from Walton and down the hill to the water to their new home, a 53,000-capacity masterpiece at Bramley-Moore Dock. Of the six ever-present Premier League clubs, Everton are the least successful and that must change.
Everton’s new Bramley-Moore Dock stadium in the distance on the river can be seen from Goodison Park
Everton will wave goodbye to Goodison this summer after 133 years at the grand old ground
Liverpool had once planned to move into Stanley Park, which separates the city’s two clubs
Goodison will not migrate from the memory easily, though. It can’t. It is one of the world’s oldest purpose-built football stadiums. Built after Everton moved from a plot of land that was to become Liverpool’s Anfield home in 1892, it predates the original Wembley by 30 years. It has staged more top flight games than any other stadium. In 1894 it hosted an FA Cup final and, in 1966, a World Cup semi-final.
Everton have long since been held back by the antiquity of their home. They first talked of moving in 1997. But they have revelled in it too.
On a marvellous stadium tour recently, two Southampton fans from Chicago and a pair of Blues from New Jersey were among a dozen or so voyeurs standing in the rudimentary visiting dressing room that hardly has enough space on its austere wooden benches for 20 opposition players.
Heated by a solitary exposed pipe running across the ceiling, it has only six showers, no sound-proofing and no toilet roll. On Wednesday Liverpool – like everybody else – will be required to bring their own. It is, the club say, for hygiene reasons.
When Liverpool manager Arne Slot addresses his players, they won’t all be able to see him. It’s the way the room is designed, in an L shape. Deliberate? Maybe.
‘It’s not quite on the scale of the one at Crewe Alexandra that basically only holds six of you at a time,’ laughs Lawrenson. ‘But I played in the 1980s and it felt old fashioned back then.
‘You would dive off the coach on Goodison Road, through the players’ door with all the abuse ringing in your ears and then get to the dressing room to realise it was no kind of refuge at all. You could hear the crowd on the concourse above you more than you could the fella sitting next to you.
‘But we were always convinced the Everton lads in the room next door could hear every single thing we were saying. Our attitude was always the same. Get on the pitch, get it done and get the hell out of there. It was not an experience to be relished!’
Goodison Park has a rich history of grand beauty and quirks and will not be forgotten in a hurry
Everton have long been held back by the antiquity of their old home, but have revelled in it too
Standing on the touchline at an empty Goodison is to appreciate its grand beauty as well as its quirks.
In the directors’ box of the Main Stand is a seat marked ‘chairman’, left empty now in memory of the late Bill Kenwright. Next to it is another vacant seat, reserved on match day for manager David Moyes just in case he is invited to sit there by the referee.
Across the way the ornate lattice work of architect Archibald Leitch has adorned the Bullens Road stand for 97 years and will be mimicked at the new stadium.
Only one stand – at the Park End – boasts unobstructed views of the pitch, meanwhile. One of its corners was filled in eight years ago. Some say it was so that occupants of the Gwladys Street at the other end no longer had to look at Liverpool’s home across Stanley Park through the gap.
This proximity to Anfield is one of the many things that makes Goodison so marvellously special. Had Liverpool, as was planned, built their own new stadium on the park 17 years ago, the city’s two football clubs would have been separated by just a single main road.
Now Everton’s impending move to the banks of the Mersey will not only shape their own future but fundamentally change the footballing landscape of a whole city.
Bramley-Moore Dock differs
It takes only half an hour to walk from Goodison Park to Everton’s new home but it’s only when you turn right off Westminster Road by the Phoenix Hotel – with a brown tourist sign pointing to Anfield in the opposite direction – that you realise just how Liverpool perches right on the edge of the land.
Off and down you walk, down towards the pull of the water, down towards vastness and dockland history and, now, new horizons.
Everton’s move will, it is hoped by the fans, take them into a new era with new horizons
One of the peculiarities of the ground is how hidden it is, by terraces, a church and an Aldi
One of the peculiarities of Goodison is how it sits hidden from view until you are right on top of it. Hidden by rows of terraced houses. Hidden by a school. Hidden by a church. Hidden by trees. Hidden by an Aldi.
Bramley-Moore Dock is not like this. The new place already sits like a gateway to the city for those travelling on the water into the neck of the Mersey from the Irish Sea. Walk north along the river from the centre of town and it’s not long before you see its nose poking out almost into the blue. It is already a stunning modern landmark.
BMD – as we will call it – sits behind the wall of the old Wellington Dock. It speaks of regeneration, of second comings and of new ambition. Not just for a football club but for a city.
The Bramley Moore pub that sits directly opposite, for example, is about to witness an uptick in trade it could never have dreamed of. It is said a £1million offer to buy it has already been made and refused.
For some Evertonians it will be a reluctant move. The club’s fanbase are largely local, loyal and real. Not many half-and-half scarves outside Goodison on a matchday.
Having said that, more than 95 per cent of current season-ticket holders are expected to follow the club to the river. BMD has also proved a far superior alternative to plans once mooted to move Everton out of Liverpool on to industrial space near Kirby.
That would have left Liverpool as a one-club town. Some likened those plans to bulldozing the Cavern Club.
Now, with the move imminent, Everton’s focus is on stretching their remarkable 70-year top-flight residency into their first season at BMD. The new stadium will make the club money. Goodison currently has just 10 executive bosses and 1,200 hospitality seats.
The new stadium will have 5,000 hospitality seats, up from 1,200, and a 53,000 capacity in all
BMD offers a far superior location to one mooted plan of moving out of Liverpool to Kirby
The finishing touches are still being applied to the new stadium ahead of its opening date
There will be more than 5,000 of those seats at BMD and they have already been sold. Needless to say, those who have already committed to spending their money will expect to be watching Premier League football.
Everton’s recent form has been much better. The return of Moyes brought them three consecutive league victories. The last time that happened was last April and one of the teams beaten were Liverpool – at Goodison.
Everton’s modern record against their rivals is not good but with the takeover by the Friedkin Group now complete, they are a club that wishes to consider horizons that stretch further than just across the park, even if on derby day that can feel difficult.
Down by the river, meanwhile, the final touches continue to be applied. This is a step forward Everton have been anticipating for an awfully long time.
‘Goodison is and was a grand old lady but any club with aspirations has to have a bigger and better stadium’. Those were words spoken by former Everton chairman Peter Johnson 27 years ago.
Farwell to Goodison
A wet match night at Goodison and the queue outside the Blue Dragon chip shop stretches all the way along the front of four and a half terrace houses opposite the turnstiles.
There are upwards of 50 people in it and the game starts in less than 25 minutes. There are other catering outlets available but that isn’t the point.
This is the one. This is what people do. This is the way it has always been but won’t be for much longer. When the stadium goes, some of these places – those that have fed and watered a football community for decades – will go too.
Everton have been in much better form since the return of David Moyes last month
The team won three games in a row for the first time since April, which included a derby victory over Liverpool
There are some things about English football that are irreplaceable and match night at an old urban stadium is one of them. The hawkers are selling ‘Farewell to Goodison’ scarves but nobody is buying them. They are not ready. Not yet.
At one end of Goodison Road, in front of the statue of Dixie Dean that now seems to point the way to Bramley-Moore, the traffic crawls but the pedestrians don’t. Everybody seems to walk with a purpose on match night.
Round the other side, on Bullens Road, two stewards shelter and talk about the new place. ‘The walk to the pitch from the dressing rooms is as long as my road apparently,’ says one.
It is not like that at Goodison. It’s a squeeze, out of the dressing rooms, down a corridor, turn left and then up the 13 steps to the pitch to the sound of the Z Cars theme tune, played once simply because two actors from the long defunct TV show were present at the game and stuck with ever since simply because Everton won it and then won the league.
On the corner of Gwladys Street and Goodison Road, by the St Luke the Evangelist Church, they shake buckets for local charities. Elsewhere there is a food bank collection.
‘You don’t see things like the church at other football stadiums,’ former Liverpool full back Jim Beglin says in Steve Zocek’s Goodison Memories book.
‘I was raised an Irish Catholic and remember looking at the church and hoping the Lord would look after me in tough circumstances.’
Beglin, now a respected TV analyst, didn’t always get his wish. He was to break his leg in a Goodison derby on a night not dissimilar to this one back in January 1987.
In front of Goodison the traffic crawls but the people don’t, walking with purpose
Dixie Dean’s ashes are scattered on the turf, which will be made into a community garden
On the concourse of the Main Stand, as boxer Tony Bellew wanders past undisturbed to take his seat on the back row, they talk about hesitantly but optimistically about new futures.
Plastered on a toilet door, meanwhile, is a sticker. ‘Kopites are gobs****s’ it says. This is a local rivalry that has grown more bitter over the years.
Then up above, written on a metal beam at a foot of a stairwell, is a pointer back to when things were different. A quote from the great Everton schemer Alan Ball.
‘I was running back to the centre circle after I scored the second goal against Liverpool and pure elation welled up inside me,’ it says. ‘I remember thinking – I just love this place. I want this place forever.’
At Everton they cling on to people like Ball, a World Cup winner who also won a league title with the club in 1970. The Everton timeline montage that wraps itself round the exterior of the stadium features him and a whole host of other blue and white luminaries.
It’s tatty now, though, and it peters out rather. It looks and feels like its time is up and that’s the way it is for Goodison.
There are sensitive and admirable plans for the place. The pitch, for example, will be repurposed as a community garden. There are ashes scattered on it, including those of the great goalscorer Dean, who died in 1980 after suffering a heart attack while watching a game against Liverpool from the Main Stand.
When Liverpool arrive before kick-off there may not be toilet roll but on a bust behind some glass in reception will be their home shirt. It’s a courtesy extended to every visiting team. Everton do things like that well.
‘New Home, Same Family,’ is one of their mottos as they prepare to take their leave. When they head to the water, it is to be presumed their innate sense of pride and tradition will go with them.