A Very Strange August

The title of this article could easily have been 'surreal, just surreal', given how August has gone compared to previous and recent seasons. Things also seem to have happened in a way that has almost felt too easy, phrase that I would not readily have associated with Everton in the same recent seasons. 

The month started with a new stadium hosting test games. While there were some glitches, it all went well, without drama, fuss or a surge of negativity from fans. There will always be queues for toilets and concession stands. The cost of a matchday experience will always be a bedbug for people, never more so given the cost of living today. There will always be queues and delays leaving and entering a ground. But, once the competitive matches started, the new. long awaited and very expensive stadium has shown itself to be very much worth the wait.

No obstructed views, a proper football stadium feel, an atmosphere and noise, good old fashioned happy fan made noise, have all been reported by Evertonians. The usual matchday issues as listed have not been amplified. While not Goodison, it has shown the potential to be a proper home for our beloved club. 

Come the middle of the month, and the start of the new season, we picked up where we left off at the end of the last on the pitch. Usually, this would have meant dour and unimaginative football, football that would have sucked all that early season hope and anticipation out of you in the space of two weeks. Instead, we have had three wins out of four games.

This has come on the back of a run of wins and creditable draws from early March onwards  last season. Wins are always welcome, and positive. They have also been a rarity with Everton in recent years. However, it's the manner in which we have played, and won the games that has been, to say the least,  unsettling. I've picked the word unsettling carefully and on purpose as it is the closest description I can come to. There is a swagger, a confidence, an ease with which we have played, and won, that I just cannot get my head around. I'll take the unsettling sensation every week, and I'll enjoy it, but getting used to it will be a challange. 

The cause of the way in which we are winning is easier to explain and digest, we have had a proper and positive transfer window. It has still been a surprise, but we have signed proper players. Proper,quality players who have synced with what quality we already had, players who have gotten fans up off their feet and enjoying their football again. Players who have added to, and enhanced, the design of a newly opened stadium, at a time when it needed them most. 

One of the strangest parts of this very strange window is that we have spent actual money. If you add what we will potentially pay for Jack Grealish and Merlin Röhl next May, it is money that I didn't think the club had, or could afford, as a going concern, even with new owners. For many recent Augusts, we have had to sell players just to survive. We have had to obey what have felt like very punitive PSR rules, rules that have caused fear and bitterness amongst fans at the start of each new season. A time when we should be feeling happy as fans with the dawn of a new season.  Being in a position to spend this proper money has been great. And it has greatly added to a wonderful month.

As with many of these articles, time will tell if it was an outlier of things to come in a positive or negative way for Evertonians. For now, I will just waiting with a heightened sense of impatience for the international window to end.