With the Guardian’s unstoppable rise to global dominance** we at Guardian US thought we’d run a series of articles for fans wishing to improve their knowledge of the sports history and storylines, hopefully in a way that doesn’t patronise you to within an inch of your life. A warning: If you’re the kind of person that finds The Blizzard too populist this may not be the series for you.



** Actual dominance may not be global. Or dominant

Four years ago, at a time when Everton were neither hiring nor firing, a banner starting cropping up at their games. “The School of Science: Re-opened 6th June 2013”, it read, the date corresponding to Roberto Martinez’s appointment as manager. Martinez – held up as a visionary after his spells at Swansea and Wigan – would spend three seasons in charge and, by the end of that time, the early luster had completely faded. The football still sparkled at times, sure, but their underbelly was grievously soft and consecutive 11th-place finishes compounded the sense that they were going nowhere in a hurry.

So what was all that about science? It is hardly the first word you would associate with the sludge Everton served up under Ronald Koeman, who succeeded Martinez for a mere 58 games, during a one-paced and dreary opening quarter of this season. There was nothing cutting-edge about it and nor, under the auspices of an increasingly curt and aloof coach, was there the warmth and common touch that the club took such pride in along with its progressive edge.

Everton’s supporters are not especially known for demanding the moon on a stick but, with hindsight, perhaps that banner was a slightly forced attempt to recapture something that made their club feel unique. They expect more than they have been getting and you can nudge the dial back almost a century to find out why. It was 1928 and Everton, Division One winners that year and scorers of 102 goals in the process, were an absolute delight to watch. Dixie Dean, their local hero of a hot-shot striker, scored a never-beaten 60 league goals that year. Steve Bloomer, the one-time Derby and Middlesbrough striker, was among those enamored by the overall package and observed: “They always manage to serve up football of the highest scientific order.”

And so, almost by osmosis, the ‘School of Science’ nickname seeped into the consciousness, soon being appropriated by the club. It set a standard that Everton, who would subsequently be relegated but bounced back to win their fourth and fifth league titles before the Second World War, have sought to match ever since. In material terms that has happened sporadically: to start with there were the marvellous league championships won by Harry Catterick’s side in 1962-63 and 1969-70, which sandwiched an FA Cup win and a run of European campaigns. The midfield of Colin Harvey, Alan Ball and Howard Kendall, so dominant during the late 1960s and early 1970s, became known as the ‘Holy Trinity’ and, for many, embodied the guile and precision the ‘School of Science’ was meant to promote. Then there was, perhaps more familiarly, the superb Kendall era of the 1980s, the playing legend now directing matters from the dugout and bringing two more titles, an FA Cup and a European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1985. At that stage in their history they had won the top flight on more occasions than Manchester United.

Everton were brilliant back then and have only very rarely threatened anything of the sort in the Premier League era – an FA Cup final win over United under Joe Royle in 1994-95, which followed the previous season’s daredevil escape from the drop, proving to be rather thin gruel. Last season’s seventh-placed finish with Koeman in charge was befitting of their present-day status: more often than not sitting right on the coat tails of the leading lights but unable to seriously threaten them, their financial power lagging a step or two behind as well.

Last year’s takeover by Farhad Moshiri has raised the stakes and made it rather easier to dispose of Koeman when £140m of summer transfer spending quickly began to look misplaced. But Everton has never been a place where dynastic levels of success have been expected even if the club motto, Nil Satis Nisi Optimum (Nothing But The Best Is Good Enough) might suggest otherwise: their most fruitful spells have all been separated by a decade or two and that is an accurate reflection of their historical status. The ‘School of Science’ tag was never entirely trophy-dependent: it was more an identity, an approach to the game, a kind of romance, and one that also helped preserve Everton’s sense of self during the lengthy spells when their city rivals, Liverpool, conquered the continent.

But it was not all. Something else Everton supporters felt they had lost in the Koeman era, and a facet all the more important to retain after that big-money takeover and with plans for a shiny new stadium in the works, was that sense of community. There was a feeling he never really understood the club and that, perhaps more than any slick technical football, has always been a minimum requirement at Goodison Park. When David Moyes became Everton manager in 2002 he referred to a listing ship as “the people’s club on Merseyside”. Moyes went on to keep Everton punching high, finishing in the top six five times, and performing marginally better than their relative level of resource. The style was frequently more artisanal than artistic but they were, in a way, everyone’s favourite little big club: Moyes knew what he was doing in openly handing them to the people, furthering the distinction from the behemoth on the other side of Stanley Park and tapping into the passion that has always coursed through Goodison’s cramped, rickety, impossibly atmospheric stands.

It is an impression that, until now, Everton have managed to maintain: that of a significant English club with a certain old-world charm; a club moulded, for now at least, among the tight streets of their northern Liverpool home. Nobody would pretend their faithful have completely avoided the modern ills of extreme impatience and overanalysis, but it has generally been a bastion of realism brushed with a little stardust. The problem for Koeman, in the end, was that the old ardor had been dulled and the science had gone bad.