The Allianz Arena: Inspiration for Merseyside?

Any negotiation on a subject as sensitive as an Everton/Liverpool ground share needs to be broached carefully and with sensitivity. Views amongst supporters of both clubs are deeply entrenched and a majority of Blues and Reds are probably against the idea. The commercial logic is, as they say, a no-brainer, but gaining broad-based acceptance of the concept is quite another matter. It is therefore highly significant that the first feelers in this latest round have come from Anfield and in the person of Kenny Dalglish, a man still employed by the club, and a man universally admired and respected by the Red half of the City. The view from the top at Goodison has always been that they would listen to any proposals and it is significant that Bill Kenwright has, with lightning speed, responded positively to Dalglish’s feelers. 

None of us should be against sharing a stadium with Liverpool, no matter how much our knees jerk against it. The rivalry between the Blues and the Reds is different from others; we are related. People forget that back in the sepia tinged pre-history of football, we sloshed about in the same primordial soup. For nearly thirty years we shared a matchday programme – with Everton and Liverpool Reserves one week, and Liverpool and Everton Reserves the next. There is a natural symmetry to a ground share with the Reds. One club sliced into two early in our common history. Now we could be grafted together like conjoined twins, once split but reunited again; still with our own identities but sharing living space. The Allianz Arena in Munich offers obvious inspiration; depending on who is playing there the whole exterior is lit up in blue, red, or white (a nice touch for a bid to be a World Cup stadium).

The commercial logic is as certain as death and taxes, it is cold, hard and brutal. Match-day takings at The Emirates Stadium average £3.3 mln., the equivalent figure at Goodison is £800,000 and at Anfield £1.3 mln. Both clubs are falling further and further behind; we are running barefoot in sand, Arsenal, Man United, City, Chelsea and (soon) Spurs are on a track, wearing spikes and taking steroids. Sharing a state-of-the-art stadium would, not only substantially increase match-day revenues, but also reduce  the stadium operating costs as born by each club, thus leaving both in a stronger financial position. A 60,000 seater stadium would cost close to £300m., however sharing would bring the distinct possibility that Liverpool City Council and the North West Development Agency would contribute. Additionally the fact that the stadium was shared by two top flight clubs would attract lucrative naming rights from the corporate sector.

For fans though, this isn’t about sensibly stated facts, it’s  about deep-rooted emotions. No Evertonian wants to say goodbye to Goodison because we worry that we would be waving adieu to all the legends and memories. Dixie Dean, the gluttonous striker who went from zero to sixty in one season. Tommy Lawton, our Brylcreemed assassin, shooting daggers at goal whenever he played or Alex Young, fine bone china skillfully sliding through a bull market of defenders. As these tales, and countless more, are passed on we still have Goodison to frame them. Both clubs have stellar histories – and the stardust must sit heavily on the shoulders of the  current players.  But what if we leave the Old Lady? The very real fear of many is that if we turn our back on Goodison we turn away everything that has made us great, and our history would float off into the horizon until it is a tiny speck. When baseball fans drive past the old Detroit Tigers ground, where Joe Dimaggio and Babe Ruth played, they wistfully pine for the old wooden stadium, forgetting about the glorious new one. History warps and twists in our hearts and perhaps occupies more space than it should. Matthew Syed has written about the “recency effect”, where there is a “tendency to weigh recent events more than earlier events” but equally we should not be ruled by history, a place where legends grow and the truth sometimes shrinks.

The barren interregnum between the mid-eighties and now, with both teams still striving for anything like the success they had back then, has clearly frayed nerves. The media leeches and ticks want to chime in, but this isn’t their debate – this is our decision, not theirs.

Somewhere along the line, the friendly derby took on a nasty tinge, and many fans sway against a groundshare between the two clubs. Even at its very worst though, the relationship between Blue and Red on Merseyside isn’t even close to Barca-Real or Rangers-Celtic; teams press-ganged by history into mutual enmity. This is neither Spanish morbo nor religious sectarianism nor Italian vendetta. This is sibling rivalry. There was a time when we sat together, sang together (“Merseyside, Merseyside!”) and dominated the league together. This changed. We hate it when our friends become successful. We are jealous because they didn’t miss the boat for the top four like we did. We now get under their skin because we are starting to catch up after years spent beached at the wrong half of the table.

Cabbies Jimmy Plunkett and Tommy Atkinson set up a mile of red and blue scarves, an umbilical cord from Anfield to Goodison after the Hillsbrough Disaster. After Rhys Jones’ murder, Z-Cars played at Anfield and the Liverpool Unites charity put Everton in purple shirts – mixing the colours of the two tribes. Does solidarity like this always have to come after tragedy? Special-relationship is an overused and cliched phrase, parrotted out by goons like Bush and Blair – but like it or not Everton and Liverpool do have a special relationship.

Some will shake their heads until this idea is shot down. Some Reds will scream until their faces turn blue, and some Blues will shout until their cheeks turn red. But to retain our history, a communal stadium with Liverpool, is the best idea for the People’s Club: fact. How can we guarantee that we don’t see our hard fought history flutter away? By combining with our historic rivals,  meeting across Stanley Park, by swallowing our pride and sharing with the enemy in a halfway house of Blue and Red. A stadium that befits the most successful footballing square mile in Britain, if not the world.

When we went down 1-0 on Sunday, a stat was thrown out saying that Everton have come back to win from this deficit just once since World War Two. What relation does the Everton team of 1946 have to now? Nothing. We are the only things that bring these players together. Too many people are led by their jerking knees by a media which lives on sensationalism. There are too many words swirling around our beautiful game. How can people honestly believe that Moyes should be shown the door? The professionals we applaud are in a results driven business, but when did the fans become result driven too? By doing so aren’t these fans becoming glory hunters?

Nearly as meaningless as inane statistics are mottoes. “Nil Satis Nisi Optimum” was first used on our shirts in 1980, but has been our motto from the start. One wonders if Stoke City fans demand that their players spend at least five days a week slaving at pottery wheels to slake the demands of their badge… Could we remove the pressure by taking our motto off our shirts? Arsenal took Victoria Concordia Crescit (“victory comes from harmony”) from their badge in 2002, and if anything their football is even more harmonious since they jettisoned the motto.

And what of those with no motto on their shirts like Wigan? Do they wander aimlessly, cruelly denied a footballing moral compass, or are they free from a ridiculous and unattainable promise?

I remember chattering my teeth through an entire Blackburn Rovers game, not through the cold but through searing excitement. I remember Duncan’s first game for us, our adrenaline infused victory over Wimbledon, Brett Angell and the footballing devil on his shoulder which turned him into a stumbling mess, Mikel Madar and his ridiculous hair, Marc Hottiger and his balsa-wood confidence. Did we cheer until we were hoarse when Farrelly scuffed in his goal, because it was the embodiment of N.S.N.O? None of these things were at the pinnacle of footballing greatness, but they were definitely good enough for me, I cheered them all.

To the fans who pass around one shriveled brain cell like the Lord of the Flies conch, who moan about the best manager we’ve had in 22 years, and claim inexplicably that ‘injuries are no excuse’: Don’t you dare tell me that only the best is good enough. My Everton are good enough for me, my love doesn’t come with Latin caveats. And don’t you dare judge on this season, when we have been knocked for six by injuries. How swiftly you forget that we finished first outside the Top Four last season and cruised to the FA Cup Final. How swiftly you forget freezing Wednesday nights at the Selhurst Park mausoleum, our Dogs of War scrapping for yet another bone.

We played well against Liverpool and lost. If we play anything like that for the rest of the season we will rise up what is a very tight and congested league. Bilyadetinov was as alone at the back post as Eleanor Rigby, and swept the ball wide – it could so easily have gone in. This season has had more knee jerk reaction than a reflex hammer.

Luck is a biased croupier, dealing unfair hands, it just goes to show that it all evens itself up over the course of the season. Liverpool conceded a goal to Sunderland via a devilish deflection off an inanimate object. On Sunday they scored via a devilish defection off Joey Yobo, Everton’s inanimate object. There is a little sign over Yobo’s head that indicates the number of days since his last accident, on Sunday it re-set to zero. But I still love him. I love them all. Would you turn to your son and tell him that you don’t adore him because perfection is the only thing that satisfies? Nil Satis Nisi Optimum – this way madness lies.

Moving home was always going to be an extremely testy subject. The very idea of it swills around our mouths until we spit it out like particularly disgusted wine-tasters.

It looks like we have three options with regards to our footballing home. First option, which should Kirkby go belly up will become even more viable, is to stay at Goodison, attempting to remodel our beautiful and historic stadium. For those who hate change (and as an Evertonian, force-fed past glory but starved of modern day success, how can we be anything BUT traditionalists) this looks like the least painful option. We stay in our beloved home and try and redevelop not a seismic shift, but a comfortable makeover for the Old Lady.

The second option is to move to Kirkby and “leave” the city of Liverpool. I am undecided about this one, only a heartless and brainwashed Orwellian Premier League Party Member would wave goodbye to such a beautiful old stadium and with it a mountain of memories, careworn laughter lines and crows feet. However, we have to move a few painful thorns from this argument.

First of all, we are only “moving out of the city” on a very dubious technicality. Try telling Terry McDermott or Alan Stubbs that Kirkby isn’t in Liverpool. As much as the red side of town wants to believe that Everton are moving to a desolate atoll, we will in reality only be a handful of miles from Goodison. The other thing we have to realise is that we voted for this – this isn’t a decision being forced on us by a distant and vengeful oil-igarch – but actually the result of a pretty fair plebiscite vote. Lastly, we have to at least take this option seriously, and give it time to breathe without the “Tesco Kirbydome” tag being foisted on it at the first chance. A new, bigger stadium will ultimately bring in more money, and we are a million miles and four decades distant from our Merseyside Millionaires moniker.

If leaving Goodison for Kirkby is tough, then how about the third option? A ground share with Liverpool. The knee jerk reaction is “not on your life, not in a month of Super Sundays”…But take a step back, take a deep breath. This could make sense.

By sharing we can get a bigger and better stadium than Kirkby, that much is obvious. One end, presumably, will be Blue, and the other red. Warren Bradley and his acolytes may feel that this is the only option if Merseyside wants to be involved in England’s bid to host the World Cup – as neither Anfield nor Goodison compare to the two vast and modern stadia across the M62 in Manchester. To be honest, the idea of the city of Liverpool hosting a World Cup barely registers on my footballing radar – after losing one of our greatest young talents to Manchester, do we really care about a Mancunian stadium playing host to a World Cup game?

Of course, for many – including me – this isn’t about sensibly stated facts, its about deep-rooted emotions. No Evertonian wants to say goodbye to Goodison because we worry that we would be saying goodbye to all the legends and memories. Dixie Dean, the gluttonous striker who told a different story with each of his goals, even though every tale ended the same; with the meeting of ball with net. Or Alex Young, fine bone china skillfully sliding through a bull market. As these tales, and countless more, are passed on we still have Goodison to frame them. But what if we leave the Old Lady? The very real fear of many is if we turn our back on Goodison we turn away everything that has made us great.

There is a strange symmetry to a ground share with the reds. One club split into two early in our common history, and now we could be grafted together like conjoined twins, long since split but now reunited again; still with our own identities but sharing living space. Is it possible to share with the enemy?

Even at its very worst, the relationship between Blue and red on Merseyside isn’t even close to Barca- Real or Rangers-Celtic, teams pressganged by history into mutual enmity. There was a time when we sat together, sang together and dominated the league together. The answer to why this has changed lies at the bottom of Morrisseys melancholy caterwauling We hate it when our friends become successful. We are jealous because they didn’t miss the boat for the top four like we did. We now get under their skin because we are starting to catch up after years spent beached at the wrong half of the table, they can no longer put their feet up and relax.

We need to realise that we are two sides of the same coin, Beardsley, Balmer, Morrissey, and Abblett and yes, even Abel Xavier. We are Blues dressed as reds Jamie Carragher and reds dressed as Blues Leon Osman. In the blue corner we have the punch drunk Rocky Balboa and in the red corner they have Joe Louis piston fists

Was I really the only one who wanted us to win the FA Cup and them to win the Premier League with the sound of Merseyside, Merseyside bobbing and weaving through the crowd in a Wembley season opener? This is neither Spanish morbo nor religious sectarianism or Italian vendetta. This is sibling rivalry.

Some will shake their heads until this idea is shot down. Some reds will scream until their faces turn blue, and some Blues will shout until their cheeks turn red. But to retain our history, a communal stadium with Liverpool, is the best idea for the Peoples Club: fact.

How can we guarantee that we dont see our hard fought history flutter away? By combining with our historic rivals, literally meeting halfway in Stanley Park. By swallowing our pride, sharing with the enemy in a halfway house of Blue and red. A stadium that befits, pound for pound, the most successful footballing citadel in the country.

Peter Johnson (dubbed “Agent Johnson” by the Anfield faithful), did a mini-Leeds with Everton, mortgaging their future away so we could buy a cavalcade of stars. After a season we had to sell almost every single one.

Johnson also had the charisma of roadkill – he once took Nigel Martyn to a meat-packing factory for contract talks and, unsurprisingly, Martyn chose to sign for Leeds.

David Moyes said in an interview a few weeks ago that chairmen shouldn’t run the rule over prospective managers as much as potential managers should interview potential chairmen.

But are there any altruistic fat cats among the nest of vipers? And who is the best fat cat in the league?

Everton’s “fat cat”, is more of a anorexic moggy, Bill Kenwright – theatre impresario and obsessive Toffee fan, who has been a constant supporter of Moyes, and wears his heart on his sleeve.

Moyes has often spoken about how tirelessly Kenwright has supported him but there are question marks about how far he can take the club and he has been criticised for his central role in moving Everton to Kirkby.

Across the park we have an utter mess, with Tom Hicks and George Gillett at the helm. They made a huge mistake by sounding out Jurgen Klinsmann, and now that another DIC bid looms on the horizon in the next few months neither will put their foot down and sack Rafa Benitez…

Hicks was described by Luton boss Kevin Blackwell as having “the morals of an alley cat” – is Blackwell right, and is Hicks really unusual when you look at his Premier League peers?

Analysing the ever-growing American presence we move on Aston owner Randy Lerner, who has provided funds for Martin O’Neill and kept himself to himself, and in comparison to ‘Deadly’ Doug Ellis he appears to be an absolute saint.

Even the Glazer family come out well, having taken over Manchester United in controversial circumstances, and facing angry supporters groups. But Glazer himself seems to have slipped off into the shadows and is far less visible than his children.

Perhaps you think that Chelsea fat cat Roman Abramovich is a good chairman and you’re able to forget his constant meddling. Abramovich – lots of money but no patience. If the stories are true, Abramovich and his sycophantic retinue go round to Chelsea players’ houses with little or no notice, to ‘discuss’ football matters, and this – in my mind – is the biggest Abramovich flaw. He seems to think that he knows about football and management.

Reading chairman John Madejski has to be up there with his total backing for Steve Coppell and seems to be one of the most benign and positive forces in the Premier League, even claiming that he will sell up for the good of the club, but only to a super-rich billionaire. “I’ll listen to sensible offers – but from billionaires only. Millionaires need not apply,” he has said.

Spurs chairman Daniel Levy is infamous for the utterly cack-handed way they have handled the Martin Jol situation. Levy’s demands for Champions League football were reasonable considering their spending. Going behind Jol’s back to court another manager wasn’t the big mistake, being caught was.

Now that Juande Ramos is in the Spurs hot seat, animosity towards Levy and his cronies has receded – but the possibility of another ‘stab in the front’ campaign always remains.

And Spurs’ north London rivals could also have an interesting “fat cat” if Russian Alisher Usmanov gobbles up Arsenal and belches all over their history and traditions and then starts putting his greasy fat sausage-like fingers in places where they aren’t welcome.

However, whilst he tried to convince the Arsenal faithful that he was a Gooner at heart, he also made a teensy-weensy confession – that he thought about purchasing Manchester United with his business partner, and I haven’t even mentioned Usmanov’s supposedly dodgy past.

So is Usmanov a nice guy, or just a sly toad trying to appear as a nice guy? Chairman Peter Hill-Wood claims that there is no place for such allegedly tainted money, even if the party claims innocence or politically motivated attacks.

Then again, tell that to Manchester City…

All my immediate family are Evertonians, and when it comes to watching our blue boys in action we usually do it either from behind the sofa, or in extreme cases (Wimbledon, Coventry, Merseyside derby) updates are usually shouted to us as we quiver in fear at the bottom of the garden.

I usually opt for the back of the sofa as my vantage point, hiding from the harbinger of doom – Jeff Stelling – hoping beyond hope that the blue sofa will deflect the painful news. Only when the score is four-nil do we deign to crawl from behind the sofa.

This season seems to be different; for some reason I am aching to play our red rivals as many times as possible – it could be confidence in my team. Led by Mikel Arteta driving his Everton forward and the underrated Steven Pienaar, he of the balsa-wood physique, we have some silk to complement our sandpaper in midfield – or it could be the fact that Liverpool started off our great run with their Mark Clattenburg-assisted victory at Goodison and the fire they stirred in our bellies.

I was too young to be fully aware of either the ’86 or ’89 thumpings we received from Liverpool – my only memory is my dad responding to the news that his car had been robbed with a glum shrug. Everton were too busy monopolising all his angst, and our FA Cup success in ’95 still seems like an out-of-body experience, a warped karmic pay-off for our relegation battles.

But for me there are no seasons more exciting than when Everton and Liverpool threaten to collide in cup competitions. For too long this has seemed only a distant whisper of a possibility. This season I was hoping that Liverpool crashed out of the Champions League – for once not out of malicious spite – but so that they could parachute down to the UEFA Cup, gliding into a dream fixture against my Everton. Alas, that is not to be, but I still hold out hope for a Carling Cup meet-up, either in the semis or the final.

In that fateful year, when we qualified for the Champions League and the preliminary draw nearly provoked a mid-air collision between Everton and Liverpool, the thought of some Merseyside action outside the Premier League – like a schoolyard fight organised after school hours – has had an appeal to me. I would love to see Rafa – the ‘pyromaniac fireman’ – constantly dousing Premier League disappointments with Champions League successes come up against the Moyesiah – learning with every breath he takes in the refined air of the final stages of cup tournaments

The parallels for this season are also very interesting. Neither manager has an assistant,with Pako Ayesteran being dispatched months ago and Alan Irvine being patted on the back as he walked away to a deserved opportunity at Preston North End. And more importantly, both managers are practising rotation. But whereas David Moyes still seems to be applying logic to the rotation of his forward line, Rafa’s rotation seems far more random – even Man of the Match awards cannot stop Rafa from imposing seemingly arbitrary changes.

Now, in order to stop a stampede of yelps from the red half of Merseyside I need to qualify the above statement – I know that S’Alex Ferguson uses rotation and that it isn’t solely a Rafa affliction but the crucial element is logic. Early in the season, the excuse was ‘resting players’ and it seems like madness to cool a player’s hot streak with some ‘rotation time’ on the bench.

So, I don’t know about you, but the dream cup draw for me would pit the Spanish pyromaniac fireman against the ginger Braveheart.

Phil Neville and PFA chief Gordon Taylor both think that players are getting burn-out, which is a fatuous and hackneyed argument. Although today’s stars do play a lot of games, I don’t recall burn-out ever being a tangible reality; rather it is a invisible miasma, a ghostly threat like Communism in 1950s America.

The BBC define burn-out as ‘physical and emotional exhaustion, reduced performance, and a lack of enjoyment/ reward from playing and training’. Taylor’s poster boy for exhaustion is Steven Gerrard, who started six games in the last 18 days, including the sojourn to Moscow’s plastic pitch and Liverpool’s trip to Istanbul.

Taylor claims that: “If that was a racehorse you would say that was too much and have the RSPCA on to you. It is a good life and nobody’s denying that, but we do have a duty to look after our sporting heroes.”

There is no doubting that Gerrard’s form has been patchy, but is this a result of burn-out? By the BBC’s definition, it is possible, although Gerrard himself seemed pretty irate to be subbed in the Merseyside derby.

The old burn-out argument has been dusted off and brought out so many times that I think I now have burn-out burn-out. So is there any solid evidence regarding burn-out? How many times can I say burn-out in this piece?

Taylor continued his pleas for some R&R for players, and especially those at the top of the hierarchy. “The biggest problem is probably with the elite, who need the most looking after. Think of the number of international players who have had foot injuries, such as Emile Heskey, Wayne Rooney and David Beckham, or of John Terry playing with broken bones and having cortisone injections.

”It’s up to the authorities and administrators to make it as safe as they can. Some players can clock up 50 to 60 games a season and it’s obviously going to take a toll.”

And so that brings me on to Exhibit A, England legend Alan Ball, a tireless runner and as good as example as anyone for examining burn-out. In the 1966-67 season he played over 50 games, on the back of his glorious Duracell bunny style World Cup campaign, but never once was burn-out an issue that was brought up.

Not only did Ball play a huge amount of games, with far less sophisticated training regimes, but the game was a far more violent form back then. Tackles from behind were woven into the games and players often sustained injuries as a result of what would today be described as on-field GBH. The biggest factor was that there was no respite, only one substitute – usually Tommy Jackson/Sandy Brown would be sitting there.

Phil Neville should perhaps stop moaning about burn-out and be thankful that he has achieved as many England caps as he has. Dixie Dean lost a testicle playing football; I wonder what Gordon Taylor would say about that? And if anyone was wondering, I have mentioned burn-out 12 times, even talking about it has left me jaded and listless.

In this 206th league match up between these two sides Liverpool won in a game that was inflated with hype before and punctured with the opposite of clean and normal goals during. Everton didn’t even have the satisfaction of scoring their goal themselves, it was a Hyppia own goal that opened things for the Blues. The blunderbuss strike force of Yakubu and Anichebe were a physical presence and Yakubu had a number of good moves, notably a shot deep in the midfield wilderness which threatened to smash through Liverpool’s goal like a vandal’s brick. The two strikers they lurched and pushed their way around the field to no avail with Anichebe being the younger and more mobile of the two. McFadden, when he came on, was again an enigma – although the Scot is concise and uniquely brilliant for his country, he is frustratingly verbose on the ball for Everton.

Everton will appeal to the fouls on Neville and Lescott – the former a two footed lunge – and the latter a definite penalty, with recognition of either one by Clattenberg meaning a different outcome to this game. The decision not to grant Everton a last gasp penalty (after Kuyt’s earlier last gasp penalty) was made all the more bizarre by the fact that Clattenberg had just given a penalty to Liverpool. Weak refs are often criticized for trying to make amends – this referee, when given a legitimate reason to give a penalty to the blue half of Merseyside, inexplicably didn’t. Ultimately though, football is about results – and this one matters more than most – sometimes the pain of defeat is dulled by scintillating skill but in the Merseyside derby performance is always of secondary or tertiary importance, the result – the trump card in the office on the Monday morning – that stamps out all excuses is of precious value.

The Observer’s Paul Wilson thinks that Everton and Liverpool will miss each other when the Blues move to Kirkby, and this is true – the rivalry is symbiotic and without each other, so tangibly close like a conjoined twin, the derby will be less like messy fisticuffs between two neighbours in a semi detached house, and more like all other local rivalries.

This game was a crossroads for Liverpool, but it is different for the Toffees. The Everton of 2007/8 still isn’t fully formed – players like Cahill, Vaughan, and Gravesen still have to be added to the mix, and a decision has to be made about whether recalcitrant wide-boy Andy Van Der Meyde’s artistry has a place in the squad. Everton still have players that can remember Duncan Ferguson, and Hibbert in particular, when harried, seems to have flashbacks of the totemic Scotsman, vainly firing up to the memory of the number 9 with the frequency of the English archers at Crecy. Liverpool will push on from here I’m sure, but Everton – my team, will still remain as unpredictable as Rocky Balboa.