TIt came in a flood earlier this week, with a sense of acute nervousness. As a forerunner to the approaching Storm Darragh has emptied its load over the north west of England, video footage shows the stairwells and stairs of Verton’s new stadium collapsing with rainwater, filling and flooding the courses below.
Which – in an ideal world, is probably not the image you want people to conjure up when they think of your new 760m stadium, built on a floodplain, surrounded on three sides by the River Mersey and expected to withstand decades of climate change. and it rises in a vast and equal way.
Naturally Verton Quick to quell any alarm, they thought the new stadium would boast an “advanced siphon drainage system” designed to deal with heavy rains, but it has not yet been installed. Which, of course, answered the second question, while raising the other. According to the club, the construction of the stadium should be completed “in the final weeks of 2024”.
Well here we are. It might be a good time to crack on that siphonic drainage system.
The point here is not to look for fun New Verton Stadiumwhich is still available for the start of the next season and from what we can already see – frankly – it’s unbelievable. But it does at least offer a window into what this club should be like: an endless trial of disasters and setbacks, gloom and worry, every bright new prospect shrouded in a glassy gray fog. A multicolored dreamscape that always seems to get closer, but that you can never quite reach.
In this respect, and for all the reigns of nostalgia and warm tributes, Saturday’s Merseyside Derby feels like something of a milestone. The final Derby takes place at Goodison Park – barring an FA Cup tie or any unexpected setbacks – it’s a moment not just for commemoration but for celebration. No, it will never be the same again. But when you’re at Verton in 2024, maybe that’s not so bad.
Recent results have of course been a brilliant spin on what Verton fans are often most fixated on. The 4-0 demolition of Wolves on Wednesday The night drew those most famous of the relegation zone, cautiously promising autumn wages, in which Sean Dyche’s side have lost two of 11 in all competitions. The Friedkin Group takeover now it must be done at some moment, because the two-year saga was emotionally destructive to everyone involved. Liverpool are top of the league, but they dropped points at Newcastle in midweek and have enjoyed a bare minimum of recovery time. This may not be the worst thing to do.
So finally to the church. Walton Road, or through the park, or from the soaked terracotta house decorated with Christmas wreaths, up to Gwladys Street for one dance with the last enemy. In many ways this is the perfect rivalry: a suffocating familiarity that so rarely spills over into genuine danger, an antipathy that so rarely feels like hatred, fighting siblings rather than neighbors, a reminder that the trigger has long been the most important of the lowly. things
Of course, long gone are the days of the “friendly derby,” if they really existed beyond the imagination. For Liverpool’s players, Saturday was a test not only of skill but of character and nerve, a wall of noise from all four sides, a reception as emphatically confrontational as any of the first-leg defeats.
And if the Anfield derby has often brought a heavenly procession to it – Verton only win there in the 21st century. it happened in covid and without the fans – then the Goodison Derby is a different beast altogether, a real competition that the form book often ignores. Howard Kendall’s brilliant 1980s team won just one Goodison derby in eight attempts. Jürgen Klopp’s all-conquering Liverpool side have won just twice in eight visits.
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The more I love the times of triumph. Liverpool fans of a certain age still remember the 5-0 win at Goodison in 1982, the opposition of the management class which gradually escalated into a merciless rampage. It was Dan Gosling replays Verton’s crazy extra-time winner in the 2009 FA Cup. But Goodison was hardly as great as it was in April Dyche’s team buried Liverpool’s title 2-0 with a comeback victory.
But Goodison is not the whole of Goodison, a stadium which, for all its charm, has even recently begun to feel like a small empty house, with awkward silences and bursts of groans. Football was average style and rules. Exhausted relegation battles with authorities, current and prospective owners, current and past coaches. Everyone, now, is a little bit worn out.
At the moment Verton look safe. They play like Dyche’s team, they spent Dyche’s team and probably remain like Dyche’s team: hardworking, diligent, with a hardworking but limited squad that soon needs to be rebuilt with money that really isn’t there. Dominic Calvert-Lewin will probably need to be replaced soon. Jarrad Branthwaite can be sold if the offer is right. They should not be in fifteenth place.
The question is whether Verton can realistically or legitimately aspire to more than this. And perhaps the answer lies in the gleaming panels from Bramley-Moore Dock looking across the Mersey, on the slopes of the huge new 13,000-seat South Stand. Always another cloud comes. The stadium will be a must-see, repelling vultures and spectators. But now, any future feels better than the present.
It represents the end of Saturn. But it also means ambition, renewal, change: a new sense of going somewhere, for a club that has been going nowhere for so long.