It’s amazing what a difference a win can make. It puts a spring in your step. The world seems that much brighter, life filled with possibility, your attitude towards your fellow man blessed with warmth and compassion.
And then you remember that next up are the Shite
There is a term in mental health circles called catastrophising, the tendency by the anxious to sprint to the worst possible outcome, however improbable, and then mentally prepare accordingly. This response is freqently disproportinate, and so, part of the healing process is about realising this, releasing the brain from its state of near-permanent fight-or-flight by incorporating a sense of perspective.
But Derby Day might be one of the few examples, at least from an Evertonian’s point of view, when catastrophising appears to be a perfectly reasonable response. In fact, it’s fair to say that some of the recent defeats were beyond anything that even the most fevered of Evertonian brains could have dreamed up.
Horrors like the ‘Origi’ Derby, the ‘Curtis Jones’ cup tie, the Silva 5-2 clusterfuck, the Martinez 4-0 shellacking part one, the Martinez 4-0 shellacking part two.
Such is the degree of bad joojoo that surrounds the Merseyside Derby nowadays, it would probably be naive to think there is ever a floor to our suffering. It is best to assume that the Derby can always invent new and unusual ways to torture us.
The arrival of these fixtures often throws into sharper focus the question of how to deal with the neighbours. While Liverpool remain an ever-present problem, like a chronic health condition, the Derby inevitably acts like a flare up, a time when the condition hints at destructive potential.
The ways in which Blues deal with this are varied. Some try to blank them, the head in the sand approach. If you can’t see them, they aren’t real. Others go for the ‘tourist club’ slight-of-hand. The anti-People’s Club. If they lack authenticity, the gambit claims, then their dominance is diminished. And then there’s acting like you don’t really care, an attempt to stop seeing them as different to any other club.
Does any of it work? Not really. You can never completely suppress that sense of visceral loathing Liverpool conjure up, no matter how hard you try. They are the yin to our yang, an elemental part of what it means to be an Evertonian; an experience that is as much about dark as it is about light.
Liverpool have undeniably played a part in the formation of the modern Blue. On the pitch, even diminished for a generation before Klopp rolled into town, they stood as a reminder of how much Everton had fallen short, a propensity for self-immolation denying the club the opportunity to match even their more modest haul of trophies in the pre-Teutonic age.
Off it, they perhaps represent a road not yet travelled, something to define ourselves against? Liverpool’s partial untethering from the local bonds that once held them so tight, stands as a cautionary tale of the perils that modern football’s love affair with the bottom line can potentially bring, that deal with the devil that so many elite clubs have had to make as they trade community for success.
And underwriting the whole relationship, simple hate. A pure and undiluted loathing that has become an indelible part of the Blue psyche. Loathing not of individuals, although that can sometimes be the case, but of the body, the great heaving Kopite mass.
It’s a hate that often sits uneasily within the anodyne landscape of the Premier League, the happy clapping, smiling faces that people its back-drop. As football morphs into an entertainment product alone, one to be enjoyed and never endured, the place for such deep-seated animosity is uncertain. While the Premier League and Sky will happily promote rivalries, you are meant to wear them lightly. A kind of ‘banter lolz’ sort of rivalry.
In short, you’re not meant to fucking hate them.
But why not? As long as it doesn’t revisit the bad old days of football’s violent past, there’s little wrong with loathing the neighbours. In an increasingly bland football world, it’s part of what makes the game interesting. It’s that deep-seated emotional pull that allows football to transcend other, more conventional ways to spend 90 minutes. A film or a play will never move you in the same way a match will. Football grabs you and conjures up extremes, light and dark.
And, despite what they and others say, our loathing functions independent of any sense of ‘bitterness’. That’s Liverpool’s very own sleight of hand, a neat alliterative trick to try and diminish us further. The truth is that Evertonians hated the neighbours long before ban. We loathed them when we were successful. We’ve loathed them for generations. And we always will. Everton could spend the next 20 years winning every trophy put before the club and we as fans would still hate Liverpool. It’s in our DNA.
But that’s not to say that our relationship with them could not do with a shade more light. For too long now, bar the very occasional win, it’s been pretty much one-way traffic, Everton’s dismal performances further fuelling our animosity. The upcoming edition finds the clubs in very different places, Everton once again fighting the drop, Liverpool enmeshed in a title push (albeit one that appears to be doomed). History and form would suggest the inevitability of a cartoon dancing Kopite, a crushed Toffee Lady. But how great would it be if this time, all that catastrophing, all that mental accommodation turned out to be unnecessary, that Dyche’s men could upset the odds? A victory, however unlikely it might seem, would all-but guarantee Premier League safety. What better way would there be than that to get a win against the neighbours, particularly as it would also effectively torpedo their increasingly slim chances of claiming the title? If ever we needed a favour from the footballing gods, it would be now. It’s not like we haven’t suffered enough at the hands of the RS. Hate is all well and good. But sometimes you need something more.
JIM KEOGHAN 