There’s a peculiar ache that comes from loving Everton, a club whose glory days shimmer on the periphery of memory and whose struggles are all too present. I grew up in the shadow of Goodison Park, the blue brick walls and floodlights a constant on the Liverpool skyline. For a boy from a comprehensive, football was more than a game; it was a pulse, a language, a way in. Everton became my family’s backdrop, the highs and lows of the club echoing the turmoil within our own home. My father’s untimely death by his own hand, and my own later battles with addiction, all seemed somehow twined up in blue scarves and the roar of the Gwladys Street. When I left Liverpool for Cambridge, it felt like a betrayal—of city, of tribe, of self. Yet Everton, with all their stubborn grit and flashes of brilliance, remained stitched into me. I spent years away, numbed by drugs and ambition, trying to rewrite my story somewhere else. But the club, like the city, kept calling me back. Getting sober meant piecing myself together, and in that long, hard process, I found myself reconnecting not just with football, but with the things and people I’d tried to leave behind. Everton were still waiting—faithful, infuriating, impossible to abandon. There was a strange symmetry in helping Bill Kenwright buy the club—a television man making a deal in the boardroom for the team that had shaped so much of my life. For all the politics and posturing, what it really meant was hope: for the fans, for the city, for myself. Being there for the last game at Goodison, with my company’s logo on the shirts, felt like coming full circle. The ground hummed with stories, with loss and laughter; every brick seemed to pulse with memory. Now, as Everton look to the future in the new Bramley-Moore Dock stadium, there’s a sense of something unfinished. This book isn’t just about football, or even about Everton. It’s about love—messy, complicated, sometimes painful, always real. It’s about what it means to belong, to lose and to come home again. And always, always, there’s gonna be a show. ROYAL MAIL TRACKED 48 This title will be delivered a few days after the publication date. Publisher: Great Book Selection – Visit Floodlit Dreams Ltd Published: October 21, 2025 Price: £10.99 Paperback: 192 pages ISBN-10: 1068295708 ISBN-13: 978-1068295706 Dimensions: 129 x 198 (mm)
