Well, this all turned dark very quickly, didn’t it? Two games in is no stage of the season for the kind of despondency that appears to have gripped a vocal section of the fanbase but, then again, Evertonians haven’t really been afforded the chance to feel any kind of new-season optimism or excitement heading into the new campaign because it feels like we’re still stuck in the last one.
Three members of the Board of Directors might have exited stage left but the most divisive of all remains as Chairman and the proposed investment from MSP Sports Capital that might signal the beginning of the end of Farhad Moshiri’s failed dalliance with Everton appears no closer to coming to fruition.
Four players might have come through the door so far this transfer window but one of them will be sidelined until the other side of the international break (to be clear, we still should have signed Jack Harrison), one is a “development player” for the future and one is a 38-year-old currently playing out of position… and not very well, it should be said.
With Yerry Mina and Conor Coady gone and Demarai Gray twiddling his thumbs waiting for a move away, the squad is arguably weaker than the one that finished 2022-23 and Everton have started a season with two defeats and no goals scored for the first time in 68 years. The clash with Wolves at Goodison Park has much more riding on it than it should so early in the season.
In terms of the 38-game marathon that is the Premier League season, Saturday’s game won’t be defining or particularly impactful on its own, of course — although, as one of those home games the Blues should have won last season under Frank Lampard but didn’t, it could contribute to the team’s overall struggles if they can’t start picking up points on a regular basis — but there are smatterings of toxicity amid a palpable level of anxiety that could really be counter-productive if things start going south early against Gary O’Neill’s side.
That anxiety and frustration was illustrated by the reaction from an audible contingent of the travelling fans at Villa Park on Sunday to Dominic Calvert-Lewin yet again leaving the pitch injured, with some booing the striker as he trudged towards the dressing room. A narrative has formed around the striker, no doubt because of his “side hustle” as a fashion model, that he is somehow fragile and unwilling to push his body to the limits for the cause or is more interested in the catwalk than the football pitch.
It’s nonsense, of course — Calvert-Lewin is as committed as any Everton player and has spoken of how frustrating it has been not being able to play. And it was by putting his body on the line in that heavy collision with Emiliano Martinez that he sustained the fractured cheekbone that forced him off at the weekend — arguably 28 minutes later than it should have done it shouldn’t be forgotten, because it was clear he wasn’t right.
While disappointing to the player — and his father, of course — the reaction was if not understandable to a degree then perhaps not wholly unsurprising. It’s unlikely many supporters in the ground realised the nature or extent of the injury at the time and any that did would hopefully admit on further reflection and having seen the swelling on his face that they let their emotions get the best of them. Again, it should also be viewed within the wider context of a fanbase that is beyond frustrated and wracked by fear already of a prolonged and, perhaps, unsuccessful struggle to avoid relegation this season.
What isn’t either understandable or forgivable, however, is the racial abuse directed at Amadou Onana in the wake of Sunday’s defeat. There has been outrage from fans online, Everton have, of course, responded and, rightly, the police are now involved in what has become a criminal matter.
It is maddening, though, the outsized effect that one idiot posting a vile Instagram comment can have on the image and reputation of an entire club and fanbase because of the ease with which people can post such things online in the modern age and how quickly the pile-on can be instigated by tabloid newspapers and their Internet equivalents.
It also speaks to the very real dilemma both the players and Everton face in how to respond to incidents like this going forward now that they have very clearly stated their condemnation. (They shouldn’t have to but it would surely be best if all of the players deleted their social media accounts tomorrow.) There is no question that abuse and discrimination, racial or otherwise, needs to be confronted and, to the extent that it’s possible, eradicated from the game and the club were right to take a stance.
The question now becomes, in calling it out at every turn and as visibly as in press releases and club statements, does the club risk fanning copycat simpletons looking to provoke further outrage while also fostering a perception to the wider world that there is a racism or abuse problem among its supporters? Should they simply refer instances to the police from this point forward?
Only last week, a prominent national journalist, of whom much better was expected, seized on the furore around a social media comment aimed at Neal Maupay in order to besmirch Evertonians, overlooking the fact that the person wishing death on the Frenchman’s mother was a Fulham fan. The piece was subsequently edited — slightly — but the damage had been done.
In the age of the Internet, social media, moral outrage, sensationalism and clickbait news stories, it is all too easy for a club or its fans as a collective to have its reputation trampled by the actions of a single individual who might not even live in the country. Or, in the case of a few scallies who confronted players in their cars after the Brighton game in January, by a tiny minority who are in no way representative of Everton supporters as a whole. (Which, incidentally, is also why Headlockgate was so ill-advised and damaging.)
Where the incident involving Onana is concerned, the irony is that perhaps no club’s fans have come further on the issue of racism than Everton’s in the past 30 years. Infamous for having no black players in the 1980s, a fact trumpeted by the ugly chant “Everton are white”, and for some fans throwing bananas at John Barnes, Evertonians (and Liverpudlians in general) are now among the most enlightened and vociferously anti-racist people around. Just ask the neo-Nazis who can’t get past the doors of Lime Street before being beaten back onto the platform by anti-fascist Scousers!
There’s an idiot born every minute and every club has its minority share of them. Everton’s Twitter and Instagram accounts have 3 million followers each so, again, while it only takes seconds for one numpty behind a keyboard — and it only takes one, probably someone too young to know the impact of their words — to post something vile trying to provoke a reaction, there will almost certainly be more posts like the ones aimed at Maupay and Onana in the future. The difficulty comes in how to deal with each new case now without making it a national news story that risks perpetuating a narrative of intolerance and bigotry among Evertonians as a collective that just isn’t there.
The prevailing image of Everton fans in this respect should be that lovely banner that filled a sizeable portion of the Gwladys Street greeting Moise Kean in 2019 after the racism he encountered in his native Italy, not the actions of some faceless, mindless individual on social media. It would behoove the nation’s journalists to keep that in mind and Blues fans to ensure that we don’t feed into the narrative so many in the media want to build around our fanbase.