A dispiriting sight from the press box on the first day of the season at Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium was the swathe of empty blue seats in the East Stand opposite.
Those unused seats – a product of the club’s £4m-a-year deal with Seat Unique – are just one of the items in a box of necessary evils, like the second successive summer of season-ticket price rises or the summer golf inside the stadium, that supposedly means a better, more competitive Everton.
Or so the theory went. The denouement of the transfer window has told Evertonians a different, depressingly familiar story.
There was a sense of relief when the Friedkin Group arrived at Goodison Park in December 2024.
After the chaos of the Farhad Moshiri years and the threat of falling into the hands of the now-collapsed 777 Partners, there was the hope of some cold-blooded competence at least.
