It has been just over a year since Everton Football Club's men's team last played at Goodison Park, and residents and businesses have shared their views on how the area has transformed since then. After more than a century at the Grand Old Lady, the club announced in 2023 that the men's team would move out at the end of the 2024/25 season. Since the start of the 2025/26 season, the men's team has been playing at the Hill Dickinson Stadium at Bramley Moore Dock, while Goodison Park continues to host Everton Women's home fixtures.
Barbara Foster, who moved to the area nearly 60 years ago, recalled typical match days on her street. She said, "On Saturday afternoons you couldn't walk down the street because of the people walking up to go to the match. That was the first thing I remember from when I moved." She added, "When I first moved in here, along this road you could buy anything. You could furnish and decorate a house, get everything you needed for the family. But now you can't even buy fresh meat around here."
Elsie Maloney, 81, grew up on Walton Road and has lived on Everton Road for 15 years in what was her nan's house. She described how fans would knock on her door asking to go upstairs to look out the window at the players arriving. On one occasion, she had to ask police to intervene when fans put a banner across her mother's window. She said, "The policeman came over and said 'get the banners down, there's an old lady.' My mum was 96 at the time."
According to Elsie, local amenities like butchers and grocery stores have been closing for decades, but the pace has accelerated since the men's team left. She noted, "Shops have gone. More so since Everton have left. Kentucky's [KFC] gone. The chippy down the road, that was fantastic, gone. There's really not a lot that I can remember that's left." She added, "If my mum was here now, she'd cry. There was a butchers, a veg shop, everything you wanted on County Road and Walton Road. Walk along now, you can see the difference yourself."
S&H Arslanian on Goodison Road has managed to stay open, but Harmeet Kaur, who works there, said business is "95% down" since the men's team moved out. Meanwhile, The Brick pub, run by diehard Evertonian Mark Leary, 66, has survived by running a coach to Bramley Moore for home games. Leary said, "In the football season, we run a coach down to Bramley Moore. With a lot of night games, we've had 50 to 60 always on the coach, who come into the pub before the game and come back afterwards." He added, "The prices in The Brick have stayed what they were before Everton left. They haven't gone up. They've stayed exactly the same, and that's only because I want them to be that way. I feel now as if I'm putting something back into the community."
