Is it time for Everton and Liverpool to merge into a single Merseyside super club?
There. I wrote it.
The fact is that, if Liverpool and Everton were car manufacturers or newspapers or restaurant chains or almost any business other than football, they would certainly have merged long ago.
It?s not just a matter of both clubs failing to meet the expectations of fans. Both clubs are coping with diminishing fan bases in a city that is losing population. Each has an old stadium that needs to be replaced. Both have histories of success but have been eclipsed in recent years by rival clubs in other cities. Both have to make massive re-investments they cannot really afford.
A merger would increase resources, double the fan base, significantly increase gates, help fund reinvestment, create space for a new stadium and eliminate wasteful competition. In any other business it would be a no-brainer. Clearly, keeping both clubs in separate competition could continue to work as it has in the past ? if, as has happened in Manchester, both clubs have major long-term investment. Right now, that?s not the case.
However, any future owners of both Everton and Liverpool, no matter how rich, will still have to deal one day with the decline of population of the region and therefore in the fan base and in revenue. All fans of my generation recall gates of 69,000. Seeing 60,000-65,000 at Goodison was not unusual. I would be surprised if either club could attract a gate of 69,000 today, no matter what the size of the stadium.
It may come down to whether fans want to see a single successful ?super club? on Merseyside, or two clubs continuing to struggle to compete against richer rivals... with limited success.
There are numerous examples of successful football club mergers, but most of those in England have been at the lower levels of football, such as Dagenham & Redbridge, or long ago, like the merger of two Newcastle clubs to form Newcastle United in 1892. However, Italy?s Sampdoria was formed by a merger in 1946 and a further merger with rival Genoa was proposed in 2003. In France, Stade St Germain merged with Paris FC in 1970 to form Paris St Germain. In Germany, Karlsruhe was formed by a series of mergers in the 1950s. Other proposed mergers, Arsenal and Fulham, Queens Park Rangers and Fulham, Huddersfield and Leeds, Stoke and Port Vale, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday, obviously have come to nothing even though they may make economic sense.
What would a merged Merseyside club be like? What would such a club be named? First, it would have to be a real merger. Obviously the heritage of both institutions would have to be acknowledged and recognized in the new entity. It would not work if either set of fans felt one club had been taken over by the other.
I?m not going to attempt to suggest a name. ?Merseyside? would be fair to both sets of fans but would sacrifice the advantage of the brand value of both clubs. Any made up portmanteau name sounds silly. Using both names - ?Liverpool & Everton? or ?Everton & Liverpool? risks the loss over time of the second name. Who says, ?Bournemouth & Boscombe Utd?? No-one. But these are details to be hammered out over time.
It would be a wrench at first. It would be sad, difficult, depressing. There would be grief, a sense of loss. It would go against every grain. But the first Premier League title would repair most of those feelings. The second? you know what I mean.
I fully expect this suggestion to be rejected ? even ridiculed ? by the vast majority of fans. If we can?t agree on sharing a stadium, what chance is there to go even further than that? I don?t exactly savor the prospect of a merger either. But I do think it is inevitable ? some day ? if we are to avoid becoming another Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United.
And remember this: a future wealthy investor in either Liverpool or Everton is likely to see the advantages of there being only one club in the city ? and attempt a buy-out rather than a merger. That we don?t want.
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Jeez, the shoite that lodges in the back of my mind...
Or we could just carry on as we are in a declining industry in a sixties theme park in the capital of dogcrap.
And it just might, should either or both of the clubs end up in administration. That is not as "un-thinkable" as we think it is. The rumours surrounding our financial woes; the fairy-tale of the first American take-over of Liverpool ? nobody thought it would come to this then did it, for the banks to forcibly take over the club.
If that happens, do we think that the decision makers in the club would prefer to rather go out of business (be extinct) and survive and be re-branded?
How's that for "un-thinkable"?
But if this happened in my lifetime I don't know what I would do. Would I support this "Everpool" team?? I dunno, maybe if there was a decent contingent of Everton players made the squad, but after they move on or retire? Probably not. I'd probably go watch Blackpool because at least they put on a show. Football would be dead without Everton ? for me anyways.What a terrible idea.
Following a football club is not about economic sense — how else do you explain thousands of fans spending thousands of quid a year for no tangible reward?
Seriously, I'd sooner follow Everton in League Two than Merseyside Merger FC in the Premier League.
We'd be the winners of course. We would automatically double our League Championship winners tally, plus loads of Cup wins (English and European).
We'd have the Council tripping over themselves to get us the premier site in Liverpool... the Kings Dock of course. We'd have the Echo actually writing about us again and Phil feckin Redmond as an ambassador. We'd have lots of friendly scandinavians as buddies, mind you, we wouldn't be able to get a seat.
D'you think we'd need to wear purple, like the corpy bins colour? Would the Kopite and The Toffee Lady have to get married? (Or would they live in sin?)I've just had a nightmare 'ere! Kenwright in charge of the super club!
1. Not long ago, the idea of leaving Goodison would have been just as controversial. Some of you who wrote with such offensive invective actually supported not just leaving Goodison but leaving the city itself. I think the Kirkby move would have been worse than a merger, frankly.
2. Not long ago, the likelihood of relegation seemed beyond impossible. Now it's an almost perennial possibility. That doesn't seem to make people half as angry as my highly speculative argument.
3. It's not like I'm suggesting this should happen tomorrow. I just think this will come up within the next several years if the economic situation doesn't improve. We have all seen things we never thought would happen with Everton.
4. Dick Fearon, come on bro, you know we are too right related. How's are the kids?
Barry, Daniel, Paul ? it fucking hurt!!! I?m waiting for the ambulance and typing through the pain and I?ll see you three in court.Dave Harrison (1) ? Agree.David Jenkins (4) ? Agree.Stephen Kenney (6) ? Agree.Chris Williamson (11) ? Couldn?t agree more with your last paragraph.Terence Leong (47) ? Stood up. Well done. And Declan (51) too.In fact, I agree with what most of you have said.Thanks Peter for a great article and thanks Michael for putting it up. Really.Oh, but Liam (36), Sam (46) ? can you really say that the reaction is unanimous when Ray Robinson (17) and Ted Smeethes (35) don?t agree with everyone else? Knowsley Libraries do a free log-in for the Oxford English Dictionary. You can even get on in Kirkby! Sorry?When I was 20, the funniest thing I ever heard was in the Enclosure and came from a bunch of cabbies who always took their lads to the match on a Saturday putting down the linesman. Reading the reactions to Peter?s article really took me back. You?re a funny lot when you get going.For my part, if it happened, it wouldn?t make a lot of difference to my watching habits as I?m one of those second-class supporters who spent his youth ducking under police horses to get to Gwladys Street turnstiles but now lives a thousand miles away and, so, doesn?t count apparently. But I would never support the team that you?re proposing Peter.
If I wanted to support a team because they win trophies, I would have changed my allegiance years ago and wouldn?t have wasted all that time checking the results, listening to commentaries, reading ToffeeWeb, worrying about the club, talking to my old man about how thin the squad?s been and for how long, etc.On the other hand, since stats seem to show that the only way the EPL can keep the gravy train rolling is to expand into overseas markets, and since stats seem to show that ? in developing markets ? fans associate more with the player than with the team, maybe Peter?s right?! Peter ? print this thread out. You may be ?the forerunner?. Thanks everyone. Biggest laugh I?ve ever had on this site.
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