Why have Everton gone 20 years without a trophy?

Let's face it, we couldn't even beat Coventry on the last day at home in 1998, a game like a cup final; we needed to rely on Chelsea saving our skin instead.

Something has to dramatically alter the finances inside the club, it can happen. We can dream.

Next!

Jim Bennings @ 1 hits the nail on the head. Moyes had three games at Wembley and we were complete no shows each tim. (including the Man Utd semi). Add to those the League Cup semi vs Chelsea and our woeful record in Europe against any team that anybody has ever actually heard of and there you have it.

We are an established Premier League club and to have only been to ONE final in 20 years is not good enough for Everton FC, simple as that!

Who knows why we can't do it, it's a mix of bottling it on the big stage, not bring ruthless in front of goal when the opportunities arrive and one of our favourite Achilles Heels over the year's, the old self destruct button, for example the Semi final of 2012 against you know who.

A combination of these things always seems to hold back our chances of breaking that seemingly never-ending glass ceiling.

We have no European matches and you only play for League Cup matches before Christmas, think the quarter final is in early December isn't it?

People deride it but imagine a semi-final second leg (or first) at Goodison under the floodlights knowing your team is a game away from Wembley and winning a trophy that we unbelievably have NEVER won in our history??

I don't like the fact that there is still a domestic trophy out there that Everton have never won, we know we are never going to win the league or Champions League so these domestic cups, Everton Football Club should be ravenous for.

The rest of the time it has been dominated by:

Man Utd 17
Chelsea 14
Arsenal 8
RS 5
Man City 4

This is a fairly unprecedented run of domination by big teams due wholly to the uneven playing field that has arisen financially.

Statistically your best chance of a trophy is the League Cup where the bigger sides definitely take this least seriously; that being said, they win it more often than not. Next comes the FA Cup and you might as well forget the League.

So yes, we probably would have expected to win one maybe two in that time period but let's face it, the dice are stacked, so let's not pretend this trophy drought is specific to us.

That again backs up our point about Everton being seasoned big-match bottlers, we actually had a stage over those two legs when it was 1-1 at Chelsea in the 1st leg and they were down to 10 men but we lost it in injury time.

No club does hard luck stories or consistent heroic failure quite like Everton FC.

Also it's a good point made that we have been conditioned to accept failure, striving to just accept "a good cup run" instead of actually wanting and believing we CAN win it!!

I said a while ago, why people deem a "a good cup run" losing heavily in a quarter final or semi is beyond me..
That's a small club mentality... A good cup run is WINNING it.

The difference in the cup competitions is not as vast as it is in the league for obvious reasons and Everton's lack of success is a disgrace, especially when you start to list the clubs that have knocked us out in that time. (Oldham at home!!!)

Too easy an excuse to make.

The fear of losing to the other lot has in my experience always been around, but every other team was treated with respect but not fear; but as time has moved forwards, more teams are feared by the club and its fans until every important game against any opposiiton becomes a potential banana skin for the team.

If Everton are to ever win a competition in the future it will take a very special group of players to shake off that losing mentality.

Somehow Everton have to recapture that ability to win games when they are favourites and not only be able to perform out of their skins when they are the percieved underdogs

It could be another twenty years before we taste success and that will be assured if we continue to behave like a small time club both on and off the pitch.

Mentality as much as finance has an impact on results and that is why Chelsea under Mourinho and Man Utd under Ferguson win things even with teams who are not quite at their best; We can't do a great deal about the financial inequalities but we can achieve more by ridding ourselves of an unwanted inferiority complex.

I understand the league title is a non-starter in the current football environment, but a domestic cup should be a realistic aspiration for us!

Lack of financial resources reduce your chances massively whatever the competition. The chances just get better in the Cups especially the League Cup.

Only Wigan and Porsmouth outside of the top 5 teams in the last 20 years have won the FA Cup.

But let's be honest with ourselves it's not just the last 20 years.

We have won the FA Cup 5 times in 148 attempts ie once every 30 years and we have never won a League Cup in 55 attempts.

Doesn't really support the assertion that a club like Everton should be doing better.

Jags, Arteta with crutiates and Yak out with an exploding heel or something.

We might have given Chelsea a fight with a full team but without them three and fielding unfit players we simply weren't good enough.

Don't start me on that mini Eddie Murphy out jumping Lescott and the dope on the line not going straight through the both of them.......Christ, that's what will eventually kill me, thinking about that game too much.....

This attitude goes something like: Let us stay in our cosy world of cheap tickets to watch reasonable footy and occasionally get a good win to shout about. One day we may even get a string of lucky draws and win a cup - maybe even Europa! Our retired players have a home to come to, our disabled and young are well looked after, our historical artifacts are (ironically) well looked after too which is brilliant.

We might even say that we are home to the sort of players the top teams don't want. They are extremely good players but they lack something - the winning attitude perhaps?

But what about winning!!

More recently I can begin see the point of it all. Building our community into the community of Liverpool is one of the very few ways we will be able to compete if we go 20 more years winning nothing. Young people are pulled towards the club for reasons other than winning and that is no bad thing as our aging demographic takes its toll. Who knows the club may even end up part owned by the community. We are going the opposite way to many of our competitors and I think that is a reasonable strategy - until of course a multi billionaire decides to run a shipping line out of Mersey Docks and needs some serious exposure worldwide via the Premier League.

Kenwright doesn't want to sell our soul. Should he?

I agree with a few of the above posters – Lets win the League Cup and build from there... a cup's a cup and it'll be an education for the younger players in the squad of what it takes to win something.

The cups involve a great amount of luck. The league is where quality and success is really measured. What we need is a new ground and new backers and anything is possible with the fan-base we have. You wouldn't have called Manchester City a big club 10 years ago. They were a yo-yo team with limited history and now they are a giant.

Anyway, said article mentions the Shareholders and Directors noting the vast wealth of Lord Granchester, who owns 8.5% of the enterprise.

The article also goes on to note that a certain Philip Green also seems to have oodles of money.

What I can not understand is why he, of all the people in the Sunday Times rich list, is mentioned. To my limited knowledge he has no shares in the Company and is not a Director.

So, why him??

Appreciating that this thread refers to 20 years, I wonder if any one recalls it was another ten prior to that that the Blues last won anything.

We have spent the last 15 years just getting back to being average.

The wealth of a few teams has effectively killed the Premier League off as a competition. Without the extra millions to spend on players, we will never win the Premier League.

The fact that our neighbours went on to beat us to the double in 1986 and continued to progress for the rest of that decade whilst we went into decline only rubbed salt into our wounds and we’ve never really recovered as a club or a fan-base even though what happened had sod all to do with Everton or its supporters.