Everton have not won a trophy since the 1995 FA Cup final against Manchester United at the old Wembley. Since the turn of the century they are the only club across the top four tiers of English football to have won nothing and been promoted nowhere. That second half of the record comes with an obvious catch: to be promoted you first have to go down, and Everton have not done that since 1951.
So they sit in an odd category of their own. One of only six clubs never to have left the top flight since the Premier League began, alongside Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham. And, simultaneously, the club with the longest active drought for anything worth putting in a cabinet.
Why there is any optimism at all
An unbeaten start to the league season and a run in the Carabao Cup have shifted the mood, cautiously. It needed shifting. The transfer window ended badly: a move for AS Monaco striker Falorin Balogun collapsed when he walked away after problems with the medical, and Iliman Ndiaye, arguably the best player at the club, went to Manchester City for £65m. David Moyes was left with 18 senior outfield players on deadline day.
Recent evidence suggests the fans turn up regardless. The 1-0 EFL Cup win over Wolverhampton Wanderers at Hill Dickinson Stadium, which set up a last-16 home tie with Newcastle United, drew both Prime Minister Andy Burnham and his Canadian counterpart Mark Carney to the ground.
The ledger, and it is not pretty
Since 2000 Everton have lost two FA Cup semi-finals and won a third, beating Manchester United on penalties in 2009 before losing the final to Chelsea. They have gone out in the third round eight times. In the EFL Cup they have reached two semi-finals, in 2008 and 2016, and lost both.
The away record against the rest of the big six over that period reads: no wins at Chelsea in 27 attempts, two at Manchester United, one each at Arsenal and Liverpool, five at Manchester City. There was an FA Cup fourth-round replay win at Stamford Bridge in 2011, if that helps. In 53 Premier League Merseyside derbies since 2000, Everton have won five and lost 28.
What the people who lived it say
Leon Osman made 433 appearances and scored 58 goals for Everton between 2003 and 2016, which makes him well placed to judge whether the years were as bleak as the list implies. He does not think so. "Yes, there have been disappointments and those years without trophies, but let me tell you this, I wouldn't swap being an Evertonian for anything in the world," he told BBC Sport.
He pointed to the fourth-place finish and Champions League qualification in 2004-05, achieved by Moyes after Wayne Rooney had been sold to Manchester United, a season Arsene Wenger described as "a miracle". It ended with a qualifying-round exit to Villarreal, 4-2 on aggregate, after Pierluigi Collina ruled out a late Duncan Ferguson header that would have taken the tie to extra time. Evertonians have not let that one go.
Dr David France, 78, has been going since 4 September 1957, when Everton drew 3-3 with Manchester United's Busby Babes. He has lived in Arizona since 1977 and reckons he has covered two million miles getting back and forth, which he prices at "a robust seven-figure Littlewoods Pools jackpot". He founded the Everton Former Players' Foundation in 1999 and gave more than 20,000 items of memorabilia into public ownership through The Everton Collection Charitable Trust.
His assessment of where the club now stands is unsentimental. "I think we missed the boat after the Premier League ship sailed. We are no longer the best of the rest." He is clear-eyed about the recent past too, describing a three-year stretch when Everton "could almost be described as a laughing stock". And then the other side of it: "You don't become an Evertonian to be a glory hunter do you? We have loyalty inbred into us. We don't just support the club, Evertonians support one another."
Osman's prediction is the one most Everton supporters would sign up to. "If and when we do get silverware, just you watch those celebrations. They will be something else."
Context: Everton's last trophy was the 1995 FA Cup. They were last relegated in 1951 and survived on the final day of 2022-23 by beating Bournemouth. They are unbeaten in the Premier League this season and host Newcastle United in the EFL Cup last 16. Quotes to Phil McNulty, BBC Sport.
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