Everton should forget about moving to Kirkby when there's a
perfectly good stadium on their doorstep - they'll just have to
paint Anfield blue.
Everton fans are up in arms at the moment because the club have
just announced their favoured site for a new stadium is in Kirkby,
four miles away from Goodison and outside the city of Liverpool.
Coming in a week when Liverpool revealed that a £450million
takeover would mean work could soon start on a £200m stadium in
Stanley Park - the bit of greenery that presently separates the two
ancient rivals - this news did not go down well at all.
Among the many reasons for Evertonian indignation is the
indisputable fact that they predate Liverpool and were in the city
first, and that they applied for planning permission to move into
Stanley Park some years ago, only to be turned down because of
greenbelt rules.
More subjective grounds for resentment include the feeling that
Liverpool are getting preferential treatment from the council, a
worry that a move to the outskirts will eventually erode both the
local fanbase and the sizeable following the club have on the
Wirral and in north Wales, and an instinctive fear that
surrendering the city to Liverpool may prove a costly and
far-reaching mistake. If it is hard to imagine the city of
Liverpool without Everton, it is impossible to think of Everton
outside Liverpool.
Of course, the move may never happen. Everton could just be putting
pressure on the city council in the same way Lancashire County
Cricket Club negotiated more favourable terms with Trafford council
earlier this year by repeatedly insisting they were about to
relocate to Wigan. The Wigan council were up for it, and all the
talk for a while was of state-of-the-art facilities, grant
assistance and greenfield sites. Then, suddenly, Trafford came back
to the table and an exclusivity deal was signed remarkably
quickly.
With the King's Dock fiasco in the recent past and Bill Kenwright
insisting that Everton have no option but to leave Goodison, the
club appear to be running out of viable alternatives.
There is one place that would be ideal, however - and if Everton
look out of the window they can see it. It is a purpose-built
football ground and a very good one, too. Has excellent corporate
facilities, a capacity of 45,000 that can be nudged up to 50,000
without much difficulty and will be vacant in three or four years.
The only problem, of course, is that it is called Anfield, and for
Evertonians that is a very big problem indeed.
To be strictly accurate, that is not the only problem. There are
also a few minor issues surrounding the future of Anfield. One of
the conditions by which Liverpool gained planning permission in
Stanley Park involved a promise to restore the lost community space
by turning the Anfield site into a public area. The plan at present
is for an Anfield plaza, a pleasant walkway from the direction of
the city up to the new ground, featuring a hotel, restaurants and
bars, shops and landscaped open space amounting to a regeneration
of one of the poorer parts of the city.
This sounds totally worthwhile, until you remember that even Sheikh
Maktoum might not have enough money to turn Walton Breck Road into
a tourist attraction. Any council objections could be swiftly
overturned if there was a will to keep Anfield going. Goodison
could be flattened to provide community space adjacent to Stanley
Park.
Liverpool have not considered selling their ground to their
neighbours because some of their supporters are unconvinced about
the need to move out of Anfield in the first place. Letting Everton
move in would be a recipe for civil unrest, but the question is an
academic one because Everton would never dream of playing at
Anfield. This turns out to be true. 'We would much rather play in
Kirkby than play at Anfield,' Everton spokesman Ian Ross said. 'In
fact we would rather play in Beirut than play at Anfield.'
Yet Everton did play at Anfield once. If you have studied your
history, you will know that not only did Liverpool fans nick that
song from Celtic, "You never walk alone" but that they were formed
suddenly in the year 1892, when Everton left Anfield, their home of
eight years, in protest at a rent increase. The landlord, a Mr John
Houlding, was left needing a team in a hurry, so he recruited 10
professionals from Scotland and registered them as Liverpool when
he was barred from retaining the name Everton. The original Everton
went off to play at Goodison Park, the new Liverpool stayed at
Anfield and kept up their Scottish contacts to good effect.
All of which means it is silly for either party to let pride stand
in the way now, although that is exactly what both parties intend
to do. Everton, or 'the people's supermarket' as Liverpool fans
have taken to calling them since the tie-in with Tesco at the
Kirkby site, will continue hunting high and low for a suitable new
home while ignoring the great big red one half a mile down the
road.
Liverpool are planning to be in their new home for the 2009-10
season, by which time they will have no further use for a superbly
appointed and genuinely historic stadium. Anyone with any sense can
see that all that is required is a change of name and a few tins of
blue paint, but sense has no place in this argument. This is
football. Anfield must die. And for the next few seasons, as the
Fast Show might have put it, we will mostly be playing in soulless
out-of-town stadiums with enormous car parks.
