Abandoning Goodison is a big price to pay for Everton standing still

Six weeks ago, my daughter and I, trapped by airport staff shortages, visited the biggest city in the country I had never been to - Liverpool.

On the first of our three full days, we headed to Anfield, which was still gripped in pre-season preparation with a half-laid pitch.

You could smell fresh paint and history. At the back of the huge main stand I looked down and pictured those great moments.

I saw Roger Hunt score the first goal shown on Match of the Day.

Kenny Dalglish was turning hapless defenders inside out in front of The Kop and, at the other end, I revisited the pain of being a 16-year-old Spurs fan when Michael Thomas stabbed home his famous title-winning goal for Arsenal.

There was a great view out the back as well. There were the anticipated quips from the friendly guide about the sight of Goodison Park to our right and he pointed out the cranes where the Toffees plan to move to a new stadium in 2024 at Bramley-Moore Dock across the city.

We hadn’t booked a tour at Goodison but decided we would walk over and take a peek around the outside.

We crossed Stanley Park. She sighed when I suggested it would be a fantastic venue for a parkrun, but I soon got lost in more great football history.

Everton first played at Goodison in 1892, the year their neighbours were formed, and two years later the ground hosted an FA Cup final.

Pele scored a goal there at the 1966 World Cup and Goodison staged one of the competition’s greatest games, when a Eusebio-inspired Portugal came from 3-0 down to beat North Korea 5-3 in the quarter-finals.

The stands are adorned with pictures from the two great Everton teams of the last sixty years – Harry Catterick’s title winners in 1970 and the outfit that one of his star players Howard Kendall took to two top-flight crowns in the following decade.

Then there is a statue of Dixie Dean, who scored 60 first division goals in the 1927-28 season.

This phenomenal feat, like Sir Donald Bradman’s batting average and Jack Nicklaus’s number of Majors, will surely never be beaten and most of it happened less than 100 yards from where I was standing.

Dean died there as well after suffering a heart attack at a Merseyside derby in 1980.

But all I could think was that, if I returned in a few years, all I would be looking at would be a pile of bricks.

Goodison, which will play host to another Merseyside derby on Saturday and was the bedrock of Everton's survival bid last season, is as much an iconic part of Liverpool as the Liver Building, the Cavern and Becher’s Brook, yet it will soon be no more.

There are plans for shops, a six-storey care home and 51,000 square feet of office space, which was plainly planned before people started going in once or twice a week or for the odd leaving do.

Everton need greater stadium capacity and the planned facilities may well be desired and needed by the people who live there.

But the club’s heritage is being sacrificed and while the term ‘legacy’ is bandied around, I fear the worst.

More has to be done to celebrate such a rich venue in the game’s history than simply naming a playground after Joe Royle or unveiling the Pat van den Hauwe rose gardens.

The non-monetary cost may just be too great. Some new stadia work and some don’t.

Arsenal and Tottenham are at least close to their previous locations so fans can still go to the same pubs and support the local shops, takeaways and, crucially, it becomes an improved rather than simply a different experience.

The emotional attachment should not be discarded just for what will probably be the unfulfilled chase of Champions League football or big-name players.

Even at Manchester City, who have become the blueprint for the transformation that huge money can bring and the only place where the club’s most iconic moment – the Aguero goal – came at their new stadium, they still sing: “We are City, Super City, from Maine Road.”

Sorry, but for Everton, the price just doesn’t seem worth paying. I fear it will simply provoke more expenditure on mediocre footballers and, Carlo Ancelotti apart, their continuing trend for uninspiring managerial appointments.

Compare the situation to what we discovered on a Beatles bus tour the following day.

We pulled up outside 251 Menlove Avenue, John Lennon’s childhood home in the suburb of Woolton and I was delighted to hear that, when the owner had died in 2002, Yoko Ono had bought the house and donated it to the National Trust.

It couldn’t be much more ordinary, but it has been given Grade II-listed status, so future development is ruled out.

Obviously, it’s easier to save a three-bedroom semi-detached beside a dual carriageway than it is a 39,500-seater football stadium, but the sentiment was there. That was the important thing.

It was truly heartwarming and the contrast was stark to what is happening with one of the city’s football clubs when their iconic site is in danger of being abandoned.

I hope, in the words of the great man himself and for the sake of Everton fans, Goodison will not just become one of those places that change forever, not for better.

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