The light that illuminates the plate that hangs above the door of the Winslow Hotel on Goodison Road is on the wink.
Flicker, flicker, flicker. Just like the famous old house of Everton, which is 10 meters on the road, it is almost ready. Go, go away soon.
There are only seven Premier League matches left in Goodison Park and only one Merseyside Derby. On Wednesday, the two major clubs of Liverpool – the only two in England who have shared the same parliamentary constituency – will meet Everton's Turf for the last time.
“It's like playing on a stage,” says former Liverpool defender Mark Lawrenson. 'You can't escape the feeling of Theater in Goodison. It's a place.
'That new Gladiator film? They could have filmed it with Goodison. Maybe they would have fed us to the lions. '
It is progress and a very clear need to catch up that Everton leads away from Walton and down the hill to the water to their new house, a masterpiece of 53,000 capacity at Bramley-Moore Dock. Of the six always present Premier League clubs, Everton is the least successful and that must change.
Goodison, however, will not easily migrate from memory. It is not possible. It is one of the world's oldest specially built football stadiums. Built after Everton had moved from a piece of land that would be the Anfield house of Liverpool in 1892, dates from 30 years before the original Wembley. It has performed more top flight games than any other stadium. In 1894 it organized a FA Cup final and in 1966 a semi-final of the World Cup.
Everton has long been stopped by the antiquity of their house. They spoke about moving in 1997 for the first time. But they also enjoyed it.
During a beautiful stadium tour recently, two Southampton fans from Chicago and a few blues from New Jersey were to a dozen voyeurs who stood in the rudimentary visiting dressing room that has hardly enough space on his sober wooden banks for 20 opposition players.
Heated by a solitary exposed pipe that runs over the ceiling, it only has six showers, no sound -resistant and no toilet roll. On Wednesday, Liverpool – just like everyone else – is obliged to bring their own. It is, the club says for hygienic reasons.
When Liverpool manager Arne Slot tackles his players, they cannot see him all. It is the way the room is designed, in an L -shape. Deliberate? Maybe.
“It is not entirely on the scale of those in Crewe Alexandra who actually holds only six of you at the same time,” Laughs Lawrenson. “But I played in the 1980s and it felt old -fashioned at the time.
'You would dive from the coach on Goodison Road, through the door of the players with all the abuse that sounds in your ears and then go to the dressing room to realize that it was no refuge at all. You could hear the crowd on the hall above you more than you could be that the guy was sitting next to you.
'But we were always convinced that the Everton boys in the room next door could hear everything we said. Our attitude was always the same. Go on the field, get it done and remove hell there. It was no experience to be enjoyed! '
On the touchline standing at an empty Goodison is to appreciate its great beauty and its peculiarities.
In the box of the director of the main standard, a chair marked 'chairman' is now left empty in memory of the late Bill Kenwright. In addition, there is another empty chair, reserved on competition day for manager David Moyes in case he is invited to sit there by the referee.
On the other side of the road, the graceful schedule of architect Archibald Leitch has decorated the Blens Road position for 97 years and will be simulated in the new stadium.
In the meantime, only one stand – at the Park End – has an unobstructed view of the field. One of the corners was filled in eight years ago. Some say that on the other hand, occupants of the Gwladys Street no longer had to look at the Liverpool house over Stanley Park through the gorge.
This proximity to Anfield is one of the many things that makes Goodison so great special. If Liverpool, as planned, had built their own new stadium on the park 17 years ago, the two football clubs of the city would have been separated by just one main road.
Now Everton's approaching move to the banks of the Mersey will not only shape their own future, but also fundamentally change the football landscape of an entire city.
Bramley-Moore Dock varies
It only takes half an hour to walk from Goodison Park to Everton's new house, but it is only when you hit Westminster Road along the Phoenix Hotel – with a brown tourist sign that points to Anfield in the opposite direction – that you You realize how Liverpool goes directly on the edge of the country.
Out and down you walk down to the migration of the water, down to the vastness and history of Dockland and now new horizons.
One of the peculiarities of Goodison is how it is hidden from view until you are on top of it. Hidden by rows of terrace -shaped houses. Hidden by a school. Hidden by a church. Hidden by trees. Hidden by an Aldi.
Bramley-Moore Dock is not the case. The new place is already like an entrance gate to the city for those traveling on the water in the neck of the Mersey of the Irish Sea. Walk north along the river from the center of the city and it does not take long before you see the nose poking in nothing. It is already a beautiful modern monument.
BMD – as we will call it – is behind the wall of the old Wellington -Dock. It speaks of regeneration, second arrival and new ambition. Not only for a football club, but also for a city.
The Bramley Moore -Pub that is directly opposed to, for example, is about to witness an increase in trade that he could never have dreamed of. It is said that an offer of £ 1 million to buy it has already been done and refused.
For some Evertonians it will be a reserved move. The club's fan base is largely locally, loyal and real. Not many half-and-half scarves outside of Goodison on a competition day.
That said, it is expected that more than 95 percent of the current seasonal card holders will follow the club to the river. BMD has also turned out to be a much superior alternative to plans ever to the objections to move Everton from Liverpool to industrial space near Kirby.
Liverpool would have left that as a town with one club. Some compared those plans to bull boxes the Cavern Club.
Now that the movement is up, Everton's focus is on stretching their remarkable 70-year-old topplight residence in their first season at BMD. The new stadium will earn the club money. Goodison currently has only 10 executive bosses and 1,200 hospitality chairs.
There will be more than 5,000 of those seats on BMD and they have already been sold. Needless to say, those who have already promised to spend their money expect them to watch Premier League football.
The recent form of Everton has been much better. The return of Moyes brought them three consecutive more competitive victories. The last time that happened last April and one of the beaten teams was Liverpool – with Goodison.
Everton's modern record against their rivals is not good, but with the acquisition of the Friedkin group complete, they are a club that wants to consider horizon that stretch further than just over the park, even if it is difficult to feel on Derby Day .
Down by the river, meanwhile, the last accents are still being used. This is a step forward that Everton has expected for a long time.
“Goodison is and was a big old lady, but every club with ambitions must have a larger and better stadium.” Those were spoken by former Everton chairman Peter Johnson 27 years ago.
Farwell to goodison
A wet match evening at Goodison and the queue outside the Blue Dragon Chip Shop extends completely along the front of four and a half terrace houses opposite the Tourniquets.
There are more than 50 people in it and the game starts in less than 25 minutes. There are other catering sales points available, but that is not the point.
This is the one. This is what people do. This is the way it has always been, but will not be much longer. When the stadium goes, some of these places – those who have fed a football community and watered for decades – will also go.
There are some things about English football that are irreplaceable and Matschtacht in an old urban stadium is one of them. The Hawkers sell 'Farewell to Goodison' scarves, but nobody buys them. They are not ready. Not yet.
On one side of Goodison Road, in front of the statue of Dixie Dean that now seems to point to the road to Bramley-Moore, the traffic but the pedestrians does not crawl. Everyone seems to be walking with a goal on competition evening.
Around the other side, on Blens Road, two stewards shelter and talk about the new place. “The walk to the field from the changing rooms is apparently as long as my way,” says one.
It is not that good at Goodison. It is a pinch, from the changing rooms, a corridor, turn left and then go up the 13 steps to the field to the sound of the Th -theme of the Z -cars, once simply played because two actors from the Lange destroy Gaarde TV show were the game and have been held since then just because Everton won it and then won the competition.
On the corner of Gwladys Street and Goodison Road, through St Luke the Evangelist Church, they shake buckets for local charities. Elsewhere there is a collection for food bank.
“You don't see things like the church in other football stadiums,” says former Liverpool Full Back Jim Beglin in Steve Zocek's Goodison Memories Book.
“I was raised an Irish Catholic and remember that I was looking at church and hoped that the Lord would take care of me in heavy circumstances.”
Beglin, now a respected TV analyst, did not always get his wish. He had to break his leg in a goodison derby one night that is not uneven in January 1987 than this one.
At the meeting of the main standard, while boxer Tony Bellew wanders past the undisturbed to take a seat in the back row, they talk about hesitantly but optimistic about new futures.
Plastered on a toilet door is now a sticker. “Copies are gobs **** s,” says it. This is a local rivalry that has become more bitter over the years.
Then above, written on a metal beam on a foot of a stairwell, a pointer is back to when things were different. A quote from the Grote Everton -Schemer Alan Ball.
“I ran back to the middle circle after I had scored the second goal against Liverpool and raged pure excitement in me,” says there. 'I remember I thought – I just love this place. I want this place forever. '
At Everton they hold on to People Like Ball, a World Cup winner who also won a competition title with the club in 1970. The Everton Timeline Montage that wraps itself around the outside of the stadium shows him and a whole series of other blue and white luminaires.
However, it is now Tatty, and the Peters out earlier. It looks and feels like his time is on and that's how it is for Goodison.
There are sensitive and admirable plans for the place. For example, the field will be reused as a common garden. There are axis, including those of the big goal scorer Dean, who died in 1980 after having had a heart attack while watching a match against Liverpool from the main standard.
When Liverpool arrives before the kick -off, there may not be a toilet roll, but their home shirt will be on a bust behind a glass in the reception. It is a courtesy that is being expanded to every visiting team. Everton does things like that.
“New house, the same family,” is one of their mottos while they are preparing to take their leave. When they go to the water, it must be assumed that their innate sense of pride and tradition will go with them.
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