Fans Comment
Lee Marman

Let's be Positive!
29 May 2005

Driving home on Thursday from work was difficult listening to Radio 5 and Talksport.   I support Everton but people who I work with in London (and I am not from Liverpool) give me strange looks when I tell them who I support.  With all the 'love-ins' the media are showering on Liverpool with at the moment I remembered why I support Everton from London.  I almost drove to Talk Sports studio to hit Adrian Durham (who is so anti-Everton about their success this season) and this is so unlike me.

In 1985 I was 15 and the Everton team that had just won the League and nearly done the treble were robbed of the glory that the Kopshites are now revelling in now.  It still rankles with me, following Heysel and the despicable behaviour of our friends across the park, that no-one ever apologised to Everton Football Club. They helped our demise from that day on and our chance to prove on a European stage that Everton were and could have been the best in Europe for many years after 1985.

The media forget what happened that day and the ramifications it had on English football including the great Everton side of 1985.  With the current clamour to have Liverpool in as European Cup holders for next year's Champions' League, what people forget is that in 1990 when English clubs were re-entered back into Europe, the same thing have been done for should Everton since we had been cruelly denied we the chance to enter the European Cup as Champions of England. 

Only two weeks before Heysel, the Police of Rotterdam were in praise of the behaviour of Everton fans before and after the triumph over Rapid Vienna.  It still sickens me to this day that our chance in the sun had gone.  If Heysel happened with the likes of Abromovich and Glazer around, they would have sued Liverpool for millions in lost earnings and Everton should have done the same looking back with anger and hindsight.  No-one mentions that on the BBC/Sky when the the cup is being paraded around the streets of Liverpool.  In any case all those people from Shepton Mallet, South Wales and London had a long journey to add the so-called million Liverpool supporters.  These supporters are the glory hunters which unfortunately will now be added by a few people with short memories and don't know much about the game we all love.

But let's look forward now to next season.  What a chance now to make up for the wilderness years and ram it down the throats of our loveable neighbours.  David Moyes has now laid the foundations for another revolution at Everton with literally no money to spend over the last three years. Again what price have Liverpool paid for success?  A lot: Heskey for £12.6M; Cisse for £14M; Alonso, Morientes and Luis Garcia ... need I go on? If he is prudent and wise with his spending on new players, I hope to think next May our fans can have the chance to celebrate a trophy (Premiership or Champions' League) that we can parade around Liverpool and see then if the exposure will be he same!

I know it sounds I have been at the vodka, but when you have to listen to the plastic Liverpool supporters in recent days, this makes the determination to do well next year even greater.  We are the People's Club and we are Everton (the club with more points in the top flight than anybody else and that includes Liverpool).  No one mentions that either.  Liverpool's history started in 1965, Everton in1878.  End of story.  Let's hope in 12 months time we are posting messages like "Well Done Everton on winning the Champions League".

Let's keep the dream alive! Lee Marman aged 35 (28 years an Evertonian from London)

Lee  Marman
aged 35 (28 years an Evertonian from London)

Responses:
Well, Lee, I know where you are coming from, and the whole Liverpool hoopla really is deeply sickening, but on one level that really does sound like the very thing we are so often lambasted for: a bitter rant! 

There really is nothing to be gained by thinking about or rationalize things to make us feel better.  What's done is done.  We can't change it; we need to just live with it and move on.  Yes, it is time to think wonderful thoughts about the great players David Moyes is lining up, and the great games in  prospect next season, so if that's what floats your boat, as they say.... — Ed

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