Use your head and sign up now for the Everton FC newsletter Sign up now Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Everton invested an extra half a million pounds in order to make their pitch state-of-the-art. The Blues have undertaken a major renovation of Goodison Park this summer with ground staff working around the clock to get the surface ready for the start of the season.

Everton will play on their new pitch for the first time tomorrow afternoon when Real Betis are the visitors to the Old Lady for the Blues’ final pre-season game.

The condition of the Goodison Park pitch deteriorated during the winter months last season with manager David Moyes and a number of players voicing their frustrations.

Everton had played some of the most attractive football of Moyes’s 11-year reign in the early stages of the campaign but found it increasingly hard to serve up stylish play during the winter months.

Resurfacing the Goodison pitch costs around half a million pounds each year.

But in a bid to combat the problems of last season, the Blues’ hierarchy sanctioned the additional spending of around £500,000 on implementing the popular Desso Grassmaster system.

Artificial fibres are injected into the natural grass surface to add greater stability to the pitch and prevent it from cutting up during the periods of poor weather.

In total, the Goodison Park pitch will be made up of 7% artificial fibres.

Supporters at tomorrow’s friendly will not see a drastically different playing surface but as the season wears on they will notice the improvements.

Head groundsman Bob Lennon says the adoption of the Desso technique will mean the Goodison pitch is in consistently good condition from August to May.

Other surface providers are available but Lennon says Desso Grassmaster will give Everton a “Rolls Royce” of a pitch and bring them into line with some of the leading stadiums in the world.

“We started about 10 weeks ago and took the whole surface of the pitch off, “ Lennon said.

“We reconstructed the profile of the pitch right through from the subsoil right through the top grass.

“The natural turf has been stitched in with Desso which pushes an eight inch tine, with fibre on it, into the surface to support it.

“It stabilises the pitch, mainly for the middle part of the season around Christmas time, when you get all the bad weather.

“It is compatibly stable all the way through the season so you don’t get any variants.

“When you pull the grass apart you can see the fibre of the artificial grass underneath.

“It’s not really visible to the naked eye.”

Leighton Baines was pragmatic in his assessment of the pitch following Everton’s 2-1 win over West Bromwich Albion in late January.

“The pitch at Goodison has been in better condition but it’s the same for both teams,” he said.

“We won’t complain and hopefully it won’t hinder us too much. We’re at the stage of the season where we’ll be playing a lot more games on it.”

Moyes, however, was slightly more to the point, saying: “I’m disappointed with Goodison. I’m disappointed with the pitch. It’s coming up. We’re trying to play good football and it’s not that great at times.”

Lennon went on to explain why the new pitch will avoid such problems.

“On these previous pitches, it is like a rice pudding,” he said.

“Once you take the skin off a rice pudding everything else erodes then.

“It is the same with football pitches. They break up.

“We class the Desso pitches as the Rolls Royce of pitches.

“It is not a Ferrari or a Lamborghini but it is made the best way.

“It may not be the fastest or the best looking but it’s the one people always go for.

“If you are going for a car, people choose the Rolls Royce because of the quality.

“What you pay for is quality. It is not aesthetically as pleasing but the pitch will be the same each week.

“It is about consistency for the home side. And the compatibility from the training ground to the match pitch.”

He added: “The Desso pitch was designed about 15 years ago and so I’ve been after it since then really.

“But it is about the price and time scale for Everton. We need at least 10-11 weeks to do it.

“Every year I put a budget in for a Desso pitch but it was knocked back because of the timescale.

“I only found out a week before the end of the season that we were getting the go-ahead this summer.

“The board have been terrific. They have been fantastic over this and have gone for it.

“We have fitted it in between West Brom’s training ground getting reconstructed and Manchester United’s main ground getting it done.

“We’ve been absolutely hammered work-wise to get this pitch ready for the start of the new season.”

A specialist team from Desso Grassmaster, based in Holland, came to Goodison Park to fit the club with their new pitch.

“They did the pitches for South Africa in 2010 and are off to Rio to do the pitches for next year’s World Cup,” he added.

“They’ve done Wembley, the Emirates, Aston Villa and Liverpool.”