A Safety Advisory Group will meet on Monday to decide whether Everton can meet Liverpool in what would be one of the last derbies to be staged in their home of the last 128 years
It is hard to believe now, even harder when you are shoehorned into one of the most cramped and restrictive press boxes in England, but Goodison Park was a World Cup stadium once.
That was in 1966, obviously, and on many occasions it has been remarked that to all intents and purposes the ground has hardly changed since. If physical distancing is now to arrive in the media areas it will certainly not be before time. Yet people are fond of Goodison, it will be missed when Everton move out to their shiny new home by the docks. It is not just the Archibald Leitch architecture, the boxy stands or the pub across the road where Bill Kenwright has a habit of fraternising with his public after famous victories, it is the way the place sits, like Arsenal’s Highbury used to, in the middle of a community. “Turn a corner and there’s a football ground,” as Arséne Wenger said when introduced to the odd concept (for a Frenchman) of a stadium surrounded on all sides by housing.
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