Euston station in London is a bleak place at the best of times. Claustrophobic, harshly lit and always overcrowded, nobody wants to be there for longer than is absolutely necessary.

It was thus a fitting venue for a group of Everton fans to harangue their team’s players as they boarded a train back to Merseyside after their 4-0 defeat to Tottenham at the weekend. “F***ing rat” was one of the choicer epithets that could be heard on a clip that went viral at the weekend.

The footage raised conflicting thoughts. On the one hand, it was tough not to agree with the club’s striker Neal Maupay — one of the primary targets for the abuse — when he posted on X: “Imagine another job where it’s normalised to get abuse like this. Hanging around at a train station to scream at men who are trying their best.”

It is only two games into the new season and they are not deliberately trying to lose.

Yes, the players are paid huge amounts of money, but the numbers on their wage slips are reflections of their athletic and mental abilities relative to the finances of the industry they are in, not a measure of how many swear words you can hurl at them while they are boarding a train. By Monday morning, Everton fan groups were queuing up to condemn the scenes.

On the other hand, there will be plenty of people out there who, maybe in a very small way, identify with those Everton fans. Sometimes you have a lot of rage and frustration and you don’t know what to do with it. Those Everton supporters should not have reacted the way they did, but when you are at the end of a long, expensive and disappointing day, and the sources of that disappointment wander past, it’s easy to see how rage can drown out the better angels of your nature.

The reaction isn’t just about one game either. You could make a strong argument that Everton are the bleakest club in the Premier League — and have been for some time, given all of the problems swirling around them.

We’ll take on-the-pitch stuff to start. They have lost their first two games of the season by an aggregate score of 7-0. It is the first time in their history that they have lost both of their opening games by three or more goals. Only Everton and Southampton are yet to score in this season’s Premier League. Everton have had only two shots on target, which is the lowest in the division, and a much-trumpeted final season at Goodison Park began with a defeat to Brighton that saw the stadium half-empty by the time the final whistle blew.

Goodison Park was largely empty by the time the Brighton game ended (Carl Recine/Getty Images)

Dominic Calvert-Lewin, despite his run of goals towards the end of last season, continues to be nothing like his best. Beyond him, they have only Maupay and Beto as centre-forward options, albeit Iliman Ndiaye will potentially be threatening from a slightly deeper role. Their full-back options are shallow, they look light in central midfield and they will be praying Jordan Pickford’s error at the weekend is a blip rather than a sign that his capabilities are waning. Saturday’s game against Bournemouth is, absurdly for the third fixture of the season, already looking massive.

But that’s nothing compared to the off-pitch stuff. The sale of Amadou Onana to Aston Villa should set aside any immediate concerns over a third points deduction related to profitability and sustainability rules, but you never know what gremlins lurk in their books.

More of a worry is Everton’s ownership situation. Fans have been protesting the regime of owner Farhard Moshiri for years. It is a relief that they didn’t end up in the hands of 777 — the Miami-based investment firm that The Athletic pointed out in June had been “described as a ‘house of cards’ in one lawsuit and a ‘Ponzi scheme’ in another” (claims 777 denies) — but the mess left by that protracted takeover saga spooked the Friedkin Group, a slightly more reputable potential custodian.

As Matt Slater reported in July, the Friedkins got cold feet because of legal uncertainties surrounding the £200million ($260m at current rates) that former Everton suitor 777 Partners has lent to the club over the past year.

Moreover, even though Dan Friedkin didn’t acquire the club, he still lent them a further £200million to pay a bill from the constructors of their new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock. So the next suitor that comes along not only has to unpick the ball of wool that is their finances, but also has to contend with two sizeable loans to previous prospective owners — loans that will need to be paid back at some point.

They’ve managed to find themselves in a Groucho Club situation: it’s such a mess that anyone you would want to own your club is probably too sensible to go anywhere near them.

Everton fans have been protesting at the running of their club for years (Lewis Storey/Getty Images)

Their best hope appears to be John Textor, but even if he manages to divest his stake in Crystal Palace — which, for financial and regulatory reasons, he needs to do to buy Everton — he’s not exactly a knight in shining armour. The most generous description of his record with his other clubs is ‘patchy’: a less generous interpretation is that his clubs tend to end up in varying degrees of chaos.

Belgian side Molenbeek were relegated last season, Lyon’s men’s team were in danger of the same in 2023-24 until a superb second half of the campaign and Palace’s progress has been stop-start since his arrival as a shareholder in 2021.

Even the success stories come with an asterisk: Botafogo are second in the Brazilian Serie A, just one point off the top after 24 games, but collapsed spectacularly when well placed in the title race last season. Textor subsequently made a series of match-fixing and corruption allegations that were rejected by the Superior Tribunal de Justica Desportiva, the autonomous legal arm of Brazilian football, funded by the country’s football federation. 

Ultimately, if Everton fans were to choose their ideal owner, it wouldn’t be Textor. He just looks preferable to some of those who have kicked the tyres over the past year or so.

Sean Dyche summed it up more succinctly after the defeat to Tottenham: “There’s so much noise and stories every day around Everton and it is tough. It’s not very often about the football.”

GO DEEPER

Everton’s start is breeding anxiety, apathy and anger

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There are some reasons to be cheerful. They also lost their first two matches of the previous two seasons and were ultimately fine. They have an excellent manager who specialises in defying expectations, whose entire career has essentially been one long middle finger to people who have written him off. They have, at the time of writing, managed to keep Jarrad Branthwaite, a genuinely excellent and homegrown (mostly — he signed from Carlisle United when he was 17) defender that plenty of big teams have already been sniffing around and more will do so in the future. All being well they will be in a new, modern, picturesque stadium this time next year.

But those rays of hope are having to work hard to pierce the fog of despair at the moment. If you search ‘Everton dejected’ in the Getty Images database, it comes up with 4,563 results. And not all of them are Pickford.

At the start of the season, The Athletic ran a survey to gauge the hopefulness levels of each Premier League club’s fans. According to that, 76 per cent were more optimistic about the season ahead than pessimistic.

You wonder how different that will be now.

(Top photo: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

A year ago, everyone knew which team would be best in Southern Section boys’ water polo — JSerra. It was as certain as the temperature reaching 100 degrees in Death Valley because the 30-0 Lions had Ryder Dodd, the best high school player in America. He’d go on to start for the U.S. Olympic team in Paris and earn a bronze medal.

Now comes life after Dodd, which means No. 1 in Southern California is up for grabs. JSerra, Harvard-Westlake, Newport Harbor and Oaks Christian all look capable of finishing on top and they’ll be playing one another in tournament and nonleague matches before the Open Division playoffs.

JSerra coach Brett Ormsby certainly has someone to build around in goalie Jonas Ransford, the starter as a sophomore on last year’s unbeaten team. There’s also 6-foot-5, 291-pound junior Tyler Anderson, one of the most imposing players in the pool.

“As a center, you can’t cover him with one player,” Ormsby said.

Taylor Bell scored five goals in the season opener and freshman Sean Anderson, Tyler’s brother, had three goals.

Oaks Christian is an intriguing team in that coach Jack Kocur’s top player is his son, Cam. There’s also Wyatt Williamson, who joined the team late last season from Hawaii, and Pepperdine commit Max Burstein. Hall of Fame water polo coach Rich Corso has joined the program to coach goalies.

Harvard-Westlake came close to toppling JSerra in several games last season. Otto Stothart, a senior, is one of the most sought after college recruits in the state. Collin Caras is committed to Stanford.

Newport Harbor, which has made five consecutive Southern Section finals, has added transfers from Harvard-Westlake and Mater Dei in Lucca Van Der Woude and Santino Rossi to join returnees Connor Ohl and Luke Harris (goalkeeper).

It was before a Manchester City press conference when a worried club official came into the room to warn everyone that — and it’s a story that feels relevant now — Sven-Goran Eriksson was as angry as he had ever seen.

Eriksson had taken the City job in 2007, the era in east Manchester before the money started to pour in, as his first appointment in football since ending his time as manager of England’s national team.

But the tabloid press had developed an obsession with his private life and there was a certain amount of intrigue that, throughout his 11 months in Manchester, he preferred to occupy the presidential suite of the Radisson hotel rather than taking the more conventional route of buying or renting a house.

A photographer had worked out he could point his lens directly into the hotel bar from the street below and a series of front-page photographs had been published showing Eriksson dancing with a younger woman who was not his partner. He appeared to be holding her tight. In the last photo, it seemed his hand had moved down her lower back. Who was this mystery brunette? Was Sven up to his old tricks again?

Well, it turned out to be his daughter and perhaps that says a lot about the scruples of some red-top newspapers that had made it their business to spy on his life.

Sven, we were warned, wanted to address it. He was on the warpath, apparently. And “we”, in this case, refers to the Manchester football writers, long accustomed to having our eyebrows singed by the ferocious tongue-lashings from Sir Alex Ferguson that became known as the ‘hairdryer’ treatment.

What we had never witnessed was the Eriksson version and, let’s face it, he had every right to be steaming mad. He didn’t look too angry when he walked in, though. “Today,” he said, “not good.”

And, blimey, that was it. He was smiling, holding out his hand to welcome all of us, one by one. No shouting, no threats. It was typical Sven: killing everyone with kindness.

Why tell this story now? Well, perhaps it tells us a lot about how the man saw life and why the news of his death, aged 76, has brought so many tributes from people who spent time in his company and have their own stories about that lovely, calm manner.

Don’t be mistaken: he was never a pushover, as Ferguson himself could testify from that fractious phone call when Eriksson informed him that, yes, he did intend to take Wayne Rooney to the 2006 World Cup, completely against the wishes of United’s manager with the player recovering from a broken metatarsal.

In future years, Eriksson would chuckle at the memory of Ferguson’s X-rated response and how, in the worst moments, the Swede had to hold his phone away from his ear. But Eriksson held his ground. He refused to be beaten down and, in the end, got his way. 

More on Sir Alex Ferguson…

No manager with Eriksson’s record of achievement, including 18 trophies with clubs in Sweden, Portugal and Italy, could have worked in football for as long as he did without a steely edge. He just hid it better than others, perhaps.

His first managerial appointment came in 1977 with Degerfors of Sweden. The last was in 2019 with the Philippines national team. In between, he had five years in charge of England, one season with Manchester City, a year at Leicester City and seven months as Notts County’s director of football, leaving all these jobs in circumstances that would not ordinarily qualify someone as a national (overseas) treasure.

And yet, it has felt that way for some time, particularly since he opened up about his pancreatic cancer and accepted that he was not going to win his fight with this brutal, indiscriminate disease.

Eriksson’s response to the news went beyond the bubble of sport. It was a reminder that as important as football is, he understood life’s priorities. He was always comfortable in his own skin, but not everyone feels able to talk so publicly and radiate such optimism when they are staring death in the eye. Not everyone wants to advertise the fact they are in their last few months and weeks.

He never saw it that way, of course. He wanted to say goodbye. And, Sven being Sven, he wanted to say thank you, too. At a time when the internet, football and social media can be a fairly dreadful mix, he seemed intent on bringing something different into the homes of complete strangers. His messages had warmth and kindness at the heart of everything.

It was reciprocated, too.

If Eriksson had a bucket list, managing Liverpool was on it. He loved it when the club he supported as a boy invited him to manage Liverpool in a charity legends match against Ajax in March. It was, he said, “absolutely beautiful” to take his seat in the Anfield dugout.

These were just some of the moments recently when it has felt like a trick of the mind that, in another era, his presence in English football was seen as an affront by many people.

Eriksson fulfils his ambition of managing Liverpool at Anfield (Liverpool FC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

John Barnwell, of the League Managers Association, described it as “an insult” to his members when the Football Association confirmed in 2001 that it had invited a non-Englishman to fill the vacancy left by Kevin Keegan’s departure. Gordon Taylor, of the Professional Footballers’ Association, accused the FA of “betraying their heritage”. An infamous column in the Daily Mail frothed that English football had decided to “sell our birthright down the fjord to a nation of seven million skiers and hammer throwers who spend half their year living in darkness”.

The speed with which these opinions changed once England started winning under their new manager was quite something to behold. Not that the man in question ever seemed too fazed, anyway.

“Sweden had an English coach (George Raynor) in 1958 when they reached the World Cup final,” said Eriksson. “Why, then, shouldn’t a Swede take England? I read the book The Second Most Important Job In The Country, which is all about the England managers from 1949 through to Kevin Keegan. It showed that all of them were declared idiots at some time, even Sir Alf Ramsey (the 1966 World Cup-winning manager), so I knew what to expect.”

At times, he did not help himself, not least when having attended a meeting with what he believed to be a wealthy businessman months before the 2006 World Cup, he was recorded admitting he would be willing to leave the England role to manage Aston Villa. The ‘Fake Sheikh’ turned out to be an undercover reporter from the News of the World.

It pained him that he could not deliver anything of real substance with the so-called ‘Golden Generation‘, featuring Michael Owen, David Beckham, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Paul Scholes and various other A-listers from the time.

The ‘Golden Generation’ fell short under Eriksson’s stewardship (Claudio Villa/Getty Images)

Yes, the 5-1 victory in Germany in 2001 is up there with England’s finest results, but Eriksson, behind the polite smile and owlish spectacles, burned with competitive desire. He desperately wanted more, especially when Hurricane Rooney appeared on the scene and started blowing opponents out of the way. It was Eriksson, you may recall, who compared him to Pele.

In the end, though, Eriksson never wanted to be defined purely as a football manager. He led a nomadic life, including roles in China, Thailand and Dubai and national team jobs with Mexico and Ivory Coast.

Even when the cancer took hold, he was determined to see more of the world, explore new places and expand his knowledge.

Eriksson takes the applause of fans at another of his former clubs, Lazio, in May (Marco Rosi – SS Lazio/Getty Images)

His home was in Sunne, Sweden, and it was there where he recorded the goodbye message that went out last week. “I had a good life. We are all scared of the day when we die, but life is about death as well,” he said.

To watch it back now is to be reminded of one of his truest gifts: his exceptional calm in the most difficult circumstances. His dignity, his positivity. You could be forgiven for thinking he had put it out too early. But he had it all planned. He is smiling, right at the end.

“I hope you will remember me as a positive guy trying to do everything he could do,” he said. “Don’t be sorry. Smile. Thank you for everything — coaches, players, crowds, it’s been fantastic. Take care of yourself and take care of your life. And live it.”

(Top photo: Clive Mason/Getty Images)