Why The Toffees Leave A Bitter Taste In The Mouth written by The View From Flagpole Corner on 24/06/2007 The 205th Merseyside derby left a lot to be desired on both sides of Stanley Park and almost all of it was off the pitch events. Before the game in February, a large white banner was unveiled reading, "One City, One Club, One Name - LIVERPOOL". The banner was created by Reclaim The Kop, an initiative set up by Liverpool supporters as part of a re-education campaign to bring back the atmosphere experienced virtually every other week at Anfield before the old Kop terrace was demolished. The banner generated a lot of anger from the Everton supporters residing in the lower Anfield Road end for the game. However the Evertonians were far from saintly themselves with a banner being passed round that read, "Stevie G - who's the daddy" - referring to a rumour circulating Merseyside about Gerrard's family. The distasteful banner was followed with chants along the same lines. By comparison to last year's fixture between the two, this derby was not as ill-tempered on the pitch. However the exchange of chants between both sets of fans wasn't a great advertisement for football on Merseyside. The Kop belted out good-humoured references to Everton's impending move to Kirkby and their exclusive deal with supermarket giant Tesco. However as the Reds fans retaliated to Everton chants of "Kopites are gobshites" with a current favourite, "where's your European Cups?" the travelling fans replied, "if it hadn't been for Heysel" which seems to be a ringing endorsement for Everton's failure to build on the success of the 1985 League and European Cup Winners Cup double. Some Everton supporters also held up copies of The Sun newspaper and made crushing motion gestures, clearly in reference to the Hillsborough disaster where 96 Liverpool supporters died in the Leppings Lane terrace. While both sides weren't exactly innocent, there seems to be an unmistakable dislike of Evertonians of all thing Liverpool. Not much of a surprise you might think considering that they're local rivals but it extends far beyond that fact. To understand this you have to jump into your DeLorean, fire up the flux capacitor and travel back in time to Wednesday 29th May 1985 - the night of the European Cup final in Heysel Stadium, Brussels. There were clashes between both Liverpool and Juventus supporters which led to the collapse of a dilapidated wall in Block Z of the stadium. The Italian supporters trying to escape from the collapsed wall were all crushed together by the under-estimating and severely reduced Belgian police. The 39 supporters trying to escape from Block Z died of suffocation but in the eyes of UEFA and the British government, the blame lay with Liverpool and its supporters because of the nil death count. UEFA banned all English clubs for competing in European competitions for 5 years with Liverpool banned until 1991 for their involvement in the disaster. Although the case has been deliberated on many an occasion, the general conclusion is and has always been that the stadium wasn't fit to stage lower leagues game in, let alone the European Cup final. The repercussions of the Heysel disaster were far reaching for all clubs in the English top flight as those who finished in the European qualifying spots went into a one-off competition called the Screen Sports Super Cup which was a cheap alternative. In 1985, Everton had won the League Championship and European Cup Winners Cup but missed out on the FA Cup, losing to a Bryan Robson-inspired Manchester United at Wembley. As reigning champions, Everton would have competed in the European Cup the following season however the ban on all English clubs after Heysel put paid to that. Not long after, Everton's heroes from Rotterdam moved on to pastures new. Andy Gray left and eventually went into punditry, Gary Lineker followed suit but not before brief stints at Barcelona and Tottenham Hotspur whilst manager Howard Kendall joined Athletico Bilbao following a big money offer from the Basque club. When English clubs were allowed back into European club competitions, Everton's side of league champions was virtually non-existent at Goodison Park as they'd all moved on and weren't suitably replaced. In the 1990s, the lewd misconception spread by a minority group that Liverpool had prevented Everton from achieving the pinnacle of European football extended beyond the odd irate Evertonian and became a mass slandering exercise. The Everton supporters website Blue Kipper is testament to that point. Throughout the nineties Everton battled relegation and mid-table mediocrity. It was pretty much the same story into the 2000s for a few years until David Moyes was drafted in as manager but they're still battling mediocrity. After the derby, Rafael Benitez described Everton as a "small club". That can be taken in one of two ways. It can be taken, as most people have, that Everton are a club of small stature and have not achieved anything of notable effort or it could be in reference to Everton's current first team squad which is minimal to say the least. Despite these comments, the current generation of Evertonians are brought up on this belief instilled in them from a very young age that Liverpool are to blame for their demise. The truth is that although Everton were fairly successful in the 1980s, it was only a brief phase of success because if Heysel hadn't happened, I can't honestly see Everton lifting the European Cup any time soon, can you? http://liverpool.rivals.net/default.asp?sid=890&p=2&stid=8449681