What makes a house, a home?

This piece may be divisive. It may annoy some of you. But to be absolutely clear before I start, this is not a hit-piece; this is not judging anyone for how they choose to support Everton, or how they have to manage their time around getting to and from matches.

But we can’t just stick our heads in the sand and ignore the issue, either.

For the first time in 3 months, Everton won at Hill Dickinson Stadium. They beat Burnley 2-0 on Tuesday — it could easily have been more. While not exactly free-flowing, this was about as dominant an Everton performance as you can get this season.

Burnley had just two attempts on target — one of them coming deep in stoppage time, with Jordan Pickford making (another) absolutely outstanding, reflex save to preserve his clean sheet. He did so in front of a South Stand Lower that, by that stage, looked more than half-empty.

‘Half-empty’ is probably going to sum up this piece, but there will be much more positive elements to write about, and I will write about them. However, I needed to get this off my chest.

In pretty much every home game this season, there has been large swathes of empty seats by full-time. Fans have been heading for the exits early, and whether it is because there is more of an open view now than there was at Goodison Park, it is becoming more noticeable.

Now, there’s lots of factors that come into this. The seemingly endless midweek night games are certainly not helping. Transport and infrastructure issues around the ground compound this, and then to cap it off, there’s the ludicrous rules Everton have put in place around memberships and transferring digital tickets, meaning season ticket holders who cannot attend a match (or attend a match in full) are often left at odds as to how to pass their tickets on. They would rather have the seat filled for most of a game than left empty, which is of course a good thing.

These are elements the club must look to address, especially ahead of a potential European campaign, which would bring with it, at a minimum, four more midweek night matches at Hill Dickinson Stadium.

However, we also can’t just ignore that, ultimately, people are making the decision to leave early, en masse, regularly.

Tuesday’s victory was only Everton’s fifth Premier League home win of the season. In fact, since the start of last term, the Toffees have only won 10 league matches since the start of the 2024-25 campaign.

Essentially, home wins don’t happen regularly, so why are people feeling the need not to stick around and enjoy them?

And it’s not just the midweek night games. While there have been far too many of them for anyone’s liking (Everton have already played six games on Monday nights this season, with three of those being at home), the stands were also emptying quite a while before full-time in home wins over Fulham and Nottingham Forest earlier in the season. Both of those matches were 3 pm kick-offs on a Saturday. 

Once again, let it be clear, I am not judging anybody. But on Tuesday, it was at least half the ground that was empty a good 10 minutes before full-time.

People are clearly feeling the need to leave early, for whatever reason, and it is noticeable from the 80th minute onwards.

With stoppage time in matches often dragging into 5-minute plus territory, that is a good 15-20 minutes that fans are paying for, and not witnessing in person.

People will always have valid reasons for having to dash off early, but it does feel the equivalent of paying to go and see a concert, and not staying for the encore. If you did that at the Oasis gigs last year, you’d have missed The Masterplan, Don’t Look Back In Anger, Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova.

I’m stretching the example there, a bit, in fairness, but I think the point stands.

And if it was just a few thousand leaving early, then it would be different, but it regularly looks like half the ground. Much more understandable if Everton are being soundly beaten, but the Toffees are now in a European fight, the weather is (hopefully) going to be getting nicer, and evening games are, at least for the run-in, in theory going to be less common.

The excuses will ultimately start to run dry if fans are still dashing for the exits on weekends.

I thought the atmosphere was good on Tuesday, from the first goal onwards the crowd were very much on-side and Everton had their full backing. But a first home win of 2026 deserved to be celebrated by the vast majority of people at full-time.

The club must look at this season as a learning curve. They must speak to fans and find a way to help.

As someone who has to travel to Liverpool for home games, I refuse to accept the trip to Hill Dickinson Stadium is that much harder than it was to get to Goodison Park. It is closer to town, it is only a bit further away from the nearest train station by foot. The traffic issues are clearly a problem, and the club must push the respective authorities to be more on-the-ball — none of the planning from local authorities has been up to scratch.

The main issue, it seems, is routine. People were used to their trips back and forth to Goodison. They would know exactly how long it would take to get there, and to get home, or to work, or to wherever their next destination was. That will take some time, but it is also worth noting that this team still needs supporting through to the end too.

 

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