Season › 2012-13 › News How long will it take before Merseyside captures the attention of football once again? Lyndon Lloyd , 17 May, 0comments | Jump to most recent Tony Barrett underlines the glaring shift in power from Merseyside to Manchester over the last two decades and wonders whether Everton and Liverpool will be able to reclaim the spotlight again any time soon. The dynamic of the power relations between Manchester and Merseyside is now so well established, so entrenched and so unquestioned that the only wonder is why the Stretford End still feels the need to rub in their superiority. A generation on from Wembley being a second home to supporters of Liverpool and Everton bearing “Manchester: A Trophy Free Zone” banners, the tables have well and truly been turned. In the space of seven days between Sunday 5 May and Sunday 12 May, Merseyside was put in its place, perhaps more than ever before. The week started with a nondescript derby that has already been forgotten, a match that meant little outside of parochial superiority and how it showed. The following day came a surge of bets on David Moyes to succeed Sir Alex Ferguson, a rush of money that sent the bookmakers running for cover and left Everton fearing that they would be powerless to prevent their manager, soon to be out of contract, from walking away. Within 48 hours, those concerns had been realised. Moyes was on his way and amidst the avalanche of deserved tributes that followed, the fact that Everton Football Club, the fourth most successful in English history, had left itself at United’s mercy. It almost felt like an afterthought but it should be one of the prevailing issues. Moyes allowed his contract to run down, not because he knew he was getting the United job, but because of his ongoing belief that Everton lacked the ambition and the financial wherewithal to compete at the highest level. In January, his club had one last chance to prove him wrong by producing the kind of transfer budget that would have allowed him to move for players who might, just might, have propelled Everton to a top four finish. » Read the full article at The Times About these ads © ToffeeWeb