There’s No Place Like Home
The old adage was true for Goodison Park in so many ways, albeit not so much recently when it came to Everton's form. Bramley-Moore Dock hasn't yet been much of a fortress either but that should change
All being well, that adage is as true in football as it is in life and where the former is concerned, there are two dimensions to it:
For fans, a club’s home stadium is the centre of the footballing universe, the gathering place, the theatre where dreams are hopefully made and memories — both good and bad — are forged.
For the team, backed by that army of supporters, their home stadium should be their refuge, their fortress and an undoubted advantage over visiting opponents.
Over the course of 133 years, Goodison Park became that beating heart and spiritual anchor for generations of Evertonians regardless of their physical location in the world. The Grand Old Lady was more than just a football stadium for fans of the men’s team; it was as much a church as St Luke’s which looks on from the corner of the Main and Gwladys Street stands.
And for successive teams, it could be the raucous bear pit it needed to be to haul the heroes of 1985 back from a goal down against Bayern Munich in the European Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final, for example, or drag the teams of 1994, 1998 and of more recent years away from the jaws of relegation.
Everton’s move from Goodison to their magnificent new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock wrenched the club from it’s ancestral home and when, on a sun-bathed afternoon last August, they opened the first chapter of their new story by the Mersey with a 2-0 victory over Brighton & Hove Albion, there was a very real feeling that the spirit of the club had made the journey intact.
Yes, the surroundings were different — modern, spacious, brand-spanking new and with wonderful views from every part of the ground — but as long as the vital ingredient to any Everton match day, Evertonians themselves, was present, it could only feel like home.
A few months on, the bloom is somewhat off the rose. Everton have won just three more matches at Hill Dickinson Stadium since the home opener against the Seagulls while suffering some ugly reverses against the likes of Tottenham, Newcastle and Brentford while also losing the first ever FA Cup tie in the new digs in the most painful way possible, by way of a calamitous penalty shootout against Sunderland and in a change strip to boot.
Off the pitch, while transport and access issues, particularly where the capacity of Sandhills train station was concerned, were known and expected, there has been growing disenchantment with the match day experience at Bramley-Moore.
That side of the move is probably best addressed at another time but where Everton’s home form is concerned, far from being an outlier and a downside of moving grounds, this season has largely seen a continuation of the norm where the Blues are concerned. Since the last time an Everton team recorded double-digit home wins in a Premier League season in 2018/19 under Marco Silva, the club has averaged seven per campaign on home turf. At the current pace, Everton are on course to win just seven again in 2025/26.
Last season, as the team’s fortunes continued on their downward trajectory in the final months of Sean Dyche’s tenure, they won just five matches at home all season, two under Dyche and three under David Moyes. Goodison Park was anything but a fortress; indeed, as the likes of Brighton, Bournemouth (who left L4 victorious in both the league and FA Cup) and Nottingham Forest discovered, the Old Lady could be more than accommodating to a visiting side.
Much of that was, of course, down to personnel and Everton’s struggles in general following the departure of Carlo Ancelotti, through a succession of poor managerial appointments and the straightjacket imposed by the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules that forced the club to consistently sell its best players.
And when the emergencies around the desperate struggles to evade the trapdoor to the Championship subsided and frustration set in, it was perhaps understandable that the fire went out of the Goodison crowd weary of years of chaos and instability.
This season, the unfinished nature of the squad-rebuilding project that Moyes and the new recruitment committee have been undertaking has very much been in evidence. Everton ended the 2025 summer transfer window noticeably short in two key areas — in the full-back positions and at centre-forward — which has had important ramifications on the team’s balance and effectiveness, particularly going forward.
Having Jake O’Brien as a round peg in a square hole — the peg will go in but it doesn’t make it a right fit — at right-back with a player of limited attacking prowess on the other side in Vitalii Mykolenko, coupled with a dearth of goals as Moyes chopped and changed his strikers while Thierno Barry, predictably, took time to find his feet, has hampered the Toffees’ ability to take the game to opponents at Bramley-Moore Dock.
Nevertheless, the manager has tried to make the side more expansive at home but even with the vast experience of Idrissa Gueye in the line-up, they have been far too open at times, exposed in midfield and punished in those afore-mentioned three heavy defeats with 11 goals conceded. The same approach against an improving and more confident Leeds United on Monday is likely to invite more trouble.
That is in marked contrast to Everton’s away form, where they’ve thus far picked up two more points than at Hill Dickinson Stadium. Being able to sit in, remain compact and hard to break down, before hitting teams on the counter-attack has far better suited the current personnel.
Those issues have had an understandable impact on the atmosphere with the crowd at the new ground replicating the frustrated groans and restless pleas for more attacking adventure that could often be a feature of Goodison. The time it can take to get away from from the new dockside location provides an easy excuse for disgruntled fans to beat an early exit when defeat looks very much on the cards in the closing stages of matches.
As the season’s metrics take shape, the importance of getting the first goal, particularly at Hill Dickinson Stadium, has become glaringly apparent. Everton have conceded first on eight different occasions this season and only come back to win once.
On the flipside, however they’re unbeaten in matches where they have got off the mark first. With the Blues’ record of protecting leads under Moyes coupled with the impact on the home atmosphere when the team falls behind, finding ways of scoring first should be uppermost in the manager’s mind.
As ever, the bigger solutions lie in the transfer market and the furthering of a process that the club have been at pains to point out was always going to more than just a couple of windows. And the Blues have, of course, been dealt a significant blow with the loss to injury of Jack Grealish.
Where before there was a reluctance not to rush into the market during the current window, the transfer committee may now feel compelled to act in perhaps at least securing a loan signing or two to bolster numbers, particularly in the wide areas where Moyes is down to just three options in Iliman Ndiaye, Dwight McNeil and Tyler Dibling.
Longer term, if the club can secure its targets in the summer and add genuine quality in those areas where they are currently short, the results should start to come on the pitch, particularly at home, as they often did under Moyes during his first spell.
Goodison Park was always regarded by visiting teams as a horrible place to go because of the hostility of the crowd and how Everton sides of the past would feed on that intensity to make things just as difficult on the pitch.
If there is a feeling that Hill Dickinson Stadium and her state-of-the-art facilities is too welcoming to opponents and that the fear factor of Goodison has been lost, the important thing is that the qualities that made the Old Lady so fearsome still reside in the Everton fans. You only had to see and hear the reaction to Grealish's last-minute winner against Crystal Palace or the roar that greeted Barry's first home goal to get a sense of what the new cathedral can be on its day.
For better and for worse, Evertonians have historically responded to what is happening on the pitch. A thundering tackle, a burning sense of injustice at a refereeing decision or, simply, tempo and front-foot, up-and-at-‘em football from the players is usually all that was needed to turn Goodison from “library” to its renowned “bear pit” status.
Bramley-Moore Dock, with its 13,000 extra seats and the wall of noise those thousands more voices can add, can be just as powerful and, eventually, become Everton’s new fortress.
Reader Responses
Selected thoughts from readers23/01/2026 08:37:34
I cant agree that our home form goes back to the departure of Carlo Ancelotti. I think the facts. The figures and all forensic evidence leads us straight to His door.
After initially getting some very good results with some very good players. Our boy Carlo realised his midfield wasnt physically very strong. His solution was to by-pass it and introduce the big boot. When asked by an Italian reporter why he had reverted to such primitive tactics. He replied "why not ?". When you have a player as good as Calvert-lewin at receiving the long ball, why wouldnt you take advantage of it ?
I still think Carlo finds it difficult to look back at his time here without chuckling with the words old rope and money swirling around his head.
We won only two home games in the second half of that season against lowly Wolves and Southampton. Home games without mustering a single shot at goal became commonplace. We even lost to Burnley and Sheff United.
The dye was cast. Successive managers decided "If its good enough for the "professor" ?".... DCL may have gone, but we are still hoofing it aimlessly to an isolated striker today. Unfortunately it has become the Everton way. You may get away with with it away from home, but at home, this awful excuse for football will never been conducive to making life difficult for opponents or creating an electric atmosphere. It's telling that only the very real threat of relegation has been able to rouse the passions of this truly fanatical fan base
The BM crowd is absolutely desperate let its hair down. You see it at the beginning of every match, but you'll never get the dance floor bouncing if you keep playing shite music.
23/01/2026 16:05:48
Some good points Darren but you and I will never agree on Ancelotti who imo if he had been backed financially would have returned us to the top table.
That second half season collapse was after he had been told the cupboard was bare and he spat his dummy out.
However,coming back to the current time, there is no doubt we need to raise the crowd at Bramley Moore which at the moment is too comfortable for away supporters with not enough positivity to raise Evertonians to the heights they are capable of.
Disappointment seems to follow us around over recent decades and the new wind isn't blowing as fully as we would have hoped for with a strange reluctance to prioritize a new RB and goalscoring forward.
We need a spark to ignite the fans and our new "super" management team need to realize it.
Get some good signings, get some good consistent performances and the atmosphere will follow.
23/01/2026 17:44:08
I agree we have been far too open at times. One of the things we did very effectively out of possession at Villa Park last week was to bring the two wide players, McNeil and Grealish inside to reduce the space for Villa to attack through the middle. That forced the hosts to thread passes into very little space around the edge of our area or go wide. That all worked well from our perspective.
In possession we always look more effective focusing on a direct approach. Apparently our players are the second worst offenders in the Premier League for mis-controlling the ball, 364 before last weekend. Also we have made the second most errors leading to an opposition shot (23). Playing out from the back does not suit most of our players but they and their manager may feel obliged in home games to adopt what is regarded as a more progressive approach in possession.
The problem with that approach is that in too many home games we have allowed opponents to steal possession in our half, something which Brentford did repeatedly in the 4-2 defeat earlier this month. It seems to me the first priority must be to stop conceding goals in that manner. It should also go without saying we need to tighten up at set pieces at home.
We have on paper some tough home fixtures in what remains of the season; Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City. Sometimes the toughest games are the easiest to play in the sense that with less possession we may have no option but to adopt a more direct approach.
23/01/2026 20:16:54
Lyndon, A good early piece on BMD, but I think we all agree you are never going to replicate over 130 years of heritage and passion in just a few months in our new home. It is, though, a two way street, the team need to up the quality, which excites the supporters, which helps the team, which excites the supporters... and on.
The on pitch stuff we all know about. I am actually more interested in your comment that 'there has been growing disenchantment with the match day experience at Bramley-Moore'. Yes, the transport is definitely lacking, and will hopefully be addressed by the council, with pressure from the club in the future. So I assume you mean within the dock walls and inside the ground? I have been to nearly all home games (no I'm not a season ticket holder (yet), I'm paying rack rate) and have a list of gripes that I've not had the opportunity to hit the club with. And I'm sure plenty of others have theirs, too. I look forward to your piece on match day disenchantment.
23/01/2026 21:56:14
Regarding the leaving early (75 minutes seems to be the norm) I think a precedent has already been set at BMD, if we’re 3-0 up (🙏) or 1or2-0 down people are leaving, whether it’s parking, trains, buses, traffic or whatever else, some Evertonians have decided a game of football now lasts 75 minutes.
I don’t think this will now change whatever infrastructure and travel improvements occur, bad habits have been formed.
It’s same with people going down to the concourse at 35 minutes and having a 25 minute half time, ridiculous,
half time used to be 10 minutes!
In terms of atmosphere, it’s going to take time for the South stand to become our noisy “wall” a lot of Gwladys Street end fans have most likely been dispersed all over the stadium, the South stand atmosphere needs time to grow and develop.
23/01/2026 22:59:05
Jeff (6) Spot on. There have always been people leaving early but not in the numbers we have seen at the Hill Dickinson. For a sizeable proportion of spectators the main point of going to the match seems now to be for the pre-match and interval drinks etc rather than watching football. Many hard core fans are totally fed up with how things are in the new stadium. Many say they much prefer the away games and not just because of the results.
23/01/2026 23:16:13
Just to clarify, Darren (2), my point was that we have struggled as a club in general since Ancelotti left (and a lot of that was down to the financial impact of the signings he made), not that our home form declined following this departure. As you point out, our record at Goodison during the Covid season with him in charge was awful.
I was just using the end of Ancelotti's tenure as a demarcation line for when we really started to go downhill, starting with the appointment of Benitez.
24/01/2026 04:11:26
Jeff (6) and John (7), is this the curse of these new larger more corporate stadiums? City, West-Ham, Arsenal, Spurs? Empties from the kick-off; the lazy long stroll back after half-time; the 75-minute head to the hills.
I'm still surprised at the empties I see at BMD from the kick-off. The club, of course, count attendance on tickets sold not bums on seats. Never-miss-a-match John knows damn well what he is talking about. Some of my mates say the same. Fed-up!
We might not be top-4 but our ground is a draw in itself and we are now getting tourists.
We have lost so much but the one thing that really affects me on stream/vidblog is watching scattered little groups of fans heading up the Dock Road.
The Winslow closes for the last time today. How I miss Goodison Road on match-days.
24/01/2026 21:00:18
Hopefully, Monday will a bear pit atmosphere, with Leeds, and hopefully Everton, have canned the Villa spirit.
Where do you start, Leeds, in their day, but hopefully a great night and Everton win.
NSNO!
25/01/2026 15:47:34
I agree with a lot of what you say, Lyndon. I think a lot of factors are at play. The ‘hardcore’ aren’t necessarily right behind the goal, as they were at Goodison, they are probably spread throughout the South stand. The away support is generally full too, every fan wants to see the shiny new stadium. Travel routines are still being bedded in, so early emptying is likely. The accommodation at halftime is incomparably better, so some people do dwell down there for an extended time.
However the main issue is that, by a large, there has not been much activity on the pitch to get the crowd going.
25/01/2026 17:42:25
Very good article, Lyndon. I had been drafting an article on BMD and why I believe it is important the club don't increase season ticket prices.
I shall post some points up tomorrow, but currently in the pub. Well, I don't seem to go out on Saturdays now, due to our fixture list.
And there's one point I shall leave you with. It looks like we are going to go through 2025-26 with only having three Saturday 3pm kick-offs at "home". Astonishing. I also find it depressing.
PS, season ticket prices should be frozen, just like us Bramley-Moore attendees will be tomorrow night.
26/01/2026 09:52:43
I do wonder if the layout of the new stadium has had an impact on atmosphere and diminished home advantage.
Am particularly thinking of the corporate seating in the West Stand which stretches almost from one penalty arc to the other, encompassing the players' tunnel and “technical areas”. The away manager and his coaches might think they are sitting in the Members' Enclosure at Lord's. They can hear themselves think.
Contrast with the modestly-priced seats that ran along the touchlines at Goodison where we had a partisan Paddock giving heartfelt advice to the opposition.
The Family Enclosure was never quite the same after its rear rows were ripped out around 20 years ago to make way for corporate boxes. But the remaining fans there could still be seen urging Everton on, often quite animatedly.
At Bramley-Moore, the first five or ten minutes of the second half is often played out in front of a pile of empty seats in the West Stand.
Many people would agree that in football grounds around the country, more vocal support comes from the most affordable seats. I’d love to see the first five or six rows of the West Stand given over to “safe standing”. Could be worth another five or six points a season.
26/01/2026 10:08:08
And am I the only one who thinks the stadium looks a bit lop-sided, with the South Stand bigger than the North?
We did have two "singing ends" at Goodison, but so far just the one at Bramley-Moore (or so it sounds like to me, I sit in southern end of the Lower East).
Whether a "singing section" could be introduced, or at least encouraged, in the Lower North, I don't know.
26/01/2026 14:29:03
A propos nothing on this or any other thread; I apologise for the tangent.
I have heard that Andy Burnham's application to stand for the next Parliamentary by election was initially accepted.
However when the panel were informed he was a Blue, VAR stepped in & overruled the decision.
26/01/2026 17:50:16
Mike (14) As one who sits in the Lower North, I think there is more chance of a ‘drinking section’ than a ‘singing section’. A lot of the younger ones spend as much time in the concourse as they do in their seats to the detriment of the atmosphere.
I agree the empty rows in the West Stand give the place an awful look. It would be difficult and costly to create a standing section at the front even in the unlikely event of the club being prepared to sacrifice the premium rates they charge for those seats.
26/01/2026 18:17:57
Just in - Scotland will face the Ivory Coast in a pre-WC friendly on 31st March at our new stadium - who will be interested in that? Good one, and money for us...
27/01/2026 17:41:40
John (16), you may well be right. Was surprised last night how popular cold lager was. It was a cup of tea for me.
I think a standing section is technically possible for the lower West, although perhaps not for the bits where the coaches and subs sit.
Yes, it wouldn't be popular with those employed to boost corporate revenue.
But if things stay as they are, the stadium may at times feel like a neutral venue as much as a home ground.
Must say though that the atmosphere for a spell after the equaliser was the best I can recall in the new stadium.
27/01/2026 18:38:53
Mike (18) Yes, the atmosphere was terrific after the equaliser and would have exploded if Gana’s shot had gone under the bar. To be fair most of the usual suspects in my row of the Lower North were in their seats before kick-off and mostly stayed there until the end.
As for the cold, fizzy and tasteless lagers it never ceases to surprise me people are so willing to pay inflated prices for a product which is a marketing triumph and a beer drinking disaster. Mine was a cup of coffee!
You make a valid point about the stadium feeling like a neutral venue. It is certainly not the bear pit the designers imagined.
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23/01/2026 06:56:11
We where at goodison for over 130 years, we've been at the new ground five minutes. It's going to take time to adjust.